Q&A: The Partner Case For More Bare-Metal Switches

Why should solution providers sell merchant silicon hardware?

The current state of the networking; it's almost like its tightly controlled and locked by the vendors and leaves very little room for the VARs to make money and add value to their customers.

When (channel partners) are working with someone … who's having them move boxes or fulfill boxes … it forces those people to either exist on razor-thin margins or transform their business into something (in which) they're bringing value to a customer.