Anjani Kommisetti, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Raritan & Servertech, speaks about the channel directions and new opportunities for partners
What have been the key highlights of 2019 and how will 2020 be an important year for the IT channel industry?
With the increasing focus on data localisation, we saw a growth in hyperscale data centres in 2019. We also saw the rise of edge data centres, pushed by growth in IoT devices. Edge data centres are allowing organisations to be closer to device users; Edge data centres reduce latency improving performance in a secure environment. While 2019 was the year of large-scale data centres, 2020 will open opportunities in tier 2 and 3 cities. We will see wide deployment of small and self-contained micro data centres, that are designed to manage work offloaded from a larger data centre, as they contain the right infrastructure that is needed for smooth IT functionality. As energy costs are rising continuously, enterprises are also turning to intelligent Power Distribution Units (PDUs), that will help them manage power consumption efficiently. Furthermore, all these technologies would be best leveraged by SMEs who are experiencing rapid growth and will bloom this year.
Can you tell us about the top three technology trends that the channel community should be betting on and why?
The technology landscape is evolving rapidly, and it is expected that channel partners adapt accordingly. With trends like rise of hyper automation, edge computing and green technology will prove to be beneficial for our partners to modernise and optimise their operations. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) driving hyper automation is a result of the need for integrating various platforms, applications and huge amount of data types. Today, how quickly you can process data and offer solutions that can bridge the gap between a product technology and consumer’s need. Thus, data processing closer to the end device enables instantaneous actions, enabling channel community to offer better business value to the customers.
Raritan’s investment in next-generation data centre solutions will help partners meet the next IT management challenges. Together, we are providing customers with innovative solutions that help better manage their IT infrastructures and resources in order to deliver business value. We are also continuously looking at innovative ways to provide our partners with the tools, resources, training and support needed to achieve success.
What are the top channel directions your company has set for your partners and where should they invest to be aligned with these directions?
Over the years, as businesses became more OEM driven, channel community lost its foothold and has become only a fulfilment platform. The gap is between the skill gap between the customers and channel partners.
Our partner training program, provides new training and added resources, such as helping resellers learn more about green IT industry trends, etc. 24/7 access to power experts, discounts on demo products, pre-built, turnkey marketing campaigns, and other elements, to make resellers successful are provided by the program.
The channel needs to focus on training themselves and their resources better so that they can focus on ensuring a better level of support and delivering enhanced solutions to the customers. We ensure that our channel partners succeed by using solution-selling approaches and capitalise on the high-growth opportunities of data centre infrastructure solutions.
