Security is complex. It’s not just the technology but its implementation too, with end user license agreements often adding to the issue. How many IT staff fully understand (or indeed read) all the legalities behind the agreements? Software licenses are written for a legal audience and they may not always be as clear as they could be to the IT audience.
Channel. Cloud Computing
Cloud computing, including Software as a Service (SaaS) is here to stay and continues to become a larger piece of the IT budgets of small businesses, as well as global organisations. Twenty one percent of companies are piloting SaaS applications, according to a recent Forrester Research Report. Gartner Research just predicted that the SaaS market reached $9.6 billion in 2009. Not bad in a tough economic year. In fact, the research firm predicts growth of a similar fashion for the next four years and in 2013 Gartner is forecasting the SaaS market to reach $16 billion. “Adoption of the on-demand deployment model has grown for nearly a decade, but its popularity has increased significantly within the last five years,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.
The IT channel is in the midst of a revolution and today, it is harder than ever for most IT resellers to run a profitable business. Developments in ecommerce over the past decade have made it very easy for IT buyers to find hardware and software at the lowest possible prices with just a few clicks of a mouse. Because of this, local and regional resellers are left with two options; they can either choose to compete on price with manufacturers and large, anonymous online IT outlets for razor-thin margins, or they can give their customers a reason other than price to keep buying from them. The manufacturers and online IT outlets are almost always able to better leverage economies of scale, giving the first option a low probability for success. Many pure IT dealers have already realized this and have made the successful transition to becoming Value Added Resellers.
Many companies pursue pure follower strategies – they don’t design their products and their market approach around their main customer group, instead they only follow the market leaders.
What does this mean?
- some product features will always be missing
- sales will report that they lose deals because of missing features
