Partner Talk: Quotes Of The Week

What were solution providers talking about with CRN last week? Here's a handful of quotes we picked up that focused on such news stories as the closing of Cisco's acquisition of AppDynamics, a shortage of solid state drives, and reaction to Dell EMC's efforts to add 400 channel-related positions, which the vendor began at the outset of the year.

"This really allows the Cisco partner to expand their value proposition to their customers and to bring the integration of the network and application experience into an integrated platform."

~ Kent MacDonald, vice president of business development at Long View Systems, a Cisco Gold Partner based in Calgary, Alberta, on last week's closing of Cisco's $3.7 billion acquisition of cloud application and business monitoring provider AppDynamics.

"You'd have to have been blind to not have heard of or seen the shortage. There have been lots of reports. People who listened prepared themselves in advance. The lead time today can range from zero days up to four weeks."

~ Gautam Shah, president of Colfax International, of Sunnyvale, Calif., in a report that solution providers and system builders are finding that a growing shortage of solid state drives (SSDs) is starting to impact their enterprise and PC businesses. Shah said his company is lucky in that it managed to secure enough supply to last through at least part of the shortage.

"We're seeing the opportunities we're engaged in coming from the line of business, so that's great in some ways but really challenging in others. … Organizational complexity is one of the more challenging areas of IoT."

~ Michael Lomonaco, director of marketing and communications at Open Systems Technologies, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based systems integrator, in reaction to an IDC report that Internet of Things solutions are helping to drive a projected 5.9 percent compound annual growth rate in line-of-business spending on technology by 2020.

"If they're hiring specialists they don't have, that could be really good for Sanity Solutions … If I had a core sales rep and that core sales rep has seven product specialists to call upon to help with a campaign, I have that same access, and that could be a really good thing."

~ Jason Cherveny, CEO of Sanity Solutions, a Denver solution provider that works with Dell EMC, on news that the vendor is looking to fill nearly 400 channel-related positions, about 170 of which would be based in North America.

"Lenovo, as a platform for us, is on hold until they figure things out. We currently lead with Dell, HP and Supermicro."

~ Lou Giovanetti, co-founder of CPU Sales, a Waltham, Mass.-based solution provider, on news that Lenovo has brought another Intel veteran, Kim Stevenson, into its executive ranks as senior vice president and general manager of its data center group. Meanwhile, Lenovo is restructuring that group into five distinct business units.