EC News Desk2020 has shown us that now more than ever, we must design and implement technology solutions with the expectation of change as a key design principle. We are now seeing organisations being driven and defined by applications and the way users interact with them, as operations pivot towards anywhere workforces.
“The opportunity for partners is to be that strategic IT advisor, that can identify what customers truly need and deliver the solutions.”
This can be challenging and confusing; yet it also offers immense opportunities for those businesses with the expertise, knowledge and competencies of what is required from a technology perspective to enable this transition. But what is required to drive the change, and how can partners support customers while growing their own businesses? Fundamentally, there are three core areas shaping the world: applications, people and infrastructure.
Firstly, this is about future ready applications. It is no overstatement to say that applications have become the lifeblood of business innovation and differentiation. During a crisis, demand for modern apps can grow at exceptional speed. It is quite simple, businesses need to be in the driving seat of being able to build, run, manage, secure and deliver new apps and services fast if they are to meet the needs of their employees and customers both in today’s turbulent times but also as a way of future-readying their business. This puts immense pressure on stretched IT teams, but it is work that has to be undertaken.
But apps are only useful to the future of work if they are being used. They need to meet the needs of a user base that has undergone one the greatest displacements in living memory. Technology, not location, is now the glue holding today’s organisations together. The pandemic, while disastrous, has offered the greatest petri dish environment imaginable to stress test what many people already believed: work no longer equals the office.
“It is the combination of security and agility that partners should prioritise”
New research from VMware has revealed a 41% increase in the proportion of employees across EMEA who now see remote working as a prerequisite rather than a perk. Again, here lies a major role for partners, enabling the delivery of a digital workspace platform that enables remote work by providing critical and secure access to the critical apps and data employees need to do their jobs, from the device of their choice, no matter where they are.
It is the combination of security and agility that partners should prioritise, corporate IT does not have to sacrifice control, but workers should neither have to fit within rigid frameworks, restricted by what they can and cannot do by inflexible governance.
For several years now, we have been talking about the new opportunities that cloud computing offers. It used to be a simple choice between public and private; now we are in a mix-and-match era of multiple kinds of cloud, private, public, hybrid, edge and different combinations of them all.
Today, enterprises are operating in a multi-cloud era and have the power to call upon whatever environment they need, from whichever cloud hyperscaler fits their needs: Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, or a local specialist cloud provider, a real possibility now with the underpinning of a cloud foundation, where the focus is on what suits the app, not the vendor.
Yet the ability to run workloads across different clouds needs to be simplified, and IT needs to be afforded the tools to manage apps irrespective of the cloud in which they reside. That means being able to establish consistent operations across clouds and leverage a consistent architectural model that extends from data centre to public clouds and edge environments. It means reducing the complexity and costs of multi-cloud management. It means having the flexibility to deliver apps across any cloud. Again, only one underpinning cloud foundation can deliver this, thus enabling developers to get apps into production faster and deliver that code to any cloud; and for ops teams, providing a developer-ready infrastructure.
So, what does this all mean for the channel? It means that, despite whatever enterprises are wrestling with, they are all updating strategies and reprioritising investments, and they need strategic IT advisors alongside them. They need partner organisations that get what is needed to deliver future-ready applications, workspaces or the infrastructure to support it all.
“It takes a connected, collaborative ecosystem and clear communication, to build the solutions enterprises are seeking”
Technical competency is vital but so too is the ability to be a credible authority and independent sounding board, to offer objective, informed advice on where efforts and investments need to be focused in order to achieve business objectives. And with the increase in the amount of technology enterprises are consuming, no single business, whether vendor, integrator, provider, reseller or any other supplier can do it all.
It takes a connected, collaborative ecosystem, with profitable margins and clear communication, to build the solutions enterprises are seeking. Here is where regular events and partner interaction are more important than ever, virtual sessions that can boost skills with breakout sessions, deliver first access to training on new technologies and connect likeminded individuals to drive competitiveness.
New ways of working, powered by new apps and new approaches, demand new partnerships to deliver them. The future of work is a misnomer because it is not happening next year or next decade; it is happening now, and the decisions taken to enable it will need to last for some time to come.
“New ways of working, powered by new apps and new approaches, demand new partnerships to deliver them.”
Enterprises are crying out for the right partners to support and guide them as they navigate the complexity of an app-driven world. They know they can only fulfil the potential of these powerful services with the right infrastructure in place. The opportunity for partners is to be that strategic IT advisor, that can identify what customers truly need, and deliver the solutions to meet their requirements.
So, we are working with our partners to help their customers become future-ready: more resilient, more able to innovate and differentiate, better able to retain and attract customers, better able to empower engaged anywhere workforces; and better placed to manage and exploit change.
Ossama Eldeeb of VMware writes how channel partners can play the role of strategic IT advisors and help their customer to be future-ready.
