Distributor CEOs: More VARs Should Sell Mobility, Virtualization

The Global Technology Distribution Council gathered the biggest and the brightest names in distribution to New York this week. CRN’s Scott Campbell caught up with eight executives at the GTDC CEO Insight conference and asked them what technology opportunity they thought was being undersold by VARs in the market. Here’s what they had to say:

Tom Dolan, Chairman, Westcon Group

I’d say there needs to be more emphasis on video. The recent European event [the volcanic eruption in Iceland] has taught us again there’s a compelling reason to sell video conferencing, along with WebEx and more, at the low end and the high end to all business customers. As time has gone on, there’s less magic and it has become more [about] equipment installation and training that [VARS do regularly].

Bob Dutkowsky, CEO, Tech Data

Mobility. I’m on this trip and I have no Netbook and no laptop. Only this [smartphone]. I’ll just use BizServer as an example, but it allows Blackberries to traffic e-mail. That requires a server, network, storage. More VARs should be selling mobility. They’re missing a huge opportunity. Also digital signage. Every one of a VAR's customers have a conference room, a lunch room. The smart VARs realize there’s opportunity there. The third area is physical security. Everybody is worried about securing their environments. There are cameras over IP now with a network to support that. That also brings in storage, networking, servers, applications.

Roy Vallee, CEO, Avnet

If I had to pick one, it feels like an obvious answer, but unified computing or converged infrastructure. That’s the avante garde right now of data center technology. That’s the one I’d point to where VARs are thirsty for knowledge.

Kevin Murai, CEO, Synnex

Virtualization and server consolidation is still underpenetrated. Data shows that somewhere south of 30 percent of servers are virtualized today. That’s significant opportunity. I think that part of the reason that is is because not enough VARs can do the assessment and take the right answer back to their customer. Also, [remote monitoring and management]. Every time we deploy an RMM solution [with a VAR], we find significant opportunity to do cleanup. It comes in the form of too many old devices on the network, version upgrades not done for routers, switches, clients and servers. We find things like warranties outdated, antivirus outdated or not existent on some devices. That’s a big opportunity that’s undersold. In pretty much every [end user environment] we see a mess.

Along with that, managed print is an obvious opportunity for VARs. Some catch on and love it. Others need to sit up and take notice of the opportunity.

NEXT: Complexity of Virtualization Pushes Some VARs Away

Greg Spierkel, CEO, Ingram Micro

I'd like to see more solutions sales. I’d also like to see more from an Ingram Micro perspective, see more resellers and manufacturers utilize our logistics capabilities. But from a more general perspective, I think the tide is rising across the full spectrum of products right now. We’re seeing good velocity in all sectors.

Kia Hong Lim, CEO, SiS Technology Group

I think that we see a lot of room on mobility and data storage and cloud computing. VARs traditionally are doing the corporate computing implementations and [with] this wave of cloud in terms of plugging into storage and mobility, they also need to be doing the investment there.

Fabian von Kuenheim, President and CEO, Magirus

The most undersold technology in my mind still is storage virtualization and storage deduplication. There still are not enough VARs that grasp on that technology and what it means. It’s complex and virtualization has a tendency to be a lengthy sales cycle. But at the end of the day, you get more margin but with economic pressure today some VARs feel it’s more important to get quicker sales.

Meinie Oldersma, CEO of 20:20 Mobile

[VARs] are not doing enough selling the value proposition [of] mobility. They sell a product or maybe two products but they are not selling the entire solution that includes all type of services. One reason for that is compared to the IT industry, where the average PC solution might be $2,500, with a mobile phone it’s maybe $400. The absolute amount is low, but they don’t sell services or accessories. You can make more money on accessories than on a mobile phone. Time should be spent on selling the entire value proposition.