APC's Digital Edge - Outsmarting Hardware Commoditization

Hardware commoditization is eroding solution providers’ profit margins. Customer acquisition costs are on the rise, along with customer expectations. It’s do-or-die time for channel partners who dive into managed services.

“Gone are the days where you just buy and resell a piece of equipment and say, ‘Okay, call me when it breaks in a few years,’” says Katie Boeh, director of channel marketing and communications, North America at APC.

“The challenge of hardware commoditization creates that deeper challenge of, ‘How do I create value for my customer? How can I make them want to come to me for all those things? Because I’m not just selling them a piece of hardware, I’m solving a problem for them.’”

Currently, managed services make up about 30 percent of IT solution providers’ revenue. Partners can reposition themselves as service providers by connecting equipment to APC’s EcoStruxure IT.

“EcoStruxure IT will actually give them the ability to see what’s going on with that physical infrastructure,” says Larry Hann, director of channel digital services at APC. “And it actually gives them actionable intelligence that they can go and have a conversation with their customer about what to do next.”

EcoStruxure IT’s cloud-based platform features built-in assessment tools that help partners:

“A lot of partners do think of us still as kind of that ‘battery-in-a-box company’,” says Boeh.

“What is new is that we’re taking those best practices that we had in the data center and actually bringing it out into the channel. We’re enabling our channel to finally use software for the way that they actually are providing IT to their customers,” says Hann.

Gartner has recognized APC has industry-leading for Innovation and Leadership in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for years. Next time, we’ll take a closer look at APC’s EcoStruxure IT and the different assessment options that are as unique as your customers.

Learn More: Cloud Infrastructure| Cloud Platforms

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