Mon, 16/02/2009 - 09:22
Can distributors have a stake in the managed services game? While the value proposition around resellers in this space seems obvious, I'm not sure whether there are ways distributors can play a role in assisting resellers to provide managed services. Are there particular services or back-end infrastructure that distributors can bring to the table? Or should they be looking at taking a hosting role?
If distributors take a role in Managed Services, they may as well enter into a reseller model themselves.
The vendors already provide that back-end for some aspects, it's a service solution and should remain that with vendors / resellers.
Also it would then mean that only certified capable resellers can provide the service and not have every tom dick and harry corner IT shop trying to offer a managed service through a distributor. It needs to be more hands on.
The market it already flooded with companies ATTEMPTING to offer managed services and in effect putting customers at risk as they try to maintain staff, service levels etc..
A distributor model is a procurement & supply & logisitics model - some already offer services, which is fine to support the products they resell, but there is already too much reliance on 3rd parties by some resellers who are unable to manage their own offerings.
In that case, what can distributors do about managed services? It's not like it's something that can be ignored.
Personally I think they need to look at their model. What can they provide from a managed services aspect?
You really need to understand it to begin with, do they offer hosting, back up, engineers, management centres, storage etc..
Hence why most disti's aren't geared up for it, there's too much variances.. The reason why Resellers work with multiple disti's, is because there is not 1 disti that can provide a total solution, or provide each componenent required to full provide a managed solution.
The reason why customers work with 1 reseller, is because they have the ability to align those multiple providers together under one hat..
There is 1 disti model that would work, which is in effect a distie becomes a service provider (such as the likes of AWA / Promim etc) and offers their services via the channel. The difference being, they need to drop their pants on pricing to ensure mass usage..
Which also leads to another query..
Why bother selling a Disti Managed Service, when you can simply sell a combination of services from the likes of HP, IBM, EMC, RSA, VMware, Verizon etc etc..
Cut the disti out and just go direct to the Vendor..
Wouldn't it be easier as well for vendors to cut out disti's and just deal directly with resellers. Now this would be better !!
If the vendor's cut out the disties, why wouldn't they just cut out the resellers also?
They don't have enough feet on the ground to begin with and in this climate they aren't going to be able to do it themselves - hence, the reliance on disties.