VARs Are Shifting Their Efforts and Resources
Sage said he is seeing many traditional Cisco resellers shift to handle more of the customer life cycle. Whereas they previously focused on upfront professional services, these partners are doing more and more in the management of the offerings they sell.
“In the past, a lot of the value of VAR to us, frankly, and to the customer, was introducing the logistics, the delivery, the installation, the cabling and the turn-up, and a lot of that value is not needed anymore,” Sage said. “It’s been replaced by an even bigger need. And that is to successfully activate the technology that customers buy. And then almost more importantly, to make sure that it gets adopted over the life cycle, so that the customer is using it successfully to get the outcome that they want.”
