“[Data analytics] is a big opportunity – helping our clients make smarter decisions based on giving them more actionable intelligence,” he said. “We help them aggregate all that data that they’re collecting and doing something useful with it.”

Another big opportunity for solution providers is security, especially because many technology IoT startups that are trying to introduce their products to the agricultural community do not prioritize security, said Alvarez.

While many solution providers want to tap into the IoT opportunity, some are also stuck scratching their heads and wondering where to even begin. According to the CRN survey, less than 10 percent of revenue that the channel is getting today is coming from IoT.

For those that want to break into IoT, Alvarez had a piece of advice: Specialize in specific vertical markets and in really understanding what opportunities, challenges and trends customers are dealing with in those spaces.

Alvarez himself seemed acutely aware of the various aspects of agriculture – from the fact that strawberries are one of the fastest-growing produce markets in Salinas to how big an issue labor cost is for the agricultural industry.

“This isn’t like deploying a small- business server, where it didn’t matter where it was deployed … you need to understand your customer, you need to be able to talk their talk and understand the terms they use when talking among themselves,” he said “For that, you need to specialize at least at first. As you get bigger, you can add more components.”