EMERGENT
business quarter – that can easily
be integrated with their custom-
ers’ existing technology environ-
ments. Working together, Avnet
and relayr will give partners the
foundation they need to help their
customers create IoT solutions
from simple experimentation to
full-scale deployments.”
Ancillary Opportunities
Above and beyond the IoT
solutions themselves, channel
partners also have the opportunity
to bring their expertise as trusted
advisors to the mix, layering on
additional solutions.
“The channel is making signifi-
cant progress with monetizing the
IoT opportunity and, unlike past
years, view themselves as strong
profitability candidates,” said Seth
Robinson, senior director of tech-
nology analysis at CompTIA.
Stumbling blocks to widespread
IoT deployments include concerns
about costs and return on invest-
ment; technical hurdles; and li-
ability, privacy and other regulatory
matters. As a result, consulting
is currently the most popular IoT
channel offering, with 40 percent
of companies offering something
in this space. The next most popu-
lar offering is security, provided
by 36 percent of firms. Analytics,
managed services, custom app
development, reselling and infra-
structure services are offered by
between 30 percent and 35 per-
cent of companies.
“First, the complexity of IoT
projects is beyond what many
companies can handle internally,
especially on the SMB end of the
spectrum,” Robinson explained.
“Second, many areas of IoT are
essentially extensions of the skills
and lines of business that solution
providers already have.”
Security might be the fastest-
growing ancillary arena. Aruba’s
aforementioned global IoT study ear-
lier this year revealed that 84 percent
have already experienced a security
breach as a result of implementing
IoT. Out of those, 49 percent dealt
with malware, 38 percent have been
the target of spyware, 30 percent
experienced phishing and 26 percent
suffered from a DDoS attack.
Overall things look bright for
channel partners: CompTIA’s
Inter-
net of Things Trends and Opportu-
nities
report found that 23 percent
of channel companies surveyed
say they’ve already made money
from IoT offerings, compared to
just 8 percent in 2015. Looking
forward, one-third of channel firms
expect to make money from IoT in
the next 12 months.
o
Channel
Vision
|
May - June, 2017
16