Partner content: Celebrating the Disruptors

"If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering." — Jeff Bezos.

Here's a question - when did you last buy a book off Amazon? Yeah, same here. I bought some batteries a few days ago. I watch their TV shows every night. We had some garden covers delivered a month ago. I saw some printer ink arrive recently. I am just migrating 140 businesses' operations platforms to Amazon Cloud Services. A book? Yeah can't quite remember that one.

I ask of course, because I am old enough to remember when Amazon's sole purpose was to disrupt the book selling industry; dominating our consumer lives and the way businesses operate their technology infrastructure and beyond was just a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye. That first consumer-focussed disruption led of course to Amazon becoming a brand that I imagine would have 100% recognition in every single UK citizens' brains.

The company, the great disruptor that became a mainstream part of our lives 30 years later, was started because of what Jeff Bezos called his "regret minimization framework" - his regret at not capturing the internet opportunity sooner.

So what do you regret not disrupting for your customers?

Yes, you read that properly. Not what do you regret not disrupting for your business, but for your customers. I think we in the channel may have fewer regrets than many other industries.

Think about what we in the channel have done in just the last few years.

We have enabled our customers to transform the way they consume and operate infrastructure and software by changing our business with the goal of connecting them to cloud services that can inject new digital fuel into business operations.

We have responded to emerging cyber security threats by investing in cyber security capabilities that help our customers adopt digital with confidence.

We have embraced new technology in data analytics and science to make our customers smarter than they ever thought possible.

We are trailblazing in technologies like automation which will bring massive productivity benefits to not just our customers but to our entire UK economy.

All this is to bring direct benefits to our customers' businesses, and of course has also helped our own business to secure success and growth for the future too. The UK channel has been brilliant at creating win-win situations for ourselves and for our customers.

At Sapphire, we focus on doing just that for every one of our 1,250 clients by disrupting what we do but also by not being afraid to disrupt their thinking, because we are the experts at disruption but always on behalf of our customers.

We love it so much it's one of the key pillars of Sapphire's DNA. Every quarter we actively celebrate our biggest disruptors who think differently and help us to change the world, no matter how small the contribution. Sapphire is committed to making our mark in everything we do, adding value by thinking differently. With these opportunities to disrupt and make your digital world anew what would you do?