Motorola team to bolster VAR services skills

Advanced Services team will focus on providing resellers with ways to boost their managed services revenue

Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions division has said its newly launched Advanced Services team will help VARs tender for projects that would have been out of reach before.

The team will offer consultancy, design, integration and management expertise and will focus on driving managed services revenue. Technology areas covered will include enterprise wireless LAN, voice over IP and security.

EMEA’s Advanced Services team comprises about 10 people and will be led by Daniele Marsico. He will offer resellers as much or as little support as they want.

Chris Ranger, head of services for EMEA at Motorola Enterprise Mobility Solutions, said the move was necessitated by the market direction. “Our primary business in services has been traditional break-fix services on mobile PCs and scanners.

“This area has become more commoditised and we were looking for higher value-add. This is where we need to move our business,” he said.

Ranger stressed that the Advanced Services team would work collaboratively with VARs and would not tread on channel toes. “Where partners are offering services, we will move into a different space,” he said.

“This will be a complementary level of services. For example, a partner might do security assessments but might not have payment card industry expertise and can sub-contract some or all of that requirement.”

Ranger said he hoped Advanced Services would account for about 15 per cent of his company’s services revenue by the end of the year. He said moving towards managed services was a long-term project and that he would look at adding to Marsico’s team this year.