Synnex Panel: Stimulus Opportunities In Health Care, SLED, Green

All five members of the panel, which also included Dana Gardner, a director at Computerware, Vienna, Va., and Steve Hull, vice president of sales for Westwind Computer Products, Albuquerque, N.M., agreed the Obama administration would favor small business interests.

Hull suggested that supplier diversity programs -- designed to help small businesses level the playing field with special certifications -- were one niche where a lot of VAR partnering was happening. Loranger confirmed she was seeing a lot of diversity programs in health care, too, from places such as insurance, pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

The panelists also agreed that green IT initiatives were starting to play a bigger role in sales and procurement than ever -- feeding the popularity of virtualization and other technologies that drive efficiency.

"EPEAT is big on the federal side now," suggested Ed Somers, Synnex's government program manager. Somers was referring to the electronic product environmental assessment tool that was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate technologies in gold, silver and bronze categories based on their environmentally-friendly attributes.

Williams said he felt like "only one out of 10" resellers knew what EPEAT was, but it was becoming a make-or-break for some of the deals he was seeing, especially in the federal space.

"Some vendors do a good job [identifying] which products meet EPEAT levels, and some don't" Hull said.

"EPEAT is a program," Williams said, describing the strength of the classification. "EnergyStar is just something that's written on a box."

Regardless of which public sector vertical a VAR chooses to engage, it's always important, the panelists argued, to look at the end-user organization as multiple facets.

"Don't just talk to the purchaser," Hull argued. "Stick to your niche and understand their [the end user organization] language. Meet with them six to 12 months ahead of the game -- if you're responding to bids, you're already too late."