Specialise For Success

Frank Basinski, director partner programmes and enablement, EMEA, Red Hat, explains why the channel must focus on becoming adept in specific verticals.

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Increased vertical focus has been happening for a while at the channel’s cutting edge, and IDC believes that 2017 is the year it becomes mainstream. The analyst house predicts that by 2018 at least 20 percent of partners will have restructured to create vertically focused customer-facing sales and solutions organisations. However, is it as black and white as this, and what are the main obstacles partners are facing in creating the crossover between industry and technology?

Thanks to the rise in third-platform technology and a dramatically shifting customer landscape, partners are focusing more and more on their vertical offerings and expertise. New research commissioned by Red Hat underlines this, with over half of the resellers, VARs, SIs, MSPs, CSPs, ISVs and consultants surveyed in the UK, French and German channels having extended their product and service portfolio towards specific vertical industries in the past 12 months.

The key driver for partners, is that customers are increasingly looking for guidance and solutions from the channel to help facilitate their digital transformation and to achieve a holistic, cross-sector business approach.