Synnex hosted a vendor roundtable at its Varnex Fall Conference in Las Vegas this week and asked solution providers to Tweet in their questions for the panelists. The questions ranged from what the vendor executives see in the SMB market, what they'd like VARs to do better and what are the manufacturers doing to take share from Apple in the tablet market.

Panelists included Mike Abplanalp, director of channel sales at Lenovo; Brian Burch, vice president of Americas marketing, SMB & Cloud Worldwide, at Symantec; Simon Dudley, video evangelist at LifeSize Communications; Long Tran, director of technology and cloud at Microsoft; Tom Cahill, director of Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN) distribution sales and Industry Standard Server channel sales at HP; and Kevin Murai, president and CEO of Synnex.

The following are excerpts from the conversation.

[Related: Varnex Enhancements Include Staffing, Focus Groups, Sales Training]

After several years driving the channel, how much opportunity is still left in the SMB space?

Burch: We [believe] IT spending worldwide will be almost $1 trillion next year. We see a downward shift in the size of companies. It creates challenges that we need to understand to serve a few dozen employees vs. hundreds of employees. Those companies will mature and grow. There's still a big opportunity.

Simon: I've been in the video conferencing business for 20 years and it's always been wait until it takes off next year. This is why video conferencing is about to take off: there was a fundamental shift three years ago. Three years ago, if you wanted video conferencing you needed $10,000 worth of hardware. Now every single person has a video conferencing system [in their phone or tablet], they just haven't enabled it yet. You can download the app and have a video call. Dr. [Robert] Metcalfe invented the Ethernet, and he said the utility of the network goes up squared by the number of nodes in it. Most end users are interested in video. Most partners are interested in video conferencing. It's a game-changing point.

Cahill: Our expectation from SMB is they want more. We're taking enterprise feature functionality to products that are a play in the SMB market. Our Generation 8 servers are more time driving business, not managing IT, and we're going to drive 3Par technology into an SMB play next year.

Murai: SMB is why all of us are here today. When we look at a macro view of where we've been, SMB has been the best performing segment for the past number of years, even through the 2008 recession, and that continues to be that way. In talking with a number of [Varnex members] the past couple of days, many are finding success specializing by technology platform or by specific market or vertical. There's whole sea of opportunity out there and when you look at how technology is shifting, whether it's mobility or cloud or more specifically with Windows 8 or Ultrabooks, that presents a lot of different options you can identify with and chase after. The same applies to different vertical markets as well. The opportunity is out there and is absolutely huge.

NEXT: How Windows 8 Can Combat Apple

How is your field presence changing to get closer to VARs?

Abplanalp: Four years ago, we had 10 channel field reps to call on companies like yourself. Throughout the years we've split territories and added additional field reps. Now we have 35. Along with that, we've added inside sales reps to call [VARs] not in major metro areas and to support field reps. It's paramount to continue to scale to add field coverage. We did a study internally 30 days ago, looking at our resellers and how fast they are growing. We looked at the coverage type and how fast [partners] grow. The growth rate from those who had field coverage was incredible. We will continue to add field coverage and give you more support in the trenches with SMB customers.

Tran: There are a lot of different programs for people in this room: the Cloud Champions club [and] the VAR Champions club. You have more opportunity to make more profit, and you will get better coverage from [account managers] and [business development managers] willing to work with you as well.

Murai: Anybody up here on this panel, they will invest where they see growth. Our role is to facilitate engagement to vendor representatives. The other thing we do is augment. We have also been growing our [field] organization.

Apple's dominance in the tablet space doesn't seem to be abating. What are your plans to gain market share in that space?

Abplanalp: We're real excited for Windows 8 [tablets]. It's a no compromise solution. It's not only a consumption device but a creation device too. There are some amazing devices out there. We are making sure to get devices into your hands. Before Windows 8, [users] didn't have choices. We built Win 8 for this [Lenovo Twist tablet]. The battery life is amazing. Plus it has a USB. It's a great device. It's got a lot of options, also security, manageability, which should be a consumer and business concern.

