ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
“The Internet of Everything (IoE)
provides unprecedented opportunities
for partners to derive greater value from
networked connections among people,
processes, data and things. Partners need
to jump on the IoE bandwagon and enable
themselves for future success.”
According to Nicolai Solling, CTO at
Help AG, “Up until now, the IoT market
has very much been driven by consumer
products, and there is no doubt that the
general level of technology and adoption of
new technology here in the Middle East is
as high, if not higher than anywhere else in
the world. For the channel though, the
real opportunity we are starting to see
is that there are some very large and
innovative commercial IoT projects
coming up. For example, DEWA recently
announced that all of Dubai’s power grid
will become smart.
“With regards to the challenges though,
first of all, the service needs to make
sense, as the need for, and benefit of, IoT,
may not be easily recognisable. Another
very important aspect is the integrity and
availability of the service. The minute you
start to integrate with the day-to-day life
of people, the service needs to be available
all the time; guaranteeing this presents
technological challenges.”
Luis Ortega, Managing Director for
Middle East, Africa, South Asia at IFS
added, “Many organisations around the
globe have yet to establish a clear picture
of what benefits IoT can deliver. Or have
not yet invested the time to develop ideas
for how to apply IoT to their business. Do
organisations have sufficient expertise
and staffing for IoT and support clear
leadership to drive these strategies?
“We tell our customers that IoT-
enabled digital transformation doesn’t
happen overnight, at least not for most.
It’s not realistic to imagine flipping a
switch and, all of a sudden, our assets are
lit up with sensors that deliver actionable
information seamlessly into our systems.
What we’ve found, for most Middle East
organisations, is that this transformation
Security is
critical, not only
in a typical IT
environment but
also in the IoT
infrastructure
environment.
Shadi Salama, Channel Leader
– Middle East Theatre, Cisco
Nicolai Solling, CTO at Help AG.
starts quite small, perhaps with the
automation of one part of a larger process.”
Mohammad Jamal Tabbara elaborated
further. “From a channel perspective, the
challenges in the IoT business start with
finding the required talent in the current
market, keeping up with rapid IoT changes
and trends, making the right partnerships
with the right vendors to target the
right clients, along with implementing,
managing and maintaining IoT projects in
an efficient and secure ecosystem.
“The channel needs to be able to
tackle all these challenges, which are
opportunities for distributors and vendors,
along with educating customers that they
need to be IoT ready. In other words, the
channel has to partner and collaborate
with the right ecosystem partnerships.”
IoT presents tremendous potential for
the channel. Nicolai Solling said: “As many
IoT solutions are created abroad, in the
region it will be more of a reseller game,
not in the classical reseller sense, but in
solutions where the local service providers
and IoT providers will rebrand and white
label services from companies abroad.
Let’s also not forget that there is the actual
infrastructure, which will need to be built
for the services that can either be in-house
or in outsourced datacentres. The next is
the actual sensors or IoT devices, which, of
course, also carry a price tag. Then there
are the services around IoT, which open up
a host of new services, both for technology
companies and for the actual services
companies in delivering innovative services
on top of those IoT offerings.”
Collaboration is key; in fact, having the
right partnership between IoT vendors,
systems integrators and solution providers
is a crucial step towards new revenue
generation for the channel. Not only that,
“this is also a massive opportunity for
distributors, where they can play a major
role in facilitating these partnerships and
relationships by bringing the right vendors
to the right partners for the right clients,”
said Mohammad Jamal Tabbara. “Creating
a collaborative and active ecosystem with
an end-to-end IoT solution will unlock
multiple barriers against streaming new
revenues for the channel and vendors,
along with creating new demand when
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