Top 5 takeaways from CRN ON with Park Place Technologies
CRN is joined by SHI’s Donavan Hutchinson and Park Place Technologies’ channel sales director Chad Jones to discuss everything from supply chain issues, Brexit and tapping into new revenue streams
Top execs from SHI and Park Place Technologies discussed everything from the supply chain crisis, to Brexit and the UK's Covid recovery in a roundtable as part of a CRN event earlier this month.
Here are our top five takeaways from the discussion:
UK datacentre investments are ramping up
SHI's UK boss Donovan Hutchinson told delegates that organisations are now starting to reinvest in their on-prem IT infrastructure as they emerge from the pandemic's uncertainty.
The common narrative that Covid has driven businesses to the cloud is only telling half the story, Hutchinson said.
He pushed back against the notion that customers are going all in on the cloud, claiming that many customers have been taking workloads back on premise.
Issues such as Brexit and data sovereignty has seen more customers than ever invest in physical datacentre's, Hutchinson said.
"We've seen more clients setting up datacentres within the UK market that typically had their datacentres within the European economy so that they can better support their businesses.
"In the last week alone, I've had conversations with three or four different organisations that have no datacentres in the UK right now - all their datacentres have always been either in the Ireland community or in mainland Europe and they're now setting up datacentres directly within the UK because there's appetite for people to store data in the UK now," he said.
Although datacentre projects are on the rise, Hutchinson acknowledged that remote working has resulted in an increased demand for cloud-based environments.
"Organisations are now starting to reinvest in their businesses to support all the additional applications they're using due to remote working. They're also looking at revising their disaster recovery strategies due to remote working as well. And I think that is leading to more complex conversations with customers about how we can secure their businesses. As we've seen more ransomware attacks, more phishing attacks, so us being able to provide them with security solutions has seen an increase as a whole."
Chad Jones, channel sales director at Park Place Technologies, added that Brexit has prompted businesses to reinvest in their datacentres despite an obvious shift to cloud-based models.
"We're in the post-warranty datacentre maintenance business. I can remember 10 years ago people saying ‘how is that going to be a business model that's going to thrive when everyone wants to go to the cloud?'. It has been interesting seeing people who have tried to go all the way to the cloud and the pendulum swings back a bit and people realise they need to keep some stuff on-prem. I think all of the applications and software solutions being delivered as-a-service in the cloud is driving the need to a greater extent, and the pandemic just accelerated what is already happening.
"There are some organisations looking to put more of their applications on-prem. We have certainly seen that in the UK more so with the divide of Brexit and trying to get everything back onto UK domains."
Brexit has an impact on logistics and on-site resourcing
Brexit hasn't only compelled customers to build more datacentres in the UK, it has also created new logistics and on-site resourcing challenges.
Solution providers depended on talent from the European market to plug a skills gap for valuable IT skills. Hutchinson said that partnering with companies like Park Place Technologies has helped to address a shortage of on-site resources.
"Brexit has created a bit of a skills gap. Previously we were able to take on resources within the European market and have them sat within the UK. It has become even more challenging to obtain those resources. So we've been capitalising on our partnership with Park Place Technologies to assist us across many countries across the globe."
He added that SHI acted quickly to prepare itself for Brexit and put the business in a position to help customers navigate the logistical challenges that come with it.
"When we knew Brexit was on the cards we very quickly set up a new site in Ireland so we can support customers. We also set up additional sites across the globe where we saw a need and requirement to provide additional support to our customers," he said.
"Many customers still operating in a way where they have multiple sites across Europe but are still ordering to the UK. They're finding challenges in having to export that equipment, and there's also the taxation around that which becomes very complicated for customers. And we've been able to help customers due to the way we're set up."
Budget constraints mean customers are looking for new solutions
With IT playing a more central role in the day-to-day operations of a business, many organisations are now looking to get the most out of their infrastructure - both in terms of cost effectiveness and efficiency.
Many are now interested in new payment models such as leasing or consumption-based models as a way to reduce large up-front costs.
Others are looking for help around IT asset management as a way to control costs.
"The new opportunities we're seeing and the requests coming in tend to be around resources, be it managed services, professional services or people looking to augment their current workforce with our own resources. That does seem to be something that has taken more of a central perspective in the conversations we're having today," said Jones.
"We have seen a significant increase in our ITAM business where customers are looking at what applications they use and if they need them at all and consolidation exercises to reduce cost. We've seen an increase in customers coming to us because they want to understand what assets they currently have, and to decrease their cost overall but also to only have applications the users need to use physically loaded onto their devices. So better management overall is what we've seeing."
The channel can add value to supply chain issues
A well-documented supply chain crisis is still frustrating the IT channel and providing a host of procurement issues for end users. But channel partners are providing a valuable service to customers in offering stock management and forecasting for customers to help them navigate these challenges.
"It all comes down to looking ahead and forecasting and understanding what the customers' growth plans are. We've been very well placed to service our customers in the UK and Europe but globally as well. We've seen a significant increase in value in us being able to hold stock and working with the manufacturers as well to educate our customers on the lead times just due to the chip shortages as a whole.
"I've seen SHI holding more stock than we've ever held before just to overcome some of these challenges. I think educating our customers around some of these lead times and how they're likely to slip and looking at ordering some of the equipment six months in advance has certainly helped us."
Hutchinson said that SHI quickly took action when component shortages first arose so they could plan ahead for their customers' future IT needs.
"When it became known about the shortages, we quickly assimilated account management teams to go out and speak to our customers accordingly to talk about what their future growth plans were, so we could start to bring in that stock and be able to deploy it and provide a lifecycle management service.
"We're seeing an increase in lifecycle management services as a whole, not only due to stock shortages and wanting to reuse or recondition some of their technologies, but because of the shortages or limited need of on-site IT staff in house."
New revenue streams through new platforms
The channel has also been innovating in new ways in order to generate new revenue streams and future proof itself for the future.
With fewer customers requiring on-site support due to more staff working from home, partners are having to find new ways to support their customers.
Hutchinson said SHI has developed its own zero touch platform working with Microsoft, Apple and Intel, to help customers support their remote working employees.
" It allows the users to benefit from zero touch engagement so they can bring their applications down from connecting to the company's domain without having to image their devices, and maintaining their application internally. We see a lot of companies going through the imaging process but we see a significant demand for zero touch solutions out there, and we're working on other things on that front."
Jones added that Park Place Technologies has developed its own hardware monitoring tools which also involves a no-touch philosophy and fits in with the new working models of organisations.
Parkview hardware monitoring is probably the premier and the linchpin of other offerings Park Place now has. It is an automated monitoring solution which learns the steady state of a given device and can actually predict prior to the fault occurring. Where we have that installed we can offer a first-time fix guarantee which ensures we can solve any issue with a single trip."