Taiwan-headquartered Advantech is encouraging its European IoT and edge computing channel to get into bed with system integrators to boost sales, so how much of a learning curve will this be for partners?
As previously reported, we attended the company’s Focused Partner Conference in Warsaw, Poland last week, to discover how the firm was gearing up for the channel opportunities offered by AI services and wider edge computing deployments.
The company said many of its partners had to convert from simply being hardware module providers to being ones that provided a full hardware, software and services stack to end customers, to maintain sales in the evolving communications and data services market.
Tony Champault, channel sales director for Advantech Europe, told us: “We have various types of partners, and some of them have been with us for well over 20 years, from the days of simple telemetry to the arrival of machine-to-machine, then the Internet of Things, and now the rapidly evolving Industrial Internet of Things and everything that goes with it.”
The Industrial Internet of Things covers areas like Industry 4.0 – which is now moving towards Industry 5.0 – digital twins, advanced mobile connectivity technologies like 5G Advanced and 6G, more secure and faster Wi-Fi standards, and, of course, artificial intelligence.
As Advantech Europe is a channel-first organisation with lots of hardware to sell into the edge computing space, Champault says the firm needs its partners to step up to the plate when it comes to selling end-to-end solutions, to help keep its connectivity and processing hardware continually being deployed in the field. If they don’t, end customers seeking a one-stop shop will go somewhere else.
Champault says: “We and our partners are getting in touch with system integrators of all sizes, as solution selling is now the target. It’s now clear that end users want full solutions rather than just hardware.”
Deloitte and Orange Business were large system integrators already involved in Advantech’s channel in their own right, but Champault said there was room for many others of all sizes. “The size of the end customer will dictate what size of SI is needed to work with our partners. A single factory at the edge will have different needs to a multinational company that needs large numbers of sites supported.”
As for the full-stack solutions Advantech wants developed for customers, Champault says it isn’t the case that software will necessarily generate high sales, but it is the consultancy and maintenance around it that will. A large chunk of software that makes edge computing systems work is open-source – Ubuntu developed by Canonical is a close Advantech partner, for instance.
“Partners can make more money through providing data security and system maintenance, for instance. Many customers will pay for this as it helps to avoid system problems, and for large ones in particular, it is a relatively small price to pay,” says Champault.
Marco Zampolli, IoT automation product sales director at Advantech, confirmed the services opportunity. “While the overall aim for us is to sell more hardware, one of our partner’s is actually giving it away to one of their customers, and owning their customer by providing key systems and maintenance around that hardware.”
He adds: “The new channel ecosystem is being built around the edge. Before, much of the AI, for instance, was in the back end or in data centres, including the public cloud. Now, for time, latency, cost, energy and green reasons, this data processing has to be done at the edge first, which, for many new applications, means our partners can play a big role.”
