EMEA Director Talks Growth in IoT
Ben Boswell, WWT's EMEA director, talked with CRN about the sizable growth expected for the Internet of Things (IoT). This industry is a high priority for WWT, and in this article Boswell discusses keys for success when working in this space: strong partnerships, standing out from competitors and speed of delivery.
On February 15, 2017 CRN UK posted:
Ben Boswell, WWT's EMEA director
Cisco and Dell EMC partner World Wide Technology (WWT) has said the Internet of Things (IoT) market is on the "verge of sizeable growth", but claims linking up with other partners is essential for resellers in order to take full advantage of the trend.
WWT is a US-headquartered reseller which works with most of the large global vendors, but has closer relationships with Cisco and Dell EMC. The firm is privately owned, has 4,000 staff and sells mainly to FTSE 100 and Fortune 100 global customers. Revenue last year hot $9.4bn, of which $170m came from the UK. In the coming years, it hopes to grow in Europe between 30 per cent and 50 per cent.
Ben Boswell, WWT's EMEA director, told CRN that his firm stands out from the likes of Computacenter, BT and Dimension Data due to its sheer breadth.
"If you look at the profile of the customers we are working with - they are global organisations, who have decision-making groups across the world," he said. "Many of them have challenges associated with their speed of execution in rolling out new IT solutions. Where I feel we are different is that we can help a customer to be able to take a concept or idea with which they need help, we hire subject matter experts, and we build cross-functional teams to help them quickly. We rarely get into a situation where a customer, once they started to engage with us, [leaves]. If we are doing our job properly, we are very different to a Computacenter, a Di Data, a BT. And we're very different to an Accenture and a KPMG, and we are very different to Wipro. We are holding that centre ground where they are trying to operate with various degrees of success."
Boswell said the IoT is high on his company's agenda, claiming its goal is to become one of Cisco's IoT partners of choice. He cited one customer, a global manufacturer, which over 18 months made $1bn of savings thanks to the IoT technology it deployed.