Nutanix has presented its predictions for the channel market in 2022. The meaning of the word “partner” is evolving rapidly and IT managers are looking for vendors that can add value to the diverse ecosystem of technologies available to them in their data centers. That’s why having trusted channel partners is key to integrating them into the right solutions or even consuming them as services to meet their evolution and growth needs.
Among the main trends that will shape the channel market in the coming year, the following stand out:
- Profit realization will be a continuous process, not a single “event”. Traditional sales methods and inherited incentive models are quickly becoming yesterday’s business. As companies move to consuming IT products as if they were a subscription service, rather than a one-time purchase, vendors will face the challenge (and opportunity) of aligning their partner incentives with those of the customer “journey.” Therefore, unbundling the incentive offering will provide much more value. We need to look at how to incentivize channel partners throughout the duration of a customer relationship so that they reap benefits on a more sustained basis.
- Knowledge is power. Giving the right partners secure access to telemetry is undoubtedly a huge untapped opportunity. This would provide a new way to validate solution adoption and usage and ultimately enable partners to provide better support, both proactively and reactively. If channel partners have access to all this data, they will be able to identify new opportunities to improve customer experience. Next year there will undoubtedly be a greater demand for these insights among the partner ecosystem and the term “sales rep” will likely fade away as “customer success managers” become the norm.
- Attracting next-generation channel talent. Those more forward-thinking channel organizations already see DevOps as one of the key practices that will help drive differentiation and growth. Low code/no code development methods will transform the way solutions are delivered, reducing time and cost of engagement and thus providing significant competitive advantages. Partners who embrace these practices will not only win new customers, but also attract the next generation of digital native channel professionals, who will join their workforces to embrace these new approaches and bring dynamism, innovation and growth.
- Market alliances: doing the right thing for customers. When it comes to alliance strategy, 2022 will see even more examples of suppliers finding common ground as demand for complete, multi-technology solutions grows. Partnerships will be driven not only by today’s customers, but by tomorrow’s customers, as the technology landscape drives innovation but also greater complexity.
“This trend is not new, in fact, Nutanix has recently announced partnership agreements with Red Hat and Citrix, which are proving to be of great value to our partners with jointly certified and supported solutions,” said Christian Alvarez, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales at Nutanix. “Nutanix is also working with AWS and Microsoft Azure because the cloud is no longer a destination but a set of capabilities that customers want to work together seamlessly as a hybrid environment. Ultimately, we vendors have learned as an industry that there is a wide range of needs to meet and we can find good ways to work together.”
