Images: Avant Partners Eye Next-Gen Tech, Enterprise Market
Enterprise CIOs and next-gen vendors increasingly rely on the technology advisory channel.
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Craig Schlagbaum is senior vice president and channel chief at Comcast Business.
He said the agent channel has fundamentally changed in terms of what it can sell.
“When I got into this industry a long time ago, we were selling raw commodities. We were selling internet circuits and basic voice, POTS lines and long distance. And what you see now is this notion of breakthrough capability, where a partner can go out and help a customer across all their issues, not just telecommunications, but areas in the cloud, areas in security and video conferencing. And that wasn’t the case 12 years ago,” Schlagbaum told Channel Futures.
Agents have moved into selling cloud communications and cybersecurity – great. What do vendors and customers think about that? Are they eager to work with a technology advisor?
Eric Ludwig co-founded Rise Technology Advisors. He broke down adoption of the agent channel into three different technology services markets.
It starts with the telco/WAN space, which loves the channel.
“The service provider community has embraced it with open arms. There are very few telecom service providers that don’t have a channel program that can be distributed through this group of TSDs. And there are a lot of customers, who, because of the maturity of that marketplace, have embraced people like us,” Ludwig told Channel Futures.
That goes for the enterprise as well.
“It’s not an uncommon thing for an enterprise at the very high end to use an advisor or consultant (depending upon how they name themselves) to help shepherd them through the telecom business. Fewer and fewer enterprise clients have a staff of people that are telecom. Most people don’t have telecom departments anymore. They did before,” Ludwig said.
One then moves up the stack to the maturing UCaaS and CCaaS markets. Ludwig said many of those suppliers are welcoming agents, but they’re also used to working with traditional distributors and resellers.
Then the cybersecurity space presents an interesting contrast. One one hand, there’s room to grow in terms of bringing vendors into the agent model.
“Those suppliers maybe aren’t as warm because they just don’t get it,” Ludwig said.
But that’s not the case with customers. They’re trying to handle a tech stack they’ve never dealt with before in cybersecurity, and they’re more than willing to ask for help, Ludwig said.
“They understand that there are niche firms that are innovating, and they want to know how they’re innovating. As the services get more complicated, I think that there’s less adoption in the channel, but there’s more recognition from the enterprise client that we add a lot of value,” Ludwig said.
Cybersecurity functions as a bellwether of sorts for how the business technology world is accepting agents.
Adrian Tilston leads a cybersecurity consultancy that the agency Resourcive recently purchased. Tilston’s firm had previously dabbling in the advisory sourcing model, but he said he’s very eager to go deeper with Resourcive.
“The overall model is really helpful from a security standpoint, because it gives our clients the ability to have a partner that can really take a look at the full security landscape, understand what’s changing and how quickly it’s changing, and try to identify solutions that solve actual business problems.”
It’s no secret that the channel has emerged as a solution for IT departments that are strapped for people. That’s particularly so in the cybersecurity space.
“It’s hard to hire, train and retain all those types of people. What is specifically happening in this ecosystem is, they are rapidly getting more vendors that fill those niches. So you can really leverage vendor relationships with … individual agent resellers and kind of offload some of the workload that you would normally have to do in-house to some type of MSSP provider. Even if it’s not full managed security, you’re just getting assistance to augment your team a little bit,” Tilston said.
Stephen Semmelroth joined Avant this year as senior director of security.
He said he has seen rapid adoption of the channel among the cybersecurity community. He pointed to some of the marquee vendor names in Avant’s portfolio.
“When they came into channel just a couple of years ago, they were 0% channel. Last year, they were 50%. They’re targeting 60% by the end of this year,” Semmelroth told Channel Futures.
Jake Jansen co-founded LAVA Technology Services, which focuses on helping enterprise customers procure and implement technology.
He noted that while the enterprise doesn’t necessarily understand the agent model very well, it is quite interested in it.
For example, some prospective customers get confused when they learn that LAVA often doesn’t charge for consulting.
“We tell them how we’re paid and how it’s good for them and good for us. There’s some confusion of, ‘Can I use this?’ Where the procurement teams get involved, and they have to go to all of their executive committees and say, ‘Are we allowed to buy through this type of process?'”
But the answer, Jansen said, is usually a resounding yes.
“I’d say, in the commercial enterprise space almost all of them have no problem whatsoever,” Jansen told Channel Futures.
The technology services distributor (TSD) space has undergone a much publicized consolidation in the last two years. Avant buying PlanetOne, and Telarus buying TCG are two good examples, and the channel gossip mill is abuzz with another auction that’s currently taking place.
“The speculation is there’ll be two to three groups in the end,” Eclipse CEO Dave Dyson told Channel Futures.
But the consolidation is creating a handful of national players that are engaged in an arms race of sorts to attract agents.
Dyson said TSDs need to treat advisors as customers.
“They’re going to have to drive value the way we deliver value to our end customers,” he said.
One example Dyson teased are lead-generation programs.
