After a whirlwind three days of CompTIA ChannelCon, I am on my way home. The captain just informed us that we are the “first revenue flight” for this brand new airplane. This seems oddly appropriate as I reflect on my takeaways from the event. So much ground was covered in the many community and council meetings, training and education sessions, keynotes and networking opportunities at ChannelCon, but everything seemed to revolve around the concept of new models.
The channel is navigating an unprecedented time of change. While the word transformation has being thrown around quite a bit, most agree what we are experiencing is accelerated evolution. Transformation signifies a departure from what was to an arrival at what is now. Our industry will never have a final destination.
The channel is an ever-evolving marketplace that adapts well to change and continually re-invents itself. But everyone agrees we are dealing with more change than we ever have before. Vendors can no longer sell products; they need to sell end-to-end solutions. Progressive solution providers can no longer sell technology; they need to sell business outcomes. Distribution can no longer rely on traditional delivery models; they must embrace the cloud. The customer has moved outside of the CIO office as line-of-business managers leverage technology to meet corporate business goals. There is still time and opportunity for legacy VARs to operate as resellers, but solution providers who seek growth and relevance need to evolve. Newcomers that challenge our legacy business models have entered our marketplace.
We have converged. Vendors, carriers, MSPs, agents and VARs are all co-existing in the same channel and either successfully partnering or winning business from each other’s customers. Telecom players were present at ChannelCon in full force talking up voice, data and cloud solutions bundles. Solution providers are squarely in the mobility space with 75 percent selling everything from handsets to virtual desktop infrastructure and mobile device management. Custom mobile apps and cloud-based app development are now a part of solution providers’ technology stack and partners are invested in voice, data and content-security-policy-provided cloud services. There is still much work to be done in articulating the value proposition to the end-user, understanding each other’s business models, ironing out compensation models and defining distribution’s role, but we are converging on one delivery platform, working with the same customer.
Millennials are among us. In 10 years, 75 percent of the IT workforce will be made up of millennials. Many will be business owners and leaders. They think and communicate differently and expect inspiring corporate cultures. They are challenging our legacy education platforms, business models and management styles. Many prefer to start up their own business versus working for someone else and view passion as more important than pedigree. But they don’t think they know it all. They want mentors and managers who will share their years of experience and help them learn faster. They are used to constant feedback from our schools’ teaching-and-testing approach and prefer immediate critique and praise versus annual performance reviews. They are happy to work hard and do not seek a work-life balance. For them, they live in a state of work-life blend and appreciate corporate cultures that support that.
All of this is so much for us to wrap our heads and business plans around and, for CompTIA, there’s so much opportunity here to provide the thought leadership, resources and training to support our member’s evolution. Much like being a passenger on a first revenue flight, there is a bit of fear and risk in the new and a loss of comfort in the old. But we need to remind ourselves it is far better to move forward with a new model than rely on the old. Eventually, the old model will not get us where we need to go. Henry Ford not only invented the automobile, he re-invented transportation. And when the going gets tough, he said, “Planes take off against the wind, not with it.”
Nancy Hammervik is CompTIA’s senior vice president, industry relations.
