Mike Long, Arrow NACP Group

CRN: What are some of the major initiatives Arrow is executing to foster midmarket opportunity for solution provider partners?

Long: This year we started the storage program, where we opened up storage labs in Atlanta and Minneapolis. Those labs are filled with equipment from virtually every manufacturer and every software provider in the storage industry. Our goal has been to really work the supply chain and for us to take on bigger expenses, thereby freeing up the resellers to invest more on the sales side.

CRN: What are the most popular services Arrow offers solution providers?

Long: Over the last year and a half it's been financing,making sure they have enough credit in the midrange business.

CRN: I'm sure you read about Ingram Micro's recent decision to cut off SMB solution providers that didn't meet a certain threshold. What's your take on that?

Long: You lose opportunities [that way. Of course, in the distribution business and the reseller business it's always a bet. When you sign up with a reseller, [you don't know whether that reseller is going to make something of themselves or be a casualty. And it's always been our policy to get to know our resellers on a more intimate level, and then we can make smarter decisions about investing in them.

CRN: How do you see the role of distributors changing over the next year?

Long: There has been [what I see as a two-way education trend. Our goal is to get the manufacturer, distributor and reseller into the right area of the supply chain. We want to provide a better understanding for the manufacturers of what the resellers do for them, and we want the resellers to completely understand where the manufacturers fit in the supply chain. We also want to get the costs lined up in the right buckets so we don't duplicate costs between the three of us.

CRN: Do you foresee a greater emphasis on value-added services in the coming year?

Long: That's another investment item for us, whether it's break-fix or load calculations or back-end tech support service for the resellers when they're on-site. Virtually every area of the service business is being stressed right now.

CRN: Are you seeing a greater emphasis on more well-rounded solution providers?

Long: Yes. When the industry started, it was primarily engineers that were getting out into the field and pushing out a single manufacturer's hardware. The problem with that is the resellers were very dependent on one manufacturer, and market swings could make or break their year.

Today, the solution providers are much more intelligent. They are becoming businesspeople. I think the last two years and the shakeouts have caused them to be more aware of their finances. They're asking questions about where they should invest their resources to grow the market. They are spending more time getting educated on different product lines so they can offer a complete solution to the customer vs. just the hardware.

CRN: What's your ETA on the storage software?

LONG: This year we'll be launching some of the first programs in the fourth quarter. They've been met with approval from many of the manufacturers, because this is a difficult area for them also, and distribution is a bridge between the reseller and the manufacturer.

CRN: When do you think we'll see a sustained upswing in the technology market?

Long: What we've seen this year is that the second quarter was larger than the first quarter, and the third quarter appears to be flat with the second quarter. We're expecting a bigger fourth quarter.

What I can tell you is the business that has been coming has primarily been upgrades, either in storage or in servers or in software. The real growth comes when productivity programs start to get installed at the customer base.