IoT Vendors Recommend Solutions Providers Take Vertical-Specific Approach To Market

Internet of Things experts from a variety of vendors, speaking during a recent CRN roundtable discussion, recommended that solution providers tackle the IoT market with a vertical-specific approach.

Intel Managing Director Steen Graham said partners should think about the problems that IoT technologies solve.

"The one thing that I think is critical for the channel to scale and really monetize the opportunities is to go beyond the vertical and really target the use-case outcome. That's where I see a lot of the opportunities. A lot of the business problems are multi-vertical problems," Graham said.

"Our approach is to build horizontally, but go to market vertically. The customers only understand things from their own vertical. They’re really not that technology-savvy. I mean IoT is not about technology and it’s not so much about the internet, it's about the things," said Tony Shakib, vice president at Cisco.

As a cyber security company, ForeScout comes to the IoT market with a targeted approach, but Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President Rob Greer recommends that solution providers look beyond their immediate IoT offerings.

"IoT isn’t just about things you know about, it's also about things you don't know about," he said.

He recommended that partners look for 'adjacencies' to expand their technology portfolios and services.