“I have to differentiate my tiny little company versus the large service providers of the world. And it’s really hard to get in those doors. So the TSDs are going to have to start figuring out how to help us crack those doors,” he said.
The key question, Dyson said, is if the TSD arms race be an exercise in share-shift.
“Are they going to spend their energy taking partners from each other? Or are they going to spend their energy differentiating?” he said.
Avant partners, vendors and staff enjoyed tacos, quesadillas, adult beverages and live music Tuesday evening.
Jennifer Gallego, Avant’s executive vice president of global sales (right), led a rock-star panel of female executives, who shared about their breakthrough moments. The panelists came from eSentire, Equinix, RingCentral and Spectrum Enterprise.
Avant CIO Chris Werpy (left) led a panel of providers from the networking side of the channel: Granite, Lumen, Tangoe, Warner Telecomm and Windstream Enterprise.
They offered a variety of predictions for the wide area network of the future, including increased automation and AI.
Avant CEO Ian Kieninger offered a breakdown of how Avant’s revenue has evolved over the last two years.
UCaaS and CCaaS continue to grow at a fast clip, while security has enjoyed a gargantuan increase.
Kieninger (left) and chief experience officer Ted Schuman (right) reminisced about how they came into telecom.
Three decades ago, Kieninger was a star basketball player, while Schuman was going door-to-door selling long distance. Kieninger gave credit to Schuman for helping build what we now call the TSD channel, while Schuman credited the advancements Avant has made.
“You guys broke away from a very, very legitimate crowd,” Schuman told Kieninger.
Former Duke basketball Christian Laettner great joined Kieninger on stage to talk about “The Shot” he made in 1992 to secure a spot in the Final Four.
Laettner offered juicy details about what was going through his head during that shot, what it was like playing with Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley, his time playing one-on-one with Larry Bird on the Dream Team and how he navigated being the most hated man in college basketball.
Opex Technologies CEO Courtney Humphrey drained a free throw to win a $10,000 prize, beating out two other partners.
A fitting move for Humphrey, whose firm won Avant’s top overall trusted advisor award.
There was no shortage of food, drink and familiar faces at The Moody Theater.
Attendees ventured out to The Moody Theater for a night of music and carousing.
Attendees were treated to a musical experience that featured members of Chicago, Rascal Flatts, Uncle Kracker, Journey and Coolio.
Coolio (right) brought the house down with Gangsta’s Paradise.
Attendees were treated to a musical experience that featured members of Chicago, Rascal Flatts, Uncle Kracker, Journey and Coolio.
Coolio (right) brought the house down with Gangsta’s Paradise.
AVANT SPECIAL FORCES SUMMIT — The technology advisor channel continues to drive adoption within next-gen vendors and enterprise customers.
Attendees trained hard and played hard at the Avant Special Forces Summit this week in Austin, Texas. And that combination of effort and celebration is very much connected to the movement partners are making up-market and up the stack.
The agent space has long been associated with SMB and midmarket telecommunications. But declarations from Avant staff and vendors, and anecdotes from partners weave a picture of a partner model that has gained credibility in the eyes of the CIO community.
Avant’s Chris Werpy
Avant chief innovation officer Chris Werpy said a spotlight has shown on the industry in the last few years.
“It hit at all levels — the [technology services distributors] (TSDs) down to the trusted advisors. And so I think that was a validation for a lot of work that people had done for years,” Werpy told Channel Futures. “We knew how powerful this channel was, in terms of a go-to-market motion. The vendors knew it. It was no secret in our world.”
Huge Partner Sales
Avant CEO Ian Kieninger offered a staggering statistic: Twenty-six percent of the $230 million year-over year growth in CCaaS market revenue in 2021 came through technology advisors.
“This room basically sold 26% of that number,” Kieninger said. “If you add up our competition, that number is going to get even bigger.”
Avant’s Ian Kieninger
Partners are increasingly tackling technologies like CCaaS and cybersecurity. Moreover, they’re targeting larger and larger customers. Kieninger said 48% of the TSD’s top 50 partners have sold a deal to a $1 billion company. That’s up from 45% last year and just 23% in 2019.
Avant’s Ted Schuman
That evolution comes as the technology services distributors consolidated into a handful of massive national players. And those TSDs say that they are doing more than they have ever done to meet end customer needs.
“Back then it was pretty simple. We pushed papers, we babysat accounts, and we sent out checks,” Avant chief experience officer Ted Schuman said. “It has certainly evolved today to engineering, pricing, picking vendors, finding the right architecture and solving problems for our customers. We’ve literally invested millions of dollars to do that.”
Avant acquired Schuman’s PlanetOne earlier this year with the aim of expanding its Pathfinder tool, bolstering its back office and bringing in a complementary culture.
Channel Futures spoke to Avant leadership, vendors and partners about the evolution of the channel and what TSDs need to be providing moving forward.
Scroll through slideshow gallery to see industry commentary as well as a visual recap of the last day of the conference.
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