BYOD is one of the fastest growing and most disruptive trends in the industry. With the volume and variety of devices flooding virtually unchecked into organisations, it’s probably fair to say the horse has well and truly bolted.
Everyone from senior blue chip executives to Gen Y staff are bringing their smartphones and tablets into the work environment, along with heightened expectations for their integration with corporate systems and applications.
For many in the channel this represents a loss of control over their customers. Furthermore for many IT managers, BYOD means a potential Pandora’s Box of security problems. Issues of mobile device management need to be considered, along with purchasing policies and policies governing usage.
At the 2012 CRN Fast50 awards in Sydney, CRN took to industry leaders to discuss the role of the reseller in BYOD.
ATTENDEES
Neville James, Citrix
Jason Brouwers, Cisco
Jeff Morris, Dell
Nick Verykios, Distribution Central
Jeff Hwong, Huawei
Ryan Parker, Netgear
Jamie Romanin, ShoreTel
Ashley Wearne, Sophos
Ahmed Issa, Synnex
David Lenz, Ingram Micro
CRN Neville James from Citrix, what do you see as the key opportunities being created by BYOD trend for the channel around mobile device management?
Neville The single biggest opportunity is that, unwittingly, lots of individuals – customers and staff – created something that as an industry, as vendors and as partners and resellers we’ve really struggled to do, and that is create a compelling event around desktop virtualisation.
For a long time we’ve been able to get customers excited about virtualisation, but then we always get stuck in their IT refresh cycles and if deals don’t go ahead it’s quite often because we haven’t been able to fit into that cadence.
I suggest that with BYOD - and this was alluded to earlier - it’s not BYOD: they’ve already brought their own devices. It should be BTOD, so whether you like it or not as a customer, there are devices in your environment, your data is going outside of your environment, it’s getting dropped into storage environments you have no control over. Or, in some cases, you have no idea where they are and that is a phenomenon you have to live with.
So from a channel and industry perspective, and obviously a vendor [Citrix] that’s actively involved in virtualisation I think BYOD has created the single most compelling event we’ve had for many a year.
CRN What do resellers need to understand about the latest wireless protocols such as 4G LTE and 80211ac in terms of the ability to support more sophisticated business applications and to provide their customers with greater flexibility?
Ryan Both of these technologies represent greater performance with regard to wireless connectivity for both devices inside the office, and then of course while workers are on the road. With 802.11ac it’s not a standard yet that’s ratified. It will be ratified early next year, and the benefit of that is that it brings gigabyte wireless to our devices.
Netgear as a company is already shipping 802.11ac in the consumer space, because consumers are already willing to adopt this technology. Particularly now we are more conscious about moving video content about our home, we’re looking for more bandwidth to be able to deliver that. In the business space it takes a compelling event for companies to invest in wireless networks that provide the mobility and flexibility around their offices.
When we look at LTE the story is very similar. We are talking about 100Mbps downloads, 50mb upload, which is equivalent to the DSL or wide broadband services we see today. From that point of view, for a small-medium business, it’s giving us bigger pipes to be able to deliver more of our workplace to our users while they’re on the road. It’s really going to enable video and voice anywhere we are, with high quality.
CRN Jeff Hwong from Huawei, in your view is video emerging as the new killer app for business mobility?
Jeff Hwong To answer this takes about two hours. Well, whether it’s going to be the killer app, we’re not sure, but obviously video is going to improve and enhance productivity in any organisation. If you look around, everyone has a smartphone. With better devices, wider screens, increased bandwidth, obviously video is going to be in the business mobility mix.
The question is how can the resellers play a role in deploying video in the business applications? They have to move away from block selling and into what we call solution selling. The reseller has an important role to help customers understand the value proposition of video and mobility. Resellers will probably have to help the customer understand what is the current status of their infrastructure – are they ready for business mobility?
Everybody talks about business mobility with things like video coming into play. But you have to help your customer understand whether it makes sense to the business.
Last, I think everybody is concerned about the cost of the additional infrastructures, security concerns, and I think together with the resellers we can help business understand the benefits mobility will bring, inclusive of video. This is where the reseller has to move away from box selling to solution selling and with that, the reseller community will probably be a lot happier with BYOD than most.
