Generating Deals in 4 to 6 Weeks? Seriously?
What vendors are asking about this week at Amazon Consulting
doneAdd comment June 30, 2009
The VAR 500:Strange Bedfellows
Beth Vanni
I’m so glad I get time to sit on airplanes. Really. It seems to get the unlikely place where I get the best, most cogent reading done, while locked in those tiny seats. This morning that reading involved the much-awaited CRN VAR 500 issue (May ‘09) – OK, I’m a little behind….
So, there are three things I’m usually interested in with this issue;
1) Who’s in the top ten?
2) how many new entrants have made it onto the list?
3) What the average year-to-year growth rate is of the overall group?
Granted,I’m still waking up to my first cup of Southwest Airlines coffee and I’m trying to glean a couple of these three things. But, immediately I have to do a double-take. It’s in the second sentence of the article. “The figure ($597,588,818,754 – total VAR500 annual revenues) is roughly $200 billion (yes, billion) more than last year’s number, largely because of the inclusion of the vendor services arms.” Huh? The vendor’s services arms?
Vendors were placed on a separate list of 25 in 2007 and 2008 and called “the Vendor Top 40” listing. The publication explains that the vendors were reintegrated onto the list, “recognizing their value as solution providers.” Well, yes, vendors add a lot of value to the IT market through their technologies and services. And, through the customer reach and services of their channel partners. But, isn’t putting the vendors’ own direct services divisions in clear and direct ranking competition with their very own channel partners IN A CHANNEL FOCUSED PUBLICATION pretty much heresy? Now, I’m smart enough to understand that one size doesn’t fit all. Would anyone really argue that IBM Global Services is a major force among independent global systems integrators in the IT market? No, unless they wanted to forfeit their job.
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Add comment June 25, 2009
What’s the Deal? Multi-vendor “DealReg” Is Here
Live from Diane’s Desk - weekly update on what’s happening around Amazon Consulting – channel news, trends and partnering matters.
Diane highlights vendor’s need for clear visibility into deal pipeline and new solution to make it easier for channel partners to register multiple vendor deals in one partner portal.
doneAdd comment June 23, 2009
Day Three Cisco Partner Summit
Diane Krakora gives insight and perspective on day three of Cisco’s Partner Summit in Boston
doneAdd comment June 9, 2009
Second Day from Cisco Partner Summit with Diane Krakora
Highlights and perspective on the second day of Cisco’s Partner Summit
- Technology Vision Day
- Data Center Announcements (code name California)
- Small Business Pro Services
Add comment June 8, 2009
First Day from Cisco Partner Summit with Diane Krakora
Let’s hear it for Diane’s First Video Blog – Made possible by the generous gift of Flip Video cameras to all Partner Summit attendees!
doneAdd comment June 5, 2009
Cisco Resolves Long-standing Field Compensation Issue
News and Commentary from the Cisco Partner Summit
Beth Vanni
Thousands of partners are in the room. 3500 partners are participating in the Virtual Summit event. Press and analysts hang on every word from the senior executives, listening for new major investments and innovations. These are the hallmarks of the Cisco Partner Summit, this year based in Boston, one of the oldest and most sophisticated cities in the U.S. Many also revere Cisco’s commitment to channels and partnering among the oldest and most mature in the high tech world. Admittedly, their programs, automation, incentives and partnering commitment from the top-down is legendary. But, then I listened closely to the keynote speech form Keith Goodwin, Cisco’s SVP of Global Channels……
The Cisco management team announced many channel program enhancements already this week including new services offerings, further extended credit terms to partners, eliminating on-site certification audits,implementing a new limited lifetime warranty on certain products and adding a new 15% rebate for core switching products. Much of these announcements will really help keep partners focused and profitable on core Cisco technologies and will encourage them to continue to invest in training and pre-sales work. But,the announcement that got THE loudest applause from the audience was around Cisco field sales compensation. Something so basic that it’s hard to imagine Cisco still having this issue acting as a barrier to partner field engagement.
2 comments June 3, 2009
Channel Roundtable for SaaS “Pure Plays”
Sandra Glaser Cheek
We recently held a “SaaS in the Channel” roundtable event with about 10 pure-play SaaS vendors to discuss the challenges and opportunities that they face in developing robust partner programs and ecosystems. After discussing the particular challenges that each vendor faced it became apparent that that SaaS partnering is truly a blend of the old and new. Many of the most basic partner principles are challenging to this crowd – how to train partners effectively, how to craft the best business proposition, tracking evolving partner business models, managing multi-channel strategies, etc. And some of the issues are new – how to continue to educate the market on SaaS as a business and licensing model, how to handle support and when and where to get the partner involved, etc.
Add comment June 3, 2009
It’s All About the Service – A Lesson In iPhone Loss
Beth Vanni
OK, so it’s my fault. I was at the circus with my kids, using my new new Apple iPhone 3G as a camera (can’t miss those shots with the elephants and the Bermese Pythons). It dropped out of my lap. Either that or the Snow Cone vendor was eyeing it the whole time – that’s my theory. Either way, it’s gone, and the last 24 hours of my life have not been the same!
Circus Casualty
Of course, everyone knows that the iPhone is only available in the U.S. through one exclusive service provider, AT&T. What an OEM deal that must have been! An old friend of mine who works for Apple admits the Apple/AT&T deal was so rich that the royalties paid by AT&T to Apple are paying for a good chunk of the ongoing R&D on the iPhone technology. Either way, I’m now addicted. Yes, I actually do use the AppStore for all those thousands of plug-in apps. And, I use the Safari web browser …. a lot. I never call 411 anymore. And I didn’t buy a Garmin, because most of the GPS functionality I need I can do on the iPhone. And finally, for the first time in my 25+ year career, I really am getting emails pushed live down to my iPhone and can actually be pretty productive when NOT in front my laptop. Amazing. This device can really make anyone from the 12 year old text-maniac to the 52 year old corporate sales executive both really productive and entertained at the same time.
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Add comment May 6, 2009
VMware reaches for the sky, um, I mean the cloud
Sandra Glaser Cheek
I recently attended VMware’s well-attended Partner Exchange conference in Orlando, FL. The primary focus of the event was to introduce how VMware partners can take advantage of new VMware technology to help start moving customers to the compute cloud – more specifically the internal or “private cloud” The company also unveiled new partner initiatives aimed at making it easier for solution providers to work with its technology and the next generation partner program.
Rick Jackson, CMO of VMware, kicked off the conference by talking about VMware’s primary focuses:
1. Get customers 100 percent virtualized. This includes introducing them to the newly announced vSphere product line.
2. Working with partners to help customers build cloud infrastructures.
3. Virtual desktops – “a necessary component of getting customers into a 100 percent virtualized environment.”
4. Working with reseller partners, solution providers and technology partners, to manage virtual platforms.
Tod Nielsen, VMware’s new COO followed with a presentation of VMware’s vision of cloud computing. And it’s not the big external clouds you would expect – Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. VMware believes that there is a place for all business, large and small to have their own data centers. And that these businesses will likely utilize external clouds to outsource some needs, but there will also be a need for a private/internal cloud. “At the end of the day, what customers want are internal clouds, which have similar tools and resources as those available on external clouds… and they will want a private cloud which allows them to have internal clouds while, at the same time, taking advantage of external clouds.” The vSphere suite of extensible management products was next unveiled.
Add comment May 4, 2009
