Is IoT ready to be a part of the channel? Distributor Arrow thinks so and is investing in IoT services and support with the aim of bring it to the wider channel.
“IoT is still in the early phase for the channel,” says Paul Karrer, director of Arrow ECS’ IoT team in EMEA. “We see various kinds of engagement for the classic reseller channel. Some are trying to ignore it, some are engaging slowly, some are partnering with other partners, even acquiring other partners with skills.” It is strongly related to the OT (overlay technology) part – related to electro-mechanical technology. It is an overlay technology, and without such knowledge, the channel won’t succeed, he says.
Arrow has some specialist partners already in IoT. “In EMEA we have several hundred partners working with us in this area. Some are heavily engaged; larger ones may already have IoT departments specialising in this.”
A lot of the ideas are in proof of concept stage. But shortly there will be a new generation of products and technologies which allows standard general partners to play a role, he thinks. These will give the wider channel an opportunity in the field.
Yes, IoT is associated with analytics which is a key component, but in the second phase, he thinks. The first phase is the data acquisition, and first step is to acquire and store the data. “We see a lot of traction in data acquisition at the moment building data lakes – the second stage is learning and doing something with it.”
“The problem is that the historic infrastructure in OT environments doesn’t allow you to get all the data you need because of the maintenance contracts which cannot be changed. Additional data acquisition needs to be done before the analytics can start. And then the partners doing the data acquisition are not necessarily the ones to do the analytics.”
Those working with Microsoft or Splunk have a lot of knowledge in this area and not necessarily in anything else, so can provide such services through an ecosystem. So there is a big opportunity for partners to work together; this is also a role that Arrow can play in bringing partners together. “We have been working for two years now is this IoT partner landscape and I think we have been quite successful. The technology is making it easier for partners to deliver this; we see more partners specialising in this. Not necessarily from the analytics side, but more widely,” he says.
“Already we are seeing projects where there is a data partner, security partner and an analytics partner working together. Arrow is helping here by bring the right people together and using our own services where the partner has limited resources. But this is about knowledge transfer in the long term.”
Partners are changing roles and he has a lot of examples where classic partners for storage need OT know-how who can deliver the equipment in, for example, powerlines in the field. Arrow is helping find all the other partners for the project.
“We see a lot of traction in the Nordics – Norway in particular where there has been a lot of investment. This region is in the lead in adopting the technology at the moment. We see a lot of managed service providers getting involved and some software partners working in machine learning. Also systems integrators are working hard on IoT.”
It is growing, but it is hard to be specific on the growth rate – sometimes it is perhaps moving too fast. “We tend to work with market-ready solutions – for tracking and tracing for example – with complete solutions.”
“Then there are customer-ready solutions which make it easier for the general reseller. Our supplies are going more in this direction. Recently-signed Teltonika (pictured) has really good offerings on IoT gateways for edge computing at a good price. As suppliers go into IoT there are many more solutions, but Arrow ECS is very selective on its portfolio,” he says.
Then there are more and more specialist vendors and vertical solutions, but the market is not waiting on new products: “We are not waiting on technology now – we have the standards, the protocols and the platforms. There is a common sense that cloud is now accepted and data can be stored in the cloud, particular in central Europe. The DACH region is somewhat sceptical about collecting data from production environment and holding data, but the main factor is the lack of resources and this is clearly an obstacle with even project management a topic. Which is why it is a chance for us to offer more with services in this market.”
“We have a strategy and this will continue, we are investing a lot of money in this and we are very focused and we are seeing success. At some time there will be a shift and partners in traditional IT will need to shift. We can help them be successful.”
The one message we have for the channel is that we are a big company with a strategy for an end-to-end solution. We have everything they need for a project. Because it is a new field, we can hep partners with what ever they need, learning from us and gaining knowledge so as to be self-sufficient. Our aim is to have a channel that can delivery IoT on its own.”
