Channel Chatter Centers On Solutions, Hiring And Where The Money Is
Last week, CRN's sister publication VARBusiness held its annual VAR 500 ceremony to recognize the industry's largest VARs. There were many encouraging signs that came out of the discussions I was involved with during the day.
First and foremost, there is unquestionably a feeling of sustainable optimism about future business.
While it wasn't universally true, most of those I spoke with feel that although the small and midtier markets will continue to be the brightest spots in the foreseeable future, enterprise business is on the rise as well.
It's not a huge uptick, but the message was consistent that enterprise accounts are no longer cutting budgets. Instead of trying to do more with less, their tone has changed to one of doing more with the same resources in the enterprise.
The other difference is that while over the past three years most enterprise accounts were only spending on IT when it would help cut costs, that outlook has changed as well. Today these accounts are saying to their solution providers, "Tell me how spending can help me grow the business."
That's what we all want to hear.
Solution providers well entrenched in their customers' businesses should find that this attitude shift will make it much easier to identify opportunities. Those opportunities, however, will not lie in automation that improves productivity. Increasingly, new projects will be tied to a solution provider's ability to identify how solutions can get a client into a new business or extend its customer base or help it repurpose a product for another market.
Other encouraging discussions came out of last week's event. We heard that the channel is in a growth mode. Virtually every VAR I spoke with said it is adding new employees, and those hires are taking place at all levels. In some cases, solution providers of significant size said they have nearly doubled their employee roster.
Along these lines, CRN will publish its annual Salary Survey next week packed full of data on what's happening on the employment and salary front. The signs here are encouraging as well, with salaries clearly on the rise.
Interestingly, one VAR I spoke with told me that the value of many highly sought-after technical certifications of several years ago has declined. The CRN data supports this observation.
When you think about it, you can apply some logic as to why we are seeing this.
The industry is now selling solutions, not technology infrastructure. In this environment, customers are looking for ways to increase top-line revenue. Technical certifications, meanwhile, demonstrate a capability to deploy technology; they don't prove a basic understanding of how to apply technology to business in such a way that it creates new revenue opportunities.
There also has been a long dry spell when it comes to the introduction of major new technology or product advancements such as Windows NT or Netscape Navigator, to name just two. Those introductions produced a rush to gain technical knowledge. But today, there is no significant certification in the technical area that is not readily available.
In the end, we are in a full-blown recovery, and the signs indicate that more opportunities will present themselves in the next 12 months than we saw in the previous 12.
The difference is that the skill set needed to succeed goes beyond the technology alone.
Make something happen. I can be reached at (516) 562-7812 or via e-mail at [email protected].