Is the channel now a means to an end?

Logicalis' Chris Gabriel begins a week in the blogging hotseat with a look at a year of huge change for the channel

Order is comforting. As a species we are fairly risk averse and, on the whole, we like to know that things will work tomorrow pretty much as they did yesterday, even when the way they work isn't really that inspiring.

We all recognise the British inability to complain, even when complaining is the only thing we should do. How was your meal? Well, apart from being undercooked, cold, and taking three hours to arrive, it was just lovely.

Complaining is just not our thing, but grumbling is. What makes us laugh at the end of the meal when we utter "it was lovely" is that we have been grumbling for the entire meal. That under-the-surface feeling that all is not quite right really does bring out the best in us. For moaning, that is, and not particularly doing anything about it.

And I wonder, because blogs are simply for wondering aloud, if there is a little recognition in the channel that things are not quite right or not as they were. There is a whiff of change in the air, and perhaps some grumbling that the world is changing.

I'm not just thinking economic downturn, by the way, although the effects of the banking crisis have caused a significant reappraisal of the importance of IT, and we recognise that we must spend more time understanding and explaining the business outcomes we deliver.

I'm also not just thinking about the emergence of significant shifts in how our customers buy what we sell, cloud in particular. Although the supply chain we work in is fundamentally changing, and will continue to change. For the channel, the major investments needed in building out service infrastructures and solutions is going to stretch the nerve and budgets of even the largest organisation.

I'm also not just thinking about the change in consumer behaviour. Although, who really now thinks the best IT experience they get is in the office? CEOs sit at home on iPads, with the world literally at their fingertips, while children can go to a Vodafone store and walk out minutes later connected to and collaborating with their friends and family through ‘disposable' technologies. What the CEO expects as an IT experience is going to be ever harder for us to deliver.

Finally, I'm not just thinking that who is selling what to whom is now more difficult to figure out. Vendors are producing flat-pack architectures, certified, packaged, buy off the shelf and assemble at home, with their view of a complete solution the one that must prevail in the customers' mind. They all fancy a little bit of the service revenues enjoyed by the channel in the past, adding value services into the mix. Of value to whom though, I wonder?

In not just thinking about these individual shifts, but taking them all into the mix, it is clear that 2011 is going to be a year of change. For those not prepared for it and prepared to invest in themselves and their people, solutions and infrastructure, it could be a challenging one. But, let's not grumble about it, let's embrace it, because, if you're part of a supply chain that changes, and you're not part of that change, that makes you irrelevant, and surely that's the worse outcome of all.

Chris Gabriel (pictured) is director of solutions and marketing at Logicalis UK

Read more from Chris throughout this week on Views from the channel