BYOD Challenges Met with Lenovo’s Combat Kit
BYOD Challenges Met with Lenovo’s Combat Kit by UCStrategies Staff
The consumerisation of IT is both an opportunity and a challenge, and solution providers need to search through a number of smartphones, tablets and operating systems in order to select the best solution for their clients.
Lenovo, however, is looking to change that. The brand ambassador at the company, Stephen Miller, said: “The old sales cycle was easy. You sold 10 computers, [and] 10 end users got the exact same computer. Now it's difficult. Everybody wants a different device.”
A Combat Kit, which is essentially a multiunit demo kit which hosts a number of computing devices from Lenovo, is being offered by Lenovo so partners can buy and hand these off to end users, thus allowing them to select the most suitable Lenovo device for their needs.
Miller stated: “You have confusion around what to sell, and end users don't know what to buy because of the paradox of choice. Help them through this confusion. Let them choose the device that works best for them.”
A variety of Lenovo ThinkPad devices such as a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad Helix, ThinkPad Twist and a ThinkPad Tablet 2 are part of the Combat Kit. Miller added: “Let your end users touch them, and then you can sell the device that they choose.”
CloudStrategies is a Cedar Knolls, New Jersey-based solution provider. The President and CEO of that company, Pete Zarras, sees his business as being “born in the cloud,” with particular focus on software and cloud services, instead of hardware. However, the strength of Lenovo’s consumerization strategy has meant that the company has recently signed on to be a Lenovo partner.
Zarras commented: “We're intrigued about the space and very attracted to Lenovo's approach to the marketplace, and the consumerization they talked about today was awesome. We did sign up to be a new Lenovo reseller a few months ago, thinking that it would be a good way for us to extend options and offerings to our historically cloud-based customers that need to use devices.”
According to Miller, there is a waiting list for the kit, but encouraged partners to sign up. He noted: “Our job is to put the world's best hardware in your hands so that you can build trust with your customers.” (CY) Link