With rolling black-outs and regular load shedding set to become a way of life in South Africa for the foreseeable future – some electricity supply pundits suggest that the current uncertain situation could continue for three years – IT resellers will have to re-examine their sales strategies.
That’s the view of Paballo Mamba, channel manager at MWeb Business, a division of Internet Solutions. She points out that this, coupled with rising electricity and security costs, is driving SMEs to look for solutions to ensure that their data is safe and always accessible.
In addition, the cost of keeping the business’ servers safe and secure is also rising. However, businesses cannot risk skimping on these expenses. It can take years for any business to recover from the loss of their servers, regardless of the cause of that loss: physical theft, sabotage, fire, flood or a cyber-borne virus.
By having servers hosted in a multi-tenant data centre, such as those operated by MWeb Business, all these concerns are taken care of. For a fixed monthly fee, a business knows that its servers are housed in a safe, environmentally controlled environment, with a secure power supply. Other services, such as state-of-the-art firewalls and round the clock maintenance can also be included.
SMEs are starting to recognise this. MWeb Business has noticed an accelerating trend among SMEs to move their data off their premises into dedicated, shared data centres. They not only want the security this provides, but also the flexibility to quickly and easily match their data and processing requirements to their business needs.
“This development is not good news for resellers who are focused on selling servers; but it opens a host of opportunities to those who choose offer their SME customers a hosting service – but the window of opportunity offered by this trend won’t last forever,” Mamba adds.
MWeb Business offers resellers a variety of ways in which to provide their customers with a hosting service.
Resellers can simply on-sell an MWeb Business hosting solution to their customers where they will continue to draw commission on the service for as long as the SME uses it.
Alternatively, resellers can choose to white label a selection of MWeb Business’ hosted offerings and market these as their own.
“There is no question that with SMEs becoming more aware of the benefits of hosting, virtualisation and the Cloud, hardware resellers are in for a torrid time – unless they too move with the times,” Mamba concludes.
