NEWS
Report: 78% of channel partners have “more to do” in shift to services and subscriptions
Most channel partners have started their migration to subscriptions and services, but only 21% say that they have gone as far as possible, leaving 78% part way through this journey and facing a variety of challenges in realising full migration, new research has found. The findings were published by technology provider and specialist distributor Westcon- Comstor in its report Navigating the shift: The role of distributor marketplaces in Partner Success . The report, conducted over the past three months, reveals that while almost every channel partner is shifting to subscription and recurring revenue models, the vast majority say they are facing myriad challenges and have more to do to make the shift. The report, based on a survey of almost 300 channel partners in the UK and Australia, explores the challenges of a changing market and business models, looking at macroeconomic factors and changes specific to the channel—plus what is needed from distributor marketplaces. With the shift to subscription and recurring revenue models comes complexity, and this is reflected in the challenges partners face; 52% cite the need to manage a complex multi-vendor
portfolio as the biggest challenge they face. Channel partners are looking to distributors, and in particular distributor marketplaces, to help overcome these challenges, with 60% believing that a single platform to buy hardware and software will help accelerate this shift, although only 49% of partners are currently using distributor marketplaces. Those partners who have started to use distributor marketplaces cite self-serve stock availability (49%), online ordering (49%) and pricing (42%) as the biggest advantages and are looking for better access to customer data (55%), market data (39%) and customer success training (46%). There is a promising opportunity for distributor marketplaces to offer a richer set of services and capabilities than what is being provided today, that will truly help them on their growth path within this new model. “We see the B2B world evolving much as the B2C world did. We all know how important marketplaces, e-commerce and digital interfaces have become,” said Patrick Aronson, CMO, Westcon-Comstor. “Our experience is that channel partners are keen to modernise and embrace the recurring revenue and subscription business model.”
Patrick Aronson CMO Westcon-Comstor
westconcomstor.com
Nebulon expands zero-trust edge solution with two-person commit
Nebulon’s Two-Person Commit policy includes three parties: ‘requestor’, the user that requested an action; ‘approver’, a user that is approving the request; and ‘arbitrator’, the Nebulon customer satisfaction team. The role of the arbitrator is to ensure that the requestor and approver are distinct individuals. Meanwhile SSO for Microsoft Azure Active Directory environments allows users to sign in and access their Nebulon-based infrastructure using their Azure Active Directory credentials. Nebulon SSO also supports the mapping of Active Directory groups to other groups in Nebulon’s cloud (NebulonON) to further simplify user and group identity management. This new authorisation capability improves perimeter protections by separating the responsibility of identity management and infrastructure management, simplifying username and passphrase management and improving identity protection when paired with multifactor authentication.
Nebulon, Inc, a data centre cyber security provider, has announced two new zero-trust offerinags: Two-Person Commit and Single Sign-on (SSO). This advances Nebulon’s security offering, which includes advanced authentication and authorisation, always-on encryption and four-minute ransomware recovery. Two-Person Commit is a security policy with its origins in military protocol. This policy protects organisations from accidental or malicious destructive actions by providing an additional layer of security for Nebulon-based clusters or groups of clusters. Once a user enables the Two-Person Commit security policy, certain operations in the cluster group must be approved by two people in the organisation, including deleting clusters, volumes, snapshots and disabling the security policy.
Siamak Nazari CEO, Nebulon
nebulon.com
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