CRN Ahmed Issa from Synnex, are we approaching anything resembling standards for mobile devices in the business world at the moment? For instance what do you think are the essential capabilities of the business smartphone?
Ahmed From the essential capability side, I believe the phone should have a very strong type of screen so to speak, but from a standard side, no, I don’t see that happening. There’s a wide range of devices in the marketplace, so there’s a common area a lot of people have, it’s the security aspect of the device. It’s more consumer driven.
The consumers have more say, because they know what they want and expect. So from an organisational perspective, people should decide. It’s the new trend. Mobility’s here to stay, but the security issue is a must and something we need to start controlling.
CRN So you think it will continue to be consumer driven or are we perhaps looking at the future reversal of that trend?
Ahmed No, I think definitely consumer driven. They know what they want. They know how to make things more seamless for them and for the user. If you go back to old days, IT was driven by businesses. But today I guess we look at the consumer and we see there’s a standard out there to make things easier for them, and they’re trying to implement that in their business. I don’t think the trend will ever change.
CRN Ashley Wearne, from Sophos, obviously one of the big concerns companies have around the BYOD trend is control and security. Do you see this trend providing opportunities around security for resellers to really get in there and be trusted advisers for security around mobility for their customers?
Ashley It goes without saying. Everyone says the same message. The thing that drives this is quite interesting, and that’s where we’ve come from, because we didn’t have a [security] industry at all when it was just mainframes, terminals and phones on your desk and in a very controlled environment; there were just no security issues. If you trace where that’s come to, where you get more devices and processing attached to networks and you let users fiddle around with the stuff, that’s where the security industry makes money.
Now of course with mobility everyone has even more devices attached to even more networks doing really quite important things on it. Users are not only fiddling around with it, but actually defining what you do with it.So this is really a sweet spot for the whole security industry, and it has to be with the partner. What we’re seeing is budgets set aside specifically for mobility, which won’t last. This is a one-time thing.
CRN Why don’t you think it will last?
Ashley Because you are going to solve the mobility thing, and it’s quickly going to become commoditised back into ‘it’s just security’ and it just happens to be focused on a new form factor for devices and we’ll get away from securing devices pretty quickly, and we’ll be securing the person irrespective of where they’re connected to.
So this is a one-time thing, and you want to get in now and have that conversation, and the sensible thing if you’re a partner, is rather than sell them something is get them on to a monthly type of subscription. You lock that budget in for 10 years; you’ve got to move away from the old way to a different business model that takes that money and gives you a revenue stream ongoing.
CRN Do you think this commoditisation and technology happening with mobility could eventually result in the security side of things being commoditised as well?
Ashley I just think the whole mobility thing will go away. It’s just something different today to what we have seen in the past so people are saying ‘Oh now we can be mobile’. It’s not actually what it’s about. It’s sort of ‘bring your own cloud’, we’ve gone past the mobile stuff.
You ‘bring your own cloud’ and you’re bringing your Dropbox, you’re bringing your Gmail. That’s what it is. You’re attached to the internet wherever you go, irrespective of what you’re doing and your company can’t control you any more. It’s fascinating really.
CRN So a question for the whole panel: does the device really matter any more?
Nick No. The only reason I say that is because it never has, it’s what the device brings. The challenge that our channel has to solve for vendors, resellers and distributors is how we’re going to solve these contemporary business problems that are associated with what people are bringing. They’re bringing their own device sure, but they’ve been doing that forever.
They brought in their own calculators, 20 years ago or whatever, and it just goes on and on. What they’re bringing is applications; they’re bringing carrier plans; they’re bringing all kinds of elements that need a contemporary business problem to be solved. The device is irrelevant.
CRN Further to that Nick, is the growth in mobile business apps a business opportunity for the channel? If so how, do they go about getting involved?
Nick Well, it has to be. I can only speak from my perspective as an entrepreneur who speaks predominantly to entrepreneurs and business owners. It’s about what are you trying to solve for your customers.