Cahill: It gets back to consumption vs. creation. [iPad] is a consumption device. When you think about our PPS side, we're working closely with Microsoft building devices to consume and create. You have this seamless connectivity through the client to the data center. One company can do that across the board. Apple can't say that. That's my message when I talk to customers.

Murai: You have to change the conversation. If the question from a customer is "I have all these iPads and iPhones, can you help me figure out how to integrate them into business?" you have to backup and ask what are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to do? Our collective role is to help joint customers find the best solutions for business problem. In a lot of cases, it's something different. Change the conversation. Now with more ammo, you can have an entire Windows 8 ecosystem from an enterprise and business perspective. That's a big winner going forward. It's not just the client, it's about the entire ecosystem and how everything works so well together. That's what enterprise is looking for.

Simon: Talk to clients about video. People think of video conferencing every time you watch a Tom Cruise movie or Jack Bauer. In the near future, we'll all been using it. Or it's Morgan Stanley and big banks. No. Your clients are doing this already. [VARs] want video. But the IT guys you talk to don't know you do video. It's not an esoteric A/V product anymore. These clients can do video. You're not just talking to IT people, and you shouldn't just be selling them another box.

NEXT: What Can VARs Do Better?

VARs are always telling vendors what to do. Now it's payback time. Where do you think VARs could do a better job?

Burch: There are 10 million new companies born in the last four years. A lot of those companies have modern ways of thinking, but the sense that security is a problem isn't there. Two-thirds of those companies think they're well protected, but 75 percent of companies that have been around have had some sort of incursion. You need to help those companies understand your role to protect that critical environment and not have an outage.

Cahill: We need to raise the end-user conversation. There's a boatload of refresh opportunities to replace Generation 5 boxes with Gen 8. But to get beyond that siloed approach and raise the level of conversation, you have to talk converged infrastructure and ultimately make the data center simpler. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to sell full-blown cloud environment every time, but if you're not having that conversation someone else is.

Tran: Since we're launching all these Windows 8 products, the training and certification aspect of it [is vital]. Be prepared to have conversations. Be proactive with customers vs. having a customer see a commercial or an ad in a magazine and ask about it. Leverage the resources we have. Just in my group, we're doing over 300 different events in probably every hometown here. Let's make sure we get you partnered up and trained up.

What does it take for a reseller to become a leader and get on the radar screen of a vendor?

Simon: The first thing is gain a trusted advisor relationship with clients. We're not asking you to become video conferencing experts. We don't want you all to be video conferencing experts. We want you to have conversations around business problems. If you do that, you can come to us and say this is all the problems [a customer] is having and then we can tell you what the technical answer is. Don't say "We don't know firewalls or video algorithms." We as an industry have made it ridiculously complicated. It should be about biz problems and solutions.

Abplanalp: Have a plan. You've got to know what you're good at. Build from there.

Tran: It does come down to relationships. I'm a huge believer with customers but also with Microsoft partners. We have different programs for you to get involved in. When I think of leadership in this space, I think cloud. We're being visionaries to deploy things like Office 365. You should too.

Cahill: Having expertise and knowledge around what you're good at is important. The question is a good one. There are thousands of resellers out there. How do you raise your level of awareness to help us understand what you can do? How we're structured now in the field, the expectation is that the regional leader will get closer to partners, compared to the way we had organized in the past. That will help us all. Sometimes it's as simple as sending a ring-the-bell email to help us understand what sold, how you did it and where you want to go next.

Murai: The 80-20 rule is going to apply. Those few resellers that do high volume will get attention. But I do see small resellers get attention. Those that put up their hand and say "I want to partner with you. I want to put in the effort to develop a relationship." Second, a number of vendor partners have specific areas of focus that are strategic to their overall business. You may not be the biggest partner, but if you focus on some specific areas, you can get that attention.

PUBLISHED NOV. 14, 2012