SAN DEIGO – At the 10th anniversary of VARnex, Synnex is looking to evolve its CloudSolv program into an Everything-as-a-Service offering.
Synnex Vice President of Marketing Bob Stegner confirmed that to CDN at the VARnex Fall Conference adding that the distributor has even had talks to change the branding of CloudSolv, which may lead to a new name for the program. Nothing has been determined on that front, but Synnex will have a new approach to cloud that will involve its mobility practice and its newly created Internet of Things (IoT) division.
Stegner said the plan is for cloud, mobile and IoT to all interact together and the market is moving in that direction.
Synnex has an IoT leader in Fran Mauney. Mauney told the VARnex audience that her area will be partnering with the cloud and mobility teams. “We are going to be the place to be and we’ll have a super cloud portal and try to work across all vendor lines to put in an IoT strategy. One that is simple with playbooks. We are also looking at verticals such as education and public safety,” she said.
In Canada, the Synnex operation has made several strides in building up CloudSolv in the country. Synnex Canada President Mitchell Martin said they have doubled the monthly reseller count on CloudSolv and now have up to 500 solution providers in that program.
“CloudSolv is a big bet for us in Canada. We are also heavily recruiting born in the cloud reseller,” Martin said. Synnex Canada is currently working on 400 leads for born in the cloud and have on-boarded 75 of them so far. Martin characterized this group as solution providers who work directly with vendors and not distribution.
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Martin added that Synnex Canada will be working closely with Mauney’s group in IoT to Canadianize those solutions for the market. The MobilitySolv program will get a renewed focus for 2018 and Martin wants to leverage North American resources for that. There is also a play for SMB and Synnex has created DiscoveryReps program which hires new graduates from colleges and universities and training them as inside sales reps. These new reps will be available to the channel on a monthly basis.
One example of what Mauney’s is trying to do in terms of merged IoT solutions with cloud and mobility is a recent new solution where a solution provider has put Wi-Fi on school buses in a U.S. school district. This bus has security cameras and the ability to track students. Mauney added that this is a repeatable solution that can be sold into other school districts.
“IoT, cloud and mobility is a big bet for 2018. The plan is to work with Westcon-Comstor and look at the edge of the network. We are trying to get that smarter here and some of the vendors have this already built out. We can put this together with services and for the partners out there don’t be scared of IoT because you are doing it already,” Mauney said.