Data management no risky business

Solution sales around data management offer hope to a flexible channel, suggests Nigel Tozer

Tozer: Delivering maximum flexibility will be key

It has got harder to derive revenue from the replacement market, yet I think there are still opportunities for resellers. I have long argued that there are good margins to be made in data management because organisations still do not realise the value of their data or how it should be managed. If you have a solution to this, you have a potential sale.

Finance directors now keep a close eye on IT costs, especially as rising regulatory burdens and people’s increasingly litigious nature puts more pressure on the IT budget.

Search and retrieval systems can help but often are not budgeted for. This can be a disincentive to try selling into that market. However, I think with the right solution you can deliver on core data management requirements – protection and tiered storage for example – while still adding value on the information management side.

You must bring new offerings to market to differentiate yourself and make a real difference to your customers. This is often easier said than done, of course, as innovation is a risky game and customers have become more critical.

Most buyers want new technologies that offer new possibilities but want to feel safe in the knowledge that they are tested and reliable, rather than bleeding edge.

A few years ago, customers may well have bought an IT package with an extended feature set to find only part of it useful over its full lifetime. Today customers don’t just want to know what a product can do; they want to understand what they can do with it and be confident it will move with them.

As a result, it is important to listen to customer wishes and develop for future needs with conviction and purpose.

Today you need to deliver flexible custom-made offerings, which enable your customers to realise maximum return while aiding agility and profits.

To bounce back quickly from some tough times, both vendors and resellers need to deliver maximum flexibility around their products and services. Done properly, data management is a transformational technology, but to gain success agility needs to practised as well as preached.

There are many more opportunities for resellers to close a deal with a customer than there were 10 years ago and solution sellers will be the future IT channel successes.

Nigel Tozer is EMEA business development director at CommVault