Barrie's Blog

Can vendor sales people and VAR sales people ever be happy bed fellows?

Probably one of the biggest issues to the UK channel, and all too often overlooked, is the pursuit of trying to align the objectives of the revenue-targeted vendor, with those of the profit-driven reseller. 

Caught in the middle of this unspoken feud is poor old Ban Ki-moon; otherwise known as the distributor.

The inconvenient truth is that, in many cases, a huge amount of distrust can grow and fester within this uncertain and uneasy alliance.  It is quite understandable when a VAR doesn’t want vendors in their customer base, and the same is true for the named accounts of many vendor salespeople.  To get over this from a vendor perspective, the sacred ‘deal registration’ system has been created.  For the vendor, this provides the clearest view possible of pipeline for planning and resource allocation purposes.  In reality it could be seen as a cattle market where additional discounts and incentives are offered as horse trades for access to a customer account or prospect. 

In a larger industry context, there are misgivings when other partners get involved in a given deal because of a legacy relationship (“he’s my father-in-law” etc.).  This will often lead to discounts being retrofitted by the VAR, thereby undermining the programme in the first place.  Vendors on the other hand believe the partner will either slow the sales process down or introduce other services or products that may be at odds with the vendor, even if a more solutions-orientated approach is the right thing to do for the customer. 

Something has to be done about this, because the squeezed middle (yes us as the distributor and full-time ‘Relate’ counsellor) is constantly trying to fix this problem.  Perhaps having a joint objective around margin is the way forward, but getting this buy-in – especially from the vendor – still seems a little out of reach.

Ultimately I think we shouldn’t lose sight that we are all on the same side, and no matter how it might feel sometimes, we don’t want such different things at the end of the day.

We’ve known for some time using technologies like Infoblox, that a dedicated IP Address Management (IPAM) solution will automate away 2 ½ man-days a month of administrative faffing for the average 1,000 user/5,000 IP address organisation.  At that scale of business in particular, it’s not just the threat of wasted time and resources that drives the purchasing decision.  With the alternative fix for IPAM typically being a dangerously unstable home-made spreadsheet based system of arcane checks and balances, there is no room to hide when the document goes awry or when some critical network outage requires rapid intervention. 

Those rules-of-thumb are true enough when grappling with DNS and DHCP infrastructure systems in an IPv4 world, but become even more compelling with the snowballing adoption of the much longer and more complicated IPv6 addressing system.  Put simply, IPv6 is not a human-friendly address system.  Whereas IPv4 is a comparatively short chain of numbers (e.g. 192.101.20.5), IPv6 by contrast is a morass of tightly bunched gibberish (something more akin to: 1966:ajhd:df7w:98gh:a123:p2ps:mwh2:6t2q).  Then there is the issue of requiring three to four IPv6 addresses per IPv6 interface.  Stick that in your spreadsheet and I defy you to get to the end of the week without your head blowing off. 

If a customer hasn’t considered IPAM automation before, then IPv6 should be a catalyst for exploring the business case for it.  If they decided against it in the past, then consider how the new challenges of navigating IPv6 jiggery-pokery is bound to make the ROI model stronger and even more compelling.

Did you know just a couple of years ago, 80% of the traffic on an enterprise network was email, FTP and port-or-protocol (TCP-ish) type traffic, while only 20% of traffic was web or HTTP/HTTPs?

Today those splits have flipped right over, with 80% of the traffic on any network predominantly take up by HTML/HTTP/s. That in turn has changed the landscape of how we address security, application performance and delivery, and the way in which networks are built.

Did you know that just one year ago, 80% of the devices accessing company Wi-Fi hot spots and enterprise wireless networks were PC based; the other 20% being so called smartphones and handheld devices? You guessed it – it’s the other way around now…

What a remarkable change and, all the more shocking, what terrific speed of change? An even more startling stat is that 80% of these smart devices are personally owned by their user; these aren’t even company issued devices!

Put these two phenomena together and it’s a lethal combination of devices we don’t own or know, and application traffic that is chiefly browser-based, accessing all sorts of apps that are either unknown or not monitored.

Then consider what threats are out there to exploit these holes. If a year or so ago, 80%, were port and protocol based, today they ride in on executable files, 80% of which come in as HTML/HTTP. They are stealthy, come in different forms and threads and are untraceable. Basically, it is modern malware that has no signature and is purpose-built to do real damage.

If modern malware loves unknown devices and HTML traffic, then what are you doing about it?

It’s a nice little earner when those license renewals letters hit customers’ doormats.  Do you view these as ‘soft’ recurring revenues, or do they present a greater opportunity than that?  On the other hand, could they actually represent a threat to your own ongoing business with that customer?

I’d say most resellers are in denial when it comes to renewals.  Their simplest option is to push for renewal, rather than encourage a rethink.  But are you being too risk-averse by failing to challenge your customer to rethink their technology estate?  Certainly you risk the customer doing some market testing, maybe bringing in competitors and so forth, but saying ‘no’ to a customer can sometimes be the best thing you’ve ever done.

Time and time again, I see VARs hiding from a bigger opportunity in order to follow the path of least resistance.  And yet, as time as proven, if you fail to introduce new ideas, techniques and technologies, you can safely bet that someone else will.  Whoever does stand up to the customer and offer them that, will at least gain more respect and acceptance as a trusted, authoritative consultant.

Every license renewal is an opportunity to get closer to the customer, and open up valuable opportunities to refresh their outdated technology with new disruptive approaches.  I admit, it is a risk, but hide from risk and you hide from its reward!