Value Added Resellers: Trusted Advisor or Used Car Salesperson of Tech?

Let me kick this off with a little background as to how and why I decided to write on this subject. I believe it was late 2014 or early 2015 and I was working for F5 Networks. During one of our Quarterly Business Reviews, we had a guest presenter from Gartner come in and talk about Mode 1 and Mode 2. Couple of items that stuck with me over the years:

  • Embrace change or you will fail
  • 1 in 10 top tech companies will not be around 10 or 20 years from now.
  • Mode 1 is legacy
  • Mode 2 is the future (the cloud)
  • Hybrid (Bimodel IT) will be adopted sooner than later and Mode 1 will be completely retired

This meeting was terrifying for me, I recently started this job and F5 Networks sole business model was Mode 1; traditional and sequential, emphasizing on safe and accuracy. The reassuring part to all of this was, in my particular patch (Arizona and Nevada), Mode 2 adoption was speculated to take 5 or more years to be adopted. This was ideal for me, enough time for me to hone my skills and make a move later down the road if F5 wouldn’t embrace change.

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