Tech Data Offering Assists in Transition to Mobility

Mobility is pushing transformations in both the channel and technology markets. Tech Data has stated that the company's TDMobility offering will allow partners to make the shift smoothly, and can use its managed services-type model to make a profit.

TDMobility rolled out last year and aids partners of Tech Data (who are looking for mobility-specific resources) by working as a one-stop-shop. Furthermore, TDMobility offers a means through which carrier billing, asset tracking and device activation can be made easier, according to the president of the company, Joe Quaglia.

Quaglia said: “The biggest challenge for [solution providers] is making that transition to establish mobility as practice within their business, which is no different from the cloud. But what might be a little bit more challenging there is you've got a whole new set of vendors, you've got new questions you have to ask your customers -- so a lot of newness. And ... our opportunity together is for the Tech Data mobility program and platform to help them do that in a much more simple fashion.”

Quaglia added that one of TDMobility's advantages was that it eradicated the need for VARs to directly liaise with major service carriers. Alternatively, Tech Data manages the responsibility and allows VARs to establish new lines for the carrier. Companies which will participate in the TDMobility program are T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T, and Verizon is also expected to join soon.

In addition to ease-of-business, VARs will likely broaden their margins through the utilization of TDMobility. A branch of the TDMobility tree is CellManage, an arms solution provider which has a single console through which cellular bills, deployments and asset tracking are managed in order to serve end users.

VARs can thusly adapt to mobility using their more varied and broader managed services. According to Quaglia, it will also be a way of creating more revenue: “The Tech Data platform, and specifically CellManage, gives [solution providers] a managed service offering that they can wrap any services they want around the devices, the rate plans, and then the management of all of that for their customers.”

Chief technology officer at Milford, Massachussetts-based Tech Data partner RetroFit Technologies, Richard Little, is an example of a solution provider who has not yet fully adopted mobility, questioning the profitability of the business. Little stated that although iPads are used by most of his customers, he is not a member of Apple's reseller program and his company would therefore be required to provide different tablets to compete. As Apple is the key player in the market, it would appear unlikely that this will happen, or that it would increase profit.

When discussing involvement in the non-tablet market, Little said: “There's the Samsung Galaxy ... but I'm just not sure it's worth the price of admission.”

RetroFit Technologies is beginning to adopt some mobile app development to benefit from the surge in mobility interest; Little said that the company has made an app for a client in the irrigation industry, and seeks to offer more to other customers in the future.

The national account manager at Rochester, N.Y.-based solution provider Systems Management Planning of New York, Stephanie Dash, noted that her company is beginning to experiment with mobility, providing initial solutions for mobile device management (like Absolute Software). Dash added that similar to TechData's TDCloud service, TDMobility will assist Systems Management Planning adjust to today's mobile world.

Dash stated: “I'm excited about this because it makes our job a lot easier to identify and quantify what the customer would really need for their environment, specifically.” (CY) Link