“We saw the writing on the wall and started urging our resellers to make the shift from box-moving to services. The path just wasn’t all that adequately lit. “Our new alliance with Global Micro lights that path perfectly,” she says. James says that Global Micro’s offering is already being piloted with 50 of Mustek’s most motivated, hard-working resellers and over the space of the next six to 12 months will become available to every authorised Mustek reseller. “And the reason it’s going to work is that all three parties – us, Global and the resellers – have distinct roles,” she says.
DISTInCT ROLES “Global Micro is responsible for the data centre, infrastructure, hosting environment and a toolset that will allow Mustek’s resellers to offer customers – as a starting gambit – a Hosted Exchange bolt-on service for Small Business Essentials that can be provisioned, managed and maintained completely remotely,” she says. This will also include Office on Demand – for all intents and purposes a virtual filing cabinet for critical files. “The resellers will be respon58 AFRICA TELECOMS Issue 20
sible for managing the customer relationship, managing any on-site issues and facilitating warranties on hardware on the customer’s premises. “Additionally, they will field customer requests for new mailboxes, handle first line support and perform maintenance tasks. “Using Global Micro’s toolset, resellers will also be able to remotely manage and monitor their customers’ onpremise equipment, thereby rendering a far higher quality service than they were able to before,” she adds. “Mustek will continue to supply hardware, manage warranties and work its magic with logistics,” she continues. “It will also be the one managing the financial aspects of the agreement: performing credit checks, carrying out all of the monthly subscription-based billing and pretty much handling the aspects of the reseller/client relationship that the reseller just doesn’t have the expertise or resources to manage,” she explains. Obviously, James says the intention is to very quickly roll the availability of these solutions out to Mustek’s broader customer base and thereafter expand the services on offer to include hosted backup, business continuity, other applica-
tions and ultimately, unified communications. One difference between this alliance and others, James says, is the fact that Mustek resellers will earn their annuity revenues in perpetuity.
DIFFEREnTIATORS “We want there to be a strong incentive for them to keep the channels of communications open with their customers, conduct regular customer visits and take care of the relationship with the customer. “Providing they’re doing their bit, they will earn monthly revenue,” she says. Another difference, she says, is the fact that there’s no prescriptive pricing model. “Resellers are free to set their own pricing and to wrap different service levels agreements around the hosted services they on-sell. While we will obviously provide some guidance, resellers must feel they’re able to customize the solution as they see fit,” Global Micro’s Milner explains. “Resellers will discover that the market has an ability to correct pricing that’s not in line with the value it provides and, furthermore, that there’s a stark difference between some services which will be a commodity and others that lend themselves to more differentiation,” he adds.
WILL IT WORk? The short answer is: “It looks that way…” “Make no mistake, there’s money to be made for the early cloud adopters,” Milner says. “But the cloud alone is not a recipe for success. You have to be able to combine cloud and non-cloud services seamlessly, and provide layers of value on top of the cloud.” Its alliance with Mustek, and access to resellers that do things aside from selling hosted services, does exactly that. Global Micro is also a company that’s grown up in the cloud era, doing only one thing – providing hosted applications and services that companies either couldn’t be bothered to have on-site, or feel more comfortable from an expertise or a cost-efficiency perspective entrusting to a third part. The fact that it’s remaining focused on that one thing and building alliances to take care of go-to-market strategy, partner engagement and logistics also means they’ll be the ones you will want to go to when it comes to mission-critical applications, data and services. That, or this whole cloud thing’s a farce. In which case we’ll all find out in the next decade just how wrong we were to move everything off-site. AT