CRN tackles emerging tech
CRN's new Emerging Technology Hub will monitor new vendors entering the UK
Today marks the launch of the first CRN Emerging Technology Hub.
While we often speak to vendors making their first foray into the UK channel, these stories tend to get lost in the archives and have never had a place where they can be referred backed to by anyone looking for more information on a new vendor than their websites.
The primary focus of the hub is to track new vendors when they land in the UK and are looking to make an investment the channel.
So how responsive is the channel to emerging vendors? Well, based on a few conversations I have had with resellers in the run up to this launch, not very.
While we were in the process of moulding the shape of the hub we spoke to a number of channel resellers and distributors responsible for championing start-up vendors and a number of issues became apparent.
One boss in particular, at an MSP focusing on emerging vendors, told me how he left his role at a reseller featured in our Top VARs list because he got fed up of its reluctance to promote newer and sometimes better vendors.
He said his previous employer was too scared to push a newly signed vendor because of the £10m business it had with another more-established one. Despite his best efforts, he said, the sales team had no incentive to try and sell the new vendor because of the recurring business, and therefore commission, they had with the old one. Resigned to defeat he left and set up his own company.
The general consensus from my early hub discussions is that the channel is not massively proactive when it comes to promoting new technology. Because of this the role of distributors becomes more important - hence the need for distributors like Ignition to introduce these new vendors to the channel partners they need.
On the flip side, how is a reseller supposed to pick out the good from the bad? Should a new vendor be considered a genuine contender purely because it has assigned itself the label ‘next-generation'? Is a new vendor automatically the best because it is new?
Over the last few months of 2016 CRN documented the tit-for-tat spats between new end-point security player Cylance and established security vendor Trend Micro. Cylance accused Trend Micro and other older vendors of being "the dinosaur in the tar pit", while Trend Micro hit back saying you do not have to be a new VC-backed vendor to be innovative.
Cylance has also performed relatively poorly in so-called independent testing reports, leading to a number of damning blog posts on the Cylance website criticising the nature of sponsored AV testing reports.
In terms of end-point security, it seems to me that everyone is saying "test us and see" but no one is willing to stick their neck on the line.
Finally, the purpose of the hub is not to just profile new vendors when they enter the UK, but to actually track them - we don't just want to give them the early publicity they need, we want to monitor them and see if they stay true to their word.
While we will be doing our best to pester resellers and distributors for tips on who to look out for, please feel free to contact us yourself if you think there is someone we should be looking at on [email protected]