Distributors Look At Reselling Services For Solution Providers

As solution providers strive to differentiate themselves from competitors by focusing on specific markets or technologies, there is an opportunity for distributors to resell those specialized services to other channel partners, say executives at CRN's Volume Distribution Roundtable.

Whether it is a proprietary vertical market application or a unique service that can be SKU'd, the potential to find a wider audience is great, executives say.

Distributors are still formulating plans on how best to proceed, but they agree that many solution providers have a valuable commodity that others could use and that distributors have the capability to market it.

"Our customers are less likely to be selling products to one another because in general they don't have a competitive advantage in manufacturing product, or [else] they would be vendors," said Steve Raymund, chairman and CEO of Tech Data.

Tech Data is developing a pilot program in which the distributor would showcase solution providers' own applications at its solutions lab in Clearwater, Fla. The distributor would not likely take title to the applications but rather play a more indirect role in helping solution providers find each other, Raymund said.

"There are times when perhaps because a customer has geographic scope beyond the service area of the reseller it makes sense to collaborate with a partner in another region. Or there can be other instances within a particular geography that a reseller has a fairly narrow vertical practice, and the end user is looking for a broader solution. So a couple resellers or more might band together to provide a solution," he said.

The ability to buy and sell other solution providers' applications and services would make a solution provider appear larger in his customer's eyes, said Kevin Murai, president of Ingram Micro.

"There are many different components that go into an overall solution"different products or technical capability, geographic coverage and things like that"and those are really the kinds of things we help VARs to collaborate with and fill in the gaps on. I think there is a lot more opportunity," Murai said.

The Ingram Micro Service Network, a collection of hundreds of services-focused VARs that partner with each other, has formed several practice groups focused on different vertical or technology platforms such as high-end networking or surveillance, Murai said.

"That's also another group that our VARs can draw on to fill in their gaps on technical capability," he said. SED International has chosen to partner with the ASCII Group to help solution providers find buyers for their own applications, said Mark Diamond, the distributor's CEO.

"We feel they've built a good community, and [so we] partner with them. We've seen benefits as well, but it's not part of our core competency to bring the resellers together. Just to be part of that community is providing benefits for our company."