NetEnrich’s Justin Crotty Offers 2012 Channel Predictions

Justin Crotty, senior vice president and general manager at NetEnrich, chimed in with his predictions for the channel and beyond in 2012. In short, cloud services will crystalize, recurring monthly revenues will become even more important, and the Broncos don’t have a chance. Crotty shares those views in this FastChat Video:

“Overall I think the outlook is really good,” Crotty said. “I think most people agree that despite some larger, macroeconomic concerns in the economy and the overall health of the economy I think generally the foundation is strong and I certainly believe that technology and the IT channel prospects next year are very strong. I think most people share an optimism and enthusiasm for the next 12 months or so.”

That said, here are Crotty’s Top 3 predictions for the channel:

Prediction No. 1: ‘Cloud’ will cease to be an umbrella term — Crotty believes the next year will see a filtering of cloud services into specific offerings, rather than vendors using the word as a catch-all. “I am getting tired of hearing about cloud, cloud, cloud as a generic trend; now I think it’s time to get realistic about what the solutions are,” he said. “The capabilities of cloud computing, the various things that are available through cloud-based technologies and delivery platforms are real [and] mature, and I think we should stop referring to cloud as this sort of nebulous, unknown coming storm. It’s here and I think people generally understand what it is, and it’s time to start referring to applications and capabilities that are delivered through the cloud by what they are.”

Prediction No. 2: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) will become more important — Crotty believes MRR in general will grow as the percentage of service revenue in the IT channel. “I think there’s no big surprise there. But I think people are starting to understand the importance of recurring revenue and the quality of that revenue that is generated in recurring nature. And I see that growing as a percentage of overall service revenue by these players.”

Prediction No. 3: Successful VARs and MSPs will delegate — Crotty said he’s seen too many VARs and MSPs who can’t scale their companies simply because they’re trying to do everything themselves. “I still run into too many organizations that tell me, ‘I just can’t grow fast enough,’ ‘I can’t scale,’ ‘It’s too difficult to service my clients,’ or ‘I can’t add new clients, it’s too expensive.’ And if you dig into that a little bit what you’re finding is they’re trying to do everything themselves. They’ve bought technologies and software platforms and tried to integrate those and they’ve hired people to watch the blinking lights and they’re doing their own help desk and they’re trying to be all things to all people,” Crotty said. But successful channel partners are those that have settled on what they’re going to do as a core competency and are leveraging partners to do the rest. “Those [companies] that don’t figure this out … and [aren’t] realistic about what [they] do really well and what can [they] allow a partner to do better than ]they] can do … will have a hard time creating long-term value for [their] company and for [their clients]. And I think you’re going to see that accelerate next year,” he said.

Bonus Prediction: The Broncos won’t go to Super Bowl XLVI — they don’t have a chance, Crotty said.