Tech Data today announced it has formed a business unit dedicated to the prospect of transforming the economic model through which solution providers deliver IT services.
The Global Lifecycle Management Services business unit will make use of capabilities the distributor gained itself as well as the professional services expertise is gained by acquiring the Technology Solutions business of Avnet, says John O’Shea, senior vice president for global lifecycle management services for the Americas at Tech Data.
O’Shea says solution providers are continually struggling with trying to balance the investments they make in gaining the expertise required to master emerging technologies and the core services they are providing to instances of legacy technologies already installed at customer sites. The Global Lifecycle Management Services provide by Tech Data will enable solution providers to rely more on Tech Data to support legacy technologies, which O’Shea says will free up solution providers to invest more of their time and resources mastering emerging technologies.
“We can focus on the meat and potatoes services on their behalf,” says O’Shea.
The TD program is structured to enable professional services teams funded by Tech Data to show up at a customer site wearing the uniforms of the local solution provider. That approach should enable solution providers to reallocate their limited capital resources to driving adoption of new classes of technology solutions, says O’Shea.
O’Shea says Tech Data already has over 1,000 IT professionals working with the new business unit, each of which has been trained by vendors that sell products distributed by Tech Data.
Interest in these types of services is expected to increase as the rate at which new technologies are coming to market continues to increase thanks to advances in, for example, agile development. The challenge solution providers and customers alike face is they often don’t have the skills available to effectively deploy and manage new technology solutions.
The only alternative solution providers have to relying on distributors to either increase the size of their payroll or attempt to build their own bench of contractors. But O’Shea notes developing and maintaining a bench of quality IT contractors can be a major challenge in a highly competitive market.
O’Shea notes that Tech Data views the services it provides as a natural complement to the technology-as-a-service (TaaS) platform it recently launched to make IT products available as a service.
It remains to be seen over time just how dependent solution providers will opt for distributors to provide IT services. The one thing that is clear is that the size of the IT opportunity continues to exceed their available resources.
Be First to Comment