Clockwise from top left: Michael Lester (Catalytic IT), Stephanie Challinor (AC3), Daniel Greengarten (Orro Group), Nick Moran (Powernet), Chris Marshall (blueAPACHE), Anthony Woodward (Logicalis Australia), Sachin Verma (Oreta), Craig Sims (CCNA)
Chris Marshall – founder and managing director of blueAPACHE
Credit: Maria Stefina Which vendors are you investing your technical and sales skills in this year in terms of accreditations and why?
Microsoft has been a strategic partner since our inception and the pace of evolution that is occurring has never been faster. This evolution covers all aspects of our partnership, from technology, programmatic, compliance and go to market. The Microsoft technology stack is both an integral component to the solutions that we bring to market and in cases are the core of the solutions. Enabling our teams to design, deliver and support market leading solutions requires a continued investment in the partnership.
Are there any new or emerging vendor[s] are you intending to pursue accreditations and certifications across sales and technical?
As the demands of identity security and access management solutions in the mid-market evolve, blueAPACