Earlier this month The NPD Group, a well known market research firm announced that business-to-business (B2B) commercial channel revenue grew for the fourth year in a row.
This is good news for companies of all sizes, and it really shows the economic health of the sector that supplies Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs). More and more in today’s marketplace, small and growing businesses are turning to local resellers and service providers to take care of their information technology needs. These local resellers can help customers procure items required to run any business, such as PCs, networking equipment and even personal technology devices like smartphones and tablets. Local Value Added Resellers (VARs) can also provide important services from hardware maintenance to software implementation and on-going support.
These channel partners are a key cog in our economy. They help companies obtain products and services more efficiently than they possibly could by themselves, from the largest organizations in the world to those in small and diverse locations.
By example, even though Apple Retail continues to grow, we are never going to see an Apple Store everywhere. Tech Data, one of the country’s largest master resellers of Apple gear has seen a dramatic uptick in their sales of all Apple products. As an Apple-authorized reseller, Tech Data sells Macs, iPads and even iPhones. When Apple last year signed deals with IBM, Cisco, they made it clear that they encourage these kinds of relationships, and their channel partners continue to grow. They allow the end customers (especially SMBs) to get the greatest products with local, personal service.
It’s that very kind of service that makes the VAR model so valuable to many of our customers at xTuple, customers who like to know that they have a tight relationship with the publisher of the software. However, they also know we cannot be everywhere. Our tremendous group of knowledgeable and talented partners help our customers every day to solve a variety of different business challenges. They help them get xTuple implemented and optimized, and they will often also provide other products and services — not to mention wise counsel and guidance — as the business continues to grow and evolve.
xTuple is grateful for our partners, and we’re glad to see their market is flourishing.
Wally Tonra
Wally has been with xTuple since 2004 and in ERP sales since the mid-1990s. After all that time selling vendor-centric, proprietary enterprise software, moving to an open source, Mac-friendly ERP package was a natural evolution. Prior to xTuple, Wally spent 10 years at JD Edwards, which was eventually acquired by Peoplesoft, in various sales and sales management positions. He made the move to xTuple before Oracle took over both Peoplesoft and the former JDE. Prior to JD Edwards, Wally held sales positions at ERP software company Daly.commerce (formerly Daly and Wolcott), hardware supplier XL/Datacomp and storage vendor EMC. Wally holds a B.S. from Boston College, where the Mac fanaticism all began.