It’s All About the Service – A Lesson In iPhone Loss

Beth Vanni

OK, so it’s my fault.  I was at the circus with my kids, using  my new new Apple iPhone 3G as a camera (can’t miss those shots with the elephants and the Bermese Pythons).  It dropped out of my lap.  Either that or the Snow Cone vendor was eyeing it the whole time – that’s my theory.  Either way, it’s gone, and the last 24 hours of my life have not been the same!

Circus Casualty

Of course, everyone knows that the iPhone is only available in the U.S. through one exclusive service provider, AT&T.   What an OEM deal that must have been!   An old friend of  mine who works for Apple admits the Apple/AT&T deal was so rich that the royalties paid by AT&T to Apple are paying for a good chunk of the ongoing R&D on the iPhone technology.   Either way, I’m now addicted. Yes, I actually do use the AppStore for all those thousands of plug-in apps. And, I use the Safari web browser …. a lot. I never call 411 anymore. And I didn’t buy a Garmin, because most of the GPS functionality I need I can do on the iPhone. And finally, for the first time in my 25+ year career, I really am getting emails pushed live down to my iPhone and can actually be pretty productive when NOT in front my laptop. Amazing. This device can really make anyone from the 12 year old text-maniac to the 52 year old corporate sales executive both really productive and entertained at the same time.

VMware reaches for the sky, um, I mean the cloud

Sandra Glaser Cheek

I recently attended VMware’s well-attended Partner Exchange conference in Orlando, FL. The primary focus of the event was to introduce how VMware partners can take advantage of new VMware technology to help start moving customers to the compute cloud – more specifically the internal or “private cloud” The company also unveiled new partner initiatives aimed at making it easier for solution providers to work with its technology and the next generation partner program.

Rick Jackson, CMO of VMware, kicked off the conference by talking about VMware’s primary focuses:

1. Get customers 100 percent virtualized. This includes introducing them to the newly announced vSphere product line.
2. Working with partners to help customers build cloud infrastructures.
3. Virtual desktops – “a necessary component of getting customers into a 100 percent virtualized environment.”
4. Working with reseller partners, solution providers and technology partners, to manage virtual platforms.

Tod Nielsen, VMware’s new COO followed with a presentation of VMware’s vision of cloud computing. And it’s not the big external clouds you would expect – Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. VMware believes that there is a place for all business, large and small to have their own data centers. And that these businesses will likely utilize external clouds to outsource some needs, but there will also be a need for a private/internal cloud. “At the end of the day, what customers want are internal clouds, which have similar tools and resources as those available on external clouds… and they will want a private cloud which allows them to have internal clouds while, at the same time, taking advantage of external clouds.” The vSphere suite of extensible management products was next unveiled.

Who Drives Partner Growth: Channel Sales Managers vs. the “Community”

Beth Vanni

The buzz about the power of social networking is almost inescapable.   At today’s Channel Focus North America conference here in San Diego, Luanne Tierney, the VP of Cisco’s Global Channel marketing function shared a great story about the power of “community collaboration”.  Her company’s CTO recently tailored her technology roadmap presentation within ½ hour before she presented it to a very important group of Cisco’s biggest customers.  But more interesting was that she did that from her hotel room based on feedback she was getting from a dozen loyal Twitter followers.  Talk about tapping into the “community” and responding!

As usual, this Channel Focus conference tries to understand trends in channel development and enablement.  Which partner types are vendors investing in?  How are their channel programs driving growth?  Well, this year’s conference is really conflicted around the topic of how to impact partner growth.   There are two very divided camps – one that is struggling with all the age-old issue of the Channel Sales Manager role and how they drive partner engagement, loyalty and growth.   The other group is focused completely on the stimulating and vendor-independent power of partner “communities”  as a means for partners to expand their associations and grow.

Passing It On

Diane Krakora

During these economic hard times, stories abound of people making a difference in their community, giving back to their social network and passing on support to the next generation. I don’t know if there are more good deeds being done now or we are so hungry for any good news that these acts of kindness are being reported more. In a way, it doesn’t matter, the awareness is being heightened. There’s the story of the chain of people paying the toll for the next car behind them, and the “free” café that serves the local homeless population fresh nutritious food (and the non-homeless who pay “what they can”) or the random man who pre-pays for the woman’s food in line at the grocery store (who can’t make the food stamps go far enough to feed her family).

I witnessed this type of selflessness this week within our channel community. The speakers at the Baptie Channel Focus event this week all passed on their knowledge, experiences and wisdom to the next generation of channel professionals. Some of the speakers were sponsors and were there selling their wares to the attendees, and some of the speakers were well respected channel leaders like Luanne Tierney of Cisco, Sheila O’Neil of Panasonic, Mike Haines with Microsoft and Stephen DiFranco from Lenovo. Talking with Maurizio Capuzzo, long time Channel Focus favorite Italian (formerly of Symbol), I discovered a giving spirit   in our channel ecosystem. Not only was he, like the rest of the speakers, willing to give two days out of the office to impart their knowledge on a relevant topic, but Maurizio also took vacation time and spent his own money to travel from New York to San Diego to participate. When my eyes twinkled with gratitude, he nonchalantly said “I enjoy passing it on”.

