Let’s face it. Large B2B tech
companies don’t come up with groundbreaking innovations. They are too big and
are too busy with action items, corporate politics and intense pressure from
the street to develop new innovations and bring those ideas to market in a
reasonable timeframe. They also have a big reason not to monkey with the status
quo, billions of reasons actually. Faster, cheaper, better typically means less
revenue.
Turns out Wall Street isn’t a big fan of cool innovations that
decrease revenue, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Perched high on the list
of career limiting moves in Silicon Valley is driving a plan to develop
innovative products and services that will decrease revenue.
The truth is, most great ideas from the major hardware and
software vendors leave with their creators, stop on Sand Hill road for funding
and end up in a little office in the Valley. Big ideas can mean big money.
Visionary engineers aren’t turning their moment of genius over to a big
political machine to get kicked around meeting rooms for three years only to
resurface neutered and too late to matter anyway.
Big tech companies, especially hardware vendors, will continue
to fight to the death to keep their antiquated products moving off the shelves.
Sluggish economics made 2013 a great year to buy dated technology; 70, 80, even
90 percent discounts on six-figure hardware deals. What’s happening here? While
these products are selling for next to nothing, vendors are now charging 20
percent of the list price for support and updates.
This is a plan that certainly works for Wall Street and it is
hard for customers to resist. What would you do if you bought a new car two
years ago for $50,000 and your dealer called you at the end of the year saying
they’d give you a new care for $5,000? Anyone would take that deal!
VMware had this same problem getting their groundbreaking
technology off the ground. Customers could install their technology and use 90
percent less server hardware. While this was great for the customers, HP, Dell
and IBM certainly weren’t happy with VMware. The same thing could be said for
resellers, as they certainly weren’t interested in selling 90 percent less
hardware.
The resellers are just as weary about messing with their nest
egg. However large or small, the few VARs that actually survive their first two
years in business did so for a reason — they realized that running a tech
resale business is about making money. The rash of leads, rebates and SPIFs
coming from their big vendors are too lucrative for the resellers with
influence to take a chance on anything new.
The hardest part of getting new innovations to market is cutting
through the big tech companies marketing machines and their incredibly talented
(and well paid) sales people to get prospective customers to consider new
technologies. There really isn’t a villain to blame, but there is a hero.
Ultimately, the buyers of technology are the heroes of our
industry. They are our saving grace. Despite pressure from their upper
management, the people in the trenches that do this because they love it are
the ones that keep us moving in the right direction.
To those visionary technologists, don’t believe all the
marketing hype from big tech. Keep innovating. By doing so, you will help shape
the future of the industry.
Paul
Murphy is VP of Worldwide Marketing at DataCore.
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