Cisco to partners: Move quickly and move now on IoT

Partners debate whether being first to the party on the Internet of Things is a blessing or a curse

"I don't think I would ever recommend to anyone to wait for the second wave. I think at the minimum you need to be learning in the space. It doesn't seem sensible to me. I think you should move quickly and move now." That's what Cisco's general manager for the Internet of Things (IoT) Rowan Trollope told CRN when asked when partners should consider IoT.

Although IoT has been talked about for years now, and to some extent it is making it into the mainstream consumer space with items such as internet-enabled heating systems and WiFi kettles, many partners are still unsure if and when to jump on the trend. Some fear that moving first could mean more risk and more complexity, but others insist that by not stepping up now, they're letting a massive opportunity slip away.

Trollope told CRN that although the trend is nascent, it has huge channel potential.

"We are at the beginning of the beginning, without a doubt," he said. "In fact, I spend so much time thinking about this that it's frustrating in the sense that you start to look at things like 'why is that device so dumb'? Once you get the idea, you think 'what could you do if you got a smart-connected X?'.

"Then every time you look at X, Y or Z in your life you go 'oh my god, this is so stupid'. Why does the trash man come to my house every Tuesday? Every other week I don't have trash but he still comes to my house. This is a huge waste of city infrastructure. Everything you look at starts to become that way.

"Every day I make toast for my daughter and she likes it dark. I like it light. So I move the switch back and forth. Half the time the toast ends up coming out light or dark or whatever because the switch was wrong. I'm like 'this thing needs to predict who I am making toast for so I don't get it wrong'. It's a very silly, trivial example but it starts to give you an idea. It really is the beginning of the beginning."

Opportunity knocks

Chris Gabriel, chief digital officer at Logicalis, said his firm began working in IoT around three years ago. Its South American business is advanced in the technology; so much so that last week the firm took some of the team on a tour of Europe to share their experiences, off the back of the company winning its first big IoT deal in the region.

Gabriel is convinced that moving first in the space has been a key advantage which will pay off for Logicalis.

"We've got a very successful, established IoT business in South America. The thing about IoT is it is a lot more bloody complicated than IT. I think the language of operational technology and the partner ecosystem you need to build is heavy lifting. We've been investing in IoT for two to three years now in South America. We did a European tour last week and we got a great reaction from analysts and customers. They liked that basically we're a lot more mature than others are but it is going a lot faster than everyone thinks it is. It's not that if you're not in it now, you're going to struggle, but our partner ecosystem in South America has about 30 or 40 vendors. It's Cisco, sensor companies, smart meter companies – it's a lot more," he said.

"That's a big investment by the guys down there. People who haven't done it yet don't realise that it's a different world. You may not be able to [do it]. Smart buildings are not IoT. IoT is a balloon over a field in Brazil capturing sensor data for tractors in a field. It's putting sensors in manhole covers. We are early movers and if we hadn't moved three years ago, we'd still be a few years away from doing it. It's not a three-month job. We're going to introduce it into Europe – we've won our first IoT project in Europe, actually. I'm really excited by it. I thought I knew stuff about stuff but I thought 'wow, I really need to get my head around this'."

"Let a few other people go first – learn from their mistakes. But at the same time, to be relevant to our customers; we need to have that conversation."

Other partners, while appreciating the huge opportunities IoT can offer them, cautioned that getting involved with the technology is sometimes not as easy as it looks.

"I still think it's a very difficult thing," said Justin Harling, CAE's managing director. "If you can find the right repeatable solution there could be a huge advantage there. It would be absolutely perfect. But the risks are manifest in coming up with something [too specific] for a customer. We talk about being customer-centric, which is great, but you run the real risk that you have a perfect solution for just one customer that isn't going to replicate."

Vendors across the board often suggest to partners that when first getting to grips with new technology, partners ought to work together more closely to help one another.

"There are areas where we work with other Cisco partners so we would never rule it out," said Harling. "But it's not as easy as it's made out to be sometimes. Frankly, with those partnerships you need to have so much trust; it needs to be at a fundamental level. To suggest that just because a partner has developed a solution, we're going to take it and be happy to put it into a customer is a whole different thing and it's very, very challenging."

Colin Brown (pictured), managing director of Softcat, said his company is keeping a close eye on the trend, but has no plans to lead the way in it.

"You know Softcat and we would never say we are a first mover, but we're a fast follower – that's more in our nature," he said. "Let a few other people go first – learn from their mistakes. But at the same time, to be relevant to our customers; we need to have that conversation."

He stressed that Softcat is "not at all" ignoring the trend, and added: "We are talking about that and meeting a lot of people to decide what we should do. Having moved Sam Routledge to a full-time CTO role for us, that's the stuff he's focusing on. We look to him to tell us when to move, how to move, and what direction to move in."