— By Lovleen Bhatia
The Indian IT distribution system is based on a well-defined channel hierarchy where the channel model decides the future of any product or a brand. No matter how strong a brand or product is, a dull channel plan leads to certain disaster.
India has previously seen numerous examples like these both on the software as well as services. Keeping up to the pace, channel partners who directly account for a product’s success needs to hone and adopt the same skillets as a techie for a better perspective about technology as well as maintain one’s pace in the virtual world.
The technology space is always in a state of flux with newer technologies being introduced every year followed by uncountable patches and version updates. It really becomes hard for an individual to keep up the pace with this change as one needs to be updated with the latest in technology on a daily basis. Cloud Computing, Hadoop, Data Management are some of the hottest topics which is gaining momentum as most technology firms are focusing heavily on this front.
Such is the momentum in Big Data that the Indian Big Data industry is expected to grow to $ 1 billion in 2015, at a CAGR of over 83% which is undoubtedly one of the highest in technology. However, the present level of skills is not enough for India to brace this growth; lack of expertise in this field may pose to be one of the biggest hindrances to its adoption.
What is needed now is skills upgrade starting right from the techies to salespeople and narrowing down to the front-men in the trade. After all, a competent salesperson or a channel partner with technical expertise is in a much better position to convert a lead.
Although most of the IT companies provides certifications and training, promising skill update, it is indeed interesting to note that these same IT firms (the biggies and market leaders) come back to complain about lack of skills.
It is time when channel partners needs to look forward to professional institutes for guidance and not just keep relying on IT firms or their partners for hand-holding.
(The author is the Co-founder and Director, Edureka. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of Channel Times or any of the websites managed or operated by Trivone Digital Services)