REGIONAL CHANNELS
VENDOR PARTNER SOLUTIONS
Dassault Systems The vendor provides 3D applications for modelling, simulation, social, collaboration, information intelligence, real time experience. The applications include 3D Experience, Catia, Solidworks, Enovia, Delmia, Simulia, Geovia, Exalead, 3D Via, Biovia, Netvibes, 3D Excite.
Oracle NetSuite Oracle NetSuite global business unit is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle. Key product groups include Enterprise Resource Planning, Global Business Management, OneWorld, Customer Relationship Management, NetSuite Professional Services Automation, NetSuite OpenAir, Omnichannel Commerce, SuiteCommerce, Business Intelligence, Experience.
IBM Security IBM security services fall under three principal heads: security transformation services, security operations and response, information risk and protection. Key products include: IBM QRadar Network Security, IBM QRadar Security Intelligence Platform, IBM BigFix Endpoint Protection, IBM X-Force
licensing. In the long term, cloud based licensing will be more lucrative than perpetual and annual licensing because of the significantly higher volumes of automatic licensing renewals.
“ The cloud model is completely different from the on-premises model. The cloud model is more on the long-term. This is another model of financing and channel partners understand that on the long-term they will make probably more money than what they are doing today,” he explains optimistically.“ This works for IBM and for the business partners who have the competency.”
IBM’ s software suite works across both on-premises and in the cloud seamlessly and provides one view of the system. For
Exchange, IBM Resilient Incident Response Platform, IBM i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis, IBM Security App Exchange, IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services, IBM Cloud Security, IBM MaaS360, IBM Identity and Access Management, IBM Guardium, IBM AppScan, IBM Trusteer.
IBM analytics IBM analytics solutions fall under the following sub categories: Analytics and data management, Business Analytics, Cloud data services, Data and Information Governance, Data Science, Enterprise content management, Hadoop and Spark, Hybrid Database and Warehouses, IBM Analytics partnerships, Line of business.
an end-customer using an IBM solution, the software could be on-premises or on the cloud. The only difference is where the data is residing for the end-customer and it could be partly in the cloud and partly on-premises, if required.
Whether it is analytics, middleware or security, Gulf Software Distribution is enabling its channel partners to offer their end-customers the choice of a hybrid approach, in addition to on-site and pure cloud Saas, since that is what IBM does best. Mazières points out that the end customer does not need to worry about the hybrid cloud integration.“ This is a unique value of IBM.”
“ These are not box moving projects,” he continues. This requires a business partner with a proper level of education and this is where we are helping them.”
Channel partners who are ready to begin a hybrid cloud journey with their end-customers need to be educated and certified. Gulf Software Distribution is training and enabling its channel partners to get certified to begin the cloud journey with their end-customers. They can also use skilled resources from IBM and Gulf Business Machines to support the enablement of their channel partners.“ My mandate is to recruit partners and to enable them properly so they can be selling these complex solutions to the market.”
Other than the challenges of cloud partner enablement, cloud partner certification, and up-skilling, does Gulf Software Distribution face any other challenges in today’ s regional marketplace? There is at least one other area that a software value added distributor can face an uphill task and this is in financing. Unlike hardware and similar capital assets, software is intangible and cannot be automatically depreciated. Hence, it is not an easy purchase to be financially leased.
“ The hardware business in terms of financing is different from the software business, completely different. You cannot make a parallel between hardware financing and software financing, because there are no assets.” However, for the current ecosystem of 50 + channel partners, Mazières has always been able to find a financial solution, when there is a face to face discussion to close the deal.“ We always find a solution with our partners who are looking for deferring some payments.”
If Mazières was given a million dollars to invest into Gulf Software Distribution, where would he put it.“ I would invest it in people because our value proposition is complex solutions.” The solutions from IBM, Oracle NetSuite and Dassault Systems are complex implementation solutions, for which partners need to be educated, trained and certified. Suitable investment in such enablement can only help channel partners gain their market share.
24 Issue 05 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS