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[email protected] COMMENT 03 Finding out what inspired someone to start a business is always interesting – and often illuminating. That original motivation can say a great deal about a company, its priorities, its culture and therefore the likelihood of its success. Was the company started by someone already in the industry because they felt they could offer a substantially different or better product/ service or did they just grab the opportunity to do what they have always done, but this time for themselves? More interesting are the entrepreneurs who enter what for them is a new industry, either for macro reasons (e.g. because the incumbents are fundamentally inefficient and they have a better business model) or for micro reasons (e.g. because they have had a bad customer experience and spot the potential to do things differently). Such was the motivation for David Thomas, Managing Director of Bluegrass Group, featured in our Q&A on page 26. He moved into IT support after receiving such poor service from his supplier that he decided he could do things better himself – a useful warning that with poor service levels you run the risk not just of losing a customer but of creating a competitor. Not many have the resources, confidence or drive to enter a new industry. But this could be changing. Certainly, for IT and telecoms resellers, convergence offers plenty of scope to develop new business areas, as Craig Gordon, Head of Vuzion, is advising his customers to do with Microsoft 365 Business Voice (see page 43). Another possibility that has worked very well for Vapour Cloud (see page 36) is to strike partnerships with businesses that have skills in ancillary areas. Or you could work more closely with distributors – in the Westcoast 2019 Trends Report What UK Resellers Really Think (see page 30), 16% of resellers said they were looking for greater collaboration with distributors. Whatever the strategy adopted, it is clear that there is significant appetite in the channel for developing new markets, with 49% of resellers surveyed by Westcoast citing expansion into new customer segments as a ‘significant priority’ and a further 46% describing it as a ‘moderate priority’. James Goulding Editor,
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[email protected] www.technologyreseller.co.uk No part of Technology Reseller can be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher. © 2019 Kingswood Media Ltd. Design: Sandtiger Media www.sandtiger.co.uk 04 What’s New The month’s best new products and services 06 Distributor News Titan Data Solutions celebrates successful first year 08 Working Together This month’s round-up of new distribution agreements 10 Tech Trends ICT in the UK today 12 Reseller News Titan joins inTec ‘owned partner’ network 16 Vendor News NEC honours top EMEA partners 20 Opinion Scott Dodds on how MSPs can profit from automation 24 DattoCon Highlights from DattoCon 2019 26 Q&A David Thomas explains why Bluegrass Group is standardising on Datto 30 Distribution What distributors could do better 32 Cloud Distribution What to look for from a cloud services provider, according to Giacom 36 View from the channel With Tim Mercer, CEO of Vapour Cloud 37 IT Monitoring How LogicMonitor can help avoid IT outages 39 Digitisation DocuSign expands its footprint with DocuSign Agreement Cloud 40 The Insider What’s stopping you from becoming the next Amazon? 42 Events Who won what in the inaugural DWS Power Awards 43 Communcations Microsoft launches phone system for SMEs 46 People New faces, new places 47 60 seconds… With Ashley Keil, VP Sales EMEA, IBML v25 · 2019 technology reseller.co.uk Comment Register online To receive your regular FREE printed copy of Technology Reseller Magazine simply fill in our online registration form at www.technologyreseller.uk/register Read Technology Reseller online, on tablets and smart phones www.technologyreseller.uk Join us : Follow us @techreselleruk www.facebook.com/TechnologyResellerMag technology-reseller-magazine Editor: James Goulding 07803 087228 ·
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