I am so inspired by this generous act to pass on knowledge to channel professionals, that we are dedicating our May webinar to the next generation of channel leadership. On May 14th at 11am PDT, please join me as I discuss careers in channels with four great channel chiefs:

•Allison Watson, SVP Worldwide Channels, Microsoft
•Keith Goodwin, SVP Worldwide Channels, Cisco
•Steve Houck, GM Latin America (former VP WW Channels), VMware
•Leonard Iventosch, VP Channel Sales, Isilon

Enjoy the lively discussion about their career choices, trials and joys of being a channel chief. And who knows, maybe you’ll inspired to pass on your expertise as well.

Register for Webinar

Voice of the Partner – What lessons can we learn from Starbucks?

Sandra Glaser Cheek

Starbucks is celebrating its MyStarbucksIdea.com’s first birthday. On this site, Starbucks asked “What would make your Starbucks experience perfect? We know you’ve got ideas – big ideas, little ideas, maybe even totally revolutionary ideas – and we want to hear them all.”

Starbuck’s has a dedicated team of “Idea Partners” – Starbucks employees who are experts in their respective fields. They bubble up the most popular and innovative ideas that are the best fit for Starbucks and present them to key decision makers within the company to recommend how they can execute on the new ideas. The top ideas are posted to the “Popular Ideas” section of the website and Starbucks customers can help decide which ideas are best by voting.

Partner Profitability – Show Them The Money

Ingrid Krivin

One of the hottest issues right now in the channel is Partner Profitability.
In other words, showing your partners that by selling your products you can make them more profitable than if they sell other vendors’ products.

But how to do this with credibility? And who has the time to think about your partner’s profitability?

Well, I say, who doesn’t have the time considering that if you want your partners to sell your stuff, you’d better start thinking about what drives them – bottom line profits.

So how to make your footprint larger in your partner’s business, and how to drive more revenue out of the partners that you have?

Recruiting the Right Partners

By Beth Vanni

Recruiting the right partners remains an age-old channel  management challenge.

Vendors have gotten increasingly more sophisticated at the “whys” and “hows” of recruiting over the years.  But the fact that nearly 50% of vendors surveyed in our 2009 State of Partner Program study indicated that recruitment represented a “very” or “somewhat” challenging issue in 2008 tells us there’s still progress to be made.

Dell Distribution Agreement Shock Waves

By Tim Lowe

Finally some news other than what’s going on in the economy!

DELL’s distribution agreement announcement is sending shock waves throughout the industry larger than rumors of IBM-SUN merger discussions. The availability of a subset of the DELL product line through broad line distributors Ingram Micro and Tech Data has ramifications for every value added reseller in the channel. The worst kept secret in the industry for years has been the percentage of DELL desktop and laptop business that has either been sold or influenced by the channel. I’ve never seen an accurate estimate of how many Dell desktops have been “sold” by the channel through the influence of a solution provider either for a configuration fee or simply as part of the overall solution package. And of course Dell has used broad line distributors for years to provide the logistics of their third party options. However the public announcement of a formal relationship between DELL and Ingram Micro/Tech Data legitimizes the entrance of Dell into the channel supply chain.

Partner Credit Crunch

By Tim Low

Every day the news is full of information regarding the worldwide financial and credit crisis.  While the economic “downturn” is affecting every aspect of IT business from overall sales to an increased emphasis on green computing, the reduction of available credit is a fundamental business change that has the potential to drastically change the IT channel model. While it’s not as sexy as a headline describing a looming depression, if partners are unable to buy products, they can’t sell them!

We are already seeing a drastic reduction in the available credit, with IBM Global Financing terminating a program that provided multivendor reseller financing. While distributors claim to not have reduced their lines of available credit, as the economy takes its toll on VARs, we will definitely see distributors increase their vigilance in reviewing open lines of credit. And the smallest VARs that rely on credit card and home equity financing have seen those lines  arbitrarily reduced or terminated with no review of the VAR business financials. This is not only affecting smaller VARs., we hear reports of $100M+ partners reviewing their available credit and looking for creative financing. The Channel Insider 2009 Market Pulse Report, a biannual study of economic activity and key performance indicators of the North America technology reseller and services channel, indicates  over half of partners surveyed are concerned with tightening credit and payment terms.

HELPING THE SMB CUSTOMER – NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL

Beth Vanni

How HP is using its vast Resources to Help SMB customers and Partners survive the Downturn

The fact that there 6.3m SMB customers in the U.S. and that they’re projected to grow 5x the rate of the market overall in 2009 isn’t news. The fact that the SMB market represents a $60+ billion dollar market for commercial computing products isn’t new either. But, amidst all the industry noise about how critical small business is to the US economy, what are the largest manufacturers really doing to help this customer segment, and more importantly the partners who service them, thrive and grow?

Well, sometimes bigger really can be better. With total revenues of over $120b and 8 of every 10 SMB customers already owning some HP equipment, HP is leveraging its vast resources and broad product portfolio to take a very active role in giving SMB customer and SMB-focused partners new reasons to invest in new equipment, get support and collaborate. Today, HP announced new products, new support, a new SaaS delivery model and new partner program offerings – all focused on the under-999 employee customer space.