Solution providers need to deliver a business outcome to successfully sell the Internet of Things to customers. And Ingram Micro is there to help every step of the way, making sure partners understand the key considerations involved.
The industrial giant is diving deep into container technology to make it easier to run applications at the edge in factories. 'We view ourselves [as] what VMware did for the data center, we're doing for the edge,' Pixeom CEO Sam Nagar told CRN in an interview earlier this year.
'In any emerging market, you have to get through that dumb-it-down stage before people can handle the choices and start to go do things on their own,' Dell edge computing exec Jason Shepherd says.
'The more that these are packaged, the more that these are proven, the more that these are ready to go, hopefully what that allows is to cut down on the proof of concepts,' IPED senior consultant Mark Williams says.
'Onshape is a very unique asset. Because of the high cost of entry, you simply won't find another [computer-aided design] SaaS startup out there,' PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann says of the vendor's plan to acquire Onshape.
Opportunities abound for solution providers to get involved with bringing blockchain to customers, including by using smart contracts to enable predictive maintenance of IT systems.
'Operational technology is in their DNA. When you talk with other companies that are trying to do this in this space, they just do not have that close touch,' Disney executive Michael Tschanz says of Hitachi Vantara's IoT platform.
'As a partner, I look at it and go, I have another well-known partner now wrapped into this entity, so I can collaborate with them and use them in my opportunities,' one partner says of Hitachi Vantara's plan to merge with Hitachi Consulting as part of an IoT-focused reorganization.
One GE Digital partner says the industrial IoT vendor's new CEO plans to visit multiple joint customers with him in October — a sign of a more partner-centric focus: 'I think the response from the clients has already been super positive.'
Hitachi's enterprise technology subsidiary is getting a new CEO and chairman and merging with Hitachi Consulting to double down on its Lumada Internet of Things business — a move that comes almost exactly two years after Hitachi Vantara was formed through a merger of three Hitachi businesses.
The chipmaker also clarifies the reliability of an earlier version of the Apollo Lake processors after retracting a notice it sent to customers last week: 'When the B-1 Stepping is used in accordance to the published specifications and design guidelines, it meets PC Client Usage requirements.'
'Partners are critically important because they typically know what sources of information they'll need to gather to put through a platform to achieve the results customers want. Understanding that upfront and walking them through that is critical,' one solution provider tells CRN.
'With CoreKinect, we're able to remove the need for us to vet a hundred different sensor manufacturer companies and partner with one company who can custom design and create sensors very specific to the actual use case,' Ingram Micro's Eric Hembree says of the CoreKinect deal.
'As we start scaling up, it will be more important for us to have system integration partners with different skill sets,' Litmus Automation co-founder John Younes tells CRN of the industrial IoT startup's channel strategy.