There’s no shortage of news about digital transformation and how new technologies are revolutionizing how we do business, changing our societies and affecting our everyday lives.
While the early phase of this transformation was focused on technology deployment, the focus is now on data. Ultimately, our ability to unlock data’s potential value is the new driving force for change. However, our IT estates are now more complex than ever – and typically reach from the edge to the core and across multiple public and private clouds.
The opportunity for our channel partners lies in helping customers manage this complexity – as most businesses lack the wide-ranging specialist skills needed to secure and manage their data. Instead, they seek trusted partners to provide guidance and consultancy that will unleash their data’s potential and protect and maintain their systems.
Just as end-customer businesses are finding it harder to manage their IT alone, it’s also getting more difficult for individual channel partners to deliver all the necessary expertise and resources.
Co-creating new partnerships via an Ecosystem Platform
This trend has caused many informal partner-to-partner relationships or micro-alliances to spring up – where channel partners have collaborated to fulfil their customers’ needs. Fujitsu is facilitating this co-operation by building an ecosystem to encourage new partner collaborations that integrate the contributions of multiple organizations, large and small, from across the entire region, with different skills and technical expertise
This isn’t the traditional network, which places a vendor at the center of a chain of distributors and resellers. This is about creating a true ecosystem, where multiple partners join forces to realize new market opportunities. Each participant can focus on their strengths while collaborating with peers to develop new service offerings and sustainable revenue streams.
The focal point for this Ecosystem is the online platform where partners can showcase their solutions and capabilities to find resellers able to take them to new markets and applications. It is also a place where they can identify and connect with peers with complementary skills. The powerful search function means that potential collaborators can be found using filters such as geography, vertical sector, or areas of technical expertise.
The intention is that this new environment will allow SELECT partners of all sizes to get involved in high-value projects in wider geographic areas. We envisage opportunities arising for partners to build, for example, applications on top of our infrastructure or offer value-adding services that can be replicated across the region to address a vertical sector's specific needs. Fujitsu’s uScale offering – based on cloud-like sourcing models, will present further opportunities for partners to reduce risk and build new recurring revenue streams with its flexible consumption models.
The platform will also provide ample opportunities to deliver value to customers at all stages of the process, from defining a customer’s IT estate baseline to devising new architectures, deploying solutions and maximizing the value they deliver. And we’ll be there to support them at every step of the way – with the resources, expertise and equipment they have come to rely on, backed by a joint go-to-market approach.
It takes a village
We’ve worked hard over the years to evolve the support we provide our channel to meet our partners' changing demands and we’ve already been trialing the matchmaking approach for some time.
I’m immensely proud that Fujitsu has the solid foundation of a robust partner ecosystem in place. Together, we can help customers truly harness their data. We are also well placed to help our channel grow, with us by each partner’s side as a trusted advisor, offering as much or as little support as they need.
The old approach to channel support – based on rebates, incentives and rewards is no longer a good fit for IT channel partners. That’s why, at Fujitsu, our collective focus is on co-creating business value.
We were the first to focus our partner program on expertise rather than revenue targets, but now it’s time to create a new benchmark for channel support. It’s time for us all to challenge old assumptions and to shape a new future for every member of the ecosystem – built on trust, mutual respect and long-term success.
None of us can do this alone – we are stronger together as an ecosystem.
Participation in the Ecosystem platform just requires each partner to complete a company profile. Sign up today: www.fujitsu.com/ecosystem