There are a number of developments associated with this awful term BYOD, and if you go back about 15 years ago when remote access started to become important, everyone was trying to convince everyone that that was a new thing. It wasn’t, because three years before that we were flogging terminal servers and routers and calling them remote access.
Remote access has been around forever; it’s the applications that are driving these new trends, not the devices, it’s the securing of those devices and securing of the applications and understanding what to do with the information that’s coming in; the analysing of that information rather than the hoarding of the information, hoarding everything that’s into it, and it’s video-led as well.
The device is starting to come of age because it is video-led and it’s bringing the data with it. It’s almost like the voice application is just starting to become secondary. So for resellers I would advise two things.
First of all forget about the device and start thinking about what it’s bringing, because that’s what your customer’s solution is around, and what you have to solve. The second thing is forget about the vendors. The vendor’s not bringing a big points margin in to you. They’re bringing in a two or three points margin, and you think you’re getting a good deal, because you’re representing one of them. Forget it. Build a business around $200,000 at 20 points, not $2 million for five. It will kill you.
CRN Jamie Romanin from ShoreTel, the term ‘unified communications’ has been around for several years now. Where is the industry at in your view and what are the key things that resellers need to do to develop opportunities in this space?
Jamie BYOD is really a symptom of a bigger change and that’s the smartphone and the user. With regard to UC, it’s no longer a bolt-on or add-on on top of an IP telephony solution. It’s expected as the norm, so customers want to do instant messaging and presence and point one video and collaboration through their telephony solution today. That’s what they expect. Resellers not offering those solutions as part of a voice platform are actually ruled off the shortlist pretty quickly.
It doesn’t stop there. UC today has gone beyond the desktop. It’s now gone to mobile devices, and our customers are demanding that they want that same UC functionality available to them wherever they may be. There’s a huge opportunity there.
Half the CIOs I talk to say within five years they believe 50 percent of their workforce will be totally mobile, and that presents an enormous opportunity for the reseller community. There are two distinct types of partners out in the market today and there is a convergence between the telephony channel and the IT channel.
The opportunity with mobility is for them to become a true solution provider and offer the technologies surrounding that telephony platform. If they’re going to step into the BYOD world and offer mobile applications enabling staff out of the office, then they need to become proficient in wireless LAN technology as well as a security. Also MDM (mobile device management technology).
CRN Ryan, how important is it for resellers of mobility solutions to be resellers of mobile communication services as well? Are the margins shrinking so much around the devices and other areas that that really needs to happen?
Ryan Well it certainly goes hand in hand. When you look at the tablet devices and smartphones, particularly the tablet devices, going into next year, they’re going to have LTE and 4G in there as standard. As a small business owner, the challenge you have is really about aggregating the telco costs of those BYOD devices and how you can get best value, because for me, I wouldn’t want to be handling a whole heap of expense claims from separate telcos and then try to develop a consistent service across devices. Certainly for SMBs, the challenge is really going to be the best way to implement mobile device management across disparate devices.
CRN Do we think there’s prohibitive billing issues with regard to resellers actually becoming resellers of telco services to accompany the mobility solutions they’re delivering?
Ryan Fundamentally it’s a great business opportunity for resellers. It’s something that when we talk to our partners about moving into the managed services space and building that recurrent revenue model, part of that is being able to do the telco services as well.
CRN Jason Brouwers, the trend towards mobility and BYOD is placing a lot of pressure on customers’ existing networks clearly. What do you see as the opportunity for partners to help them manage and capitalise on this disruptive trend in terms of upgrading and selling new network infrastructure.
Jason The really beautiful thing about technology, and particularly the consumerisation of IT, is that it creates opportunity. It creates problems for our customers who turn to the channel for help. There are always things that come to challenge us, from a technology point of view, but that’s really quite a good thing.
So BYOD’s here. It’s going to be something else tomorrow, but the key thing is that from a partner point of view, from our point of view, what’s important is that it can create a real opportunity. But probably most important is the services pull-through. So it’s not just about the products, but about what they can do and the value you can add for your customers because if it’s complex then that means they need the channel to solve those problems.
CRN We all seem to accept that the horse has bolted and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s irreversible. Did something change in terms of IT managers and their behaviour?
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