The evolving market trends demand that businesses move towards virtualisation, and desktop virtualisation comes with its own set of nuances. Reseller ME explores the channel prospects in this technology.
As organisations are experiencing the benefits of cloud, a number of legacy technologies have progressively moved towards the virtual space, right from servers to storage. And with the workforce becoming increasingly mobile, businesses are now experimenting with desktop virtualisation. Although not quite mainstream yet, it is definitely being dabbled with and is only a matter of time before it takes the enterprise world by storm.
And this is precisely why channel partners should sit up and take notice of this technology and strike when the iron is hot. However according to channel experts, partners are reluctant to dive into this technology.
Mario Veljovic, Vice President Solutions MENA, Global Distribution says, “The legacy virtual desktop management is performed by a combination of SAN, networking, and core infrastructure administrators, which is unnecessarily complicated and expensive, which make partners hesitate to proactively suggest this solution.”
Agreeing, Anand Choudha, MD, Spectrami says, “Only limited numbers of partners are focusing on desktop virtualisation solutions, rest do not see the big opportunity in the region yet.” However Choudha adds that the market is growing at an accelerating rate and the demand is on the rise when compared to last year, even though it is gradual. “Since last year, we have seen a great percentage of growth in the sales for this specific segment,” he adds.
The reason for partners’ reservations towards desktop virtualisation comes from inadequate knowledge about its applications and benefits. According to Shams Hasan, Enterprise Product Manager, Dell Middle East, partners are not well-acquainted with the technology. He says there is a difference in being well-versed with its benefits and being in a position to answer any customer queries and play the role of an advisor. “Partners are able to have discussions with customers around the subject but often reach out to vendors when opportunities evolve from discussions to engagements or initiatives. Often what helps to seal a deal are tailor-made solutions to a specific problem the customer might be facing,” explains Hasan.
Channel partners should take the time out to not only understand the advantages of desktop virtualisation but also develop unique and effective strategies in order to be a differentiator in the market.
Comstor’s Senior Technical Consultant, Ahmed Rushdy, says one of the ways partners can successfully sell this technology is by enabling themselves on the VDI validated solution design and on how to demonstrate security in DaaS and VDI solution, especially if it is a cloud based one.
He says, “Partners should have more enablement campaigns from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution vendors as most of the time VDI are integrated solutions offered by multiple vendors that requires the right technical and business knowledge.”
Vendors and distributors have a large role to play in enabling partners to increase their expertise in this field. Veljovic believes vendors and distributors should build technology alliances and further investment in partner enablement. However, he says, “it should be looked at beyond a particular vendor and addressing VDI more holistically.”
Noman Qadir, Director of Channels, Middle East and Africa, Citrix, believes training and support is critical for partner enablement. He says, “Through the intensive training programmes that Citrix offers, most of our channel partners are self-sufficient when it comes to their business. Once the partners are well-versed in the technologies and products, we focus on providing technical support to them to help them grow their business. For instance, we work closely with them to draft and respond to RFPs where necessary.”
He further adds that vendors and distributors can help by ensuring that customers’ needs are considered while proposing the infrastructure rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. This helps in planning capacity accurately.
Through intensive training programmes the aim is to offer partners an opportunity to see desktop virtualisation as a norm rather an emerging technology. Citrix has run desktop virtualisation training programmes regularly for its Middle East channel partners for over five years. “Through this, almost all regional partners are now very well aware of the various benefits and advantages that desktop virtualisation offers to an organisation. In addition, we train partners on ROI analysis and work with them on customising Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) studies for their customers,” adds Qadir
Hasan further adds, “The right collaboration model for partners should involve a vendor who can provide the flexibility to explore a breadth of solutions and make resources available to enable partners to deep-dive and get hands-on with customers.”
But with all the training programmes, it is pertinent for partners to first understand the demand themselves. “After which they need to be educated enough to get the most possible benefits out of this technology, accordingly they need to educate their customers and we help them doing that. We do this in various ways, one of them being roadshows through which we have been able to increase the awareness in the region,” says Choudha.
Lack of knowledge and low customer acceptance are two challenges the regional channel is currently facing. Qadir says, “A primary challenge that partners face is resistance from customers. Some customers have the wrong perception that desktop virtualisation requires a very high upfront cost.”
Although this was the case a couple of years ago, it is increasingly changing as vendors and distributors are taking an active role in assuaging this concern. As the technology is being now being widely adapted and cost of storage and other hardware has reduced over the years, the overall upfront costs have reduced significantly.
It is also crucial to note that partners will also need experts in the pre-sales and post-sales team who have enough knowledge on desktop virtualisation and application delivery and this is easier said than done. Partners need to invest on time in finding the right kind of people and work towards training and educating them.
Hasan adds, “The large timelines involved with VDI initiatives and the rapidly evolving developments in VDI solutions, compounded by the diversity of offerings, providing proof of concepts at customer sites, and the multiple hierarchies of conversations and engagements that are often involved at the customer further pose as challenges to the channel partners.”
While Rushdy goes on to explain that the complexity and the initial capex required for the technology are some other challenges for VDI Solutions. He says, “Accurate sizing of all the components involved in the solution such as servers, storages, virtual layer and on how to utilise a converged infrastructure to provide up-to-date cost saving solution offering is important. “In DaaS environment one of the major challenges would be demonstrating and incurring SLA of performance,” he adds.
The technology around desktop virtualisation is constantly evolving and therefore it is crucial for channel partners to evolve with it. Qadir further adds, “It is important for channel partners to continue focusing on services to implement mobile device management, mobile application delivery and management and desktop virtualisation in a secure manner to varied devices as customer requirements.”
As the market for desktop virtualisation promises to be a high growth avenue and with only few partners currently in this space, there exists a tremendous opportunity for the channel. Partners should take the initiative to educate themselves on the technology and develop effective marketing strategies in order to successfully sell this technology.
