4) As-a-service branded ‘s**t for customers' by Computacenter's CEO
What happened?
As-a-service offerings have been going great guns this year, with HPE recently announcing that GreenLake sales through partners grew by over 70 per cent in its most recent quarter.
But in September, Computacenter's plain-speaking CEO Mike Norris shot down consumption-based IT in flames by declaring at the Canalys Channels Forum EMEA that as "as-a-service is s**t for corporate customers".
Why was it controversial?
HPE and Dell are pumping beaucoup bucks into marketing their GreenLake and APEX consumption offerings, with the former recently saying that it wants to put the "entire company inside GreenLake". Dell claimed the latter recently hit $1bn in annual recurring revenue, meanwhile.
Having the CEO of one of your largest global partners diss the concept of paying for IT infrastructure as you use it was not in the script.
"We have to embrace it. The vendors want to do it. I'm not saying it's not going to conquer the world. It's [just] not very good for customers," Norris was quoted as saying in a Channel Futures article.
The Computacenter chieftan's opposite number at Softcat, Graeme Watt, leapt to as-a-service's defence, however.
"I don't agree that it's something that the vendors have dreamt up, and there's not a demand for it. There's definitely demand for it and we see it as a growing part of the business," he told CRN in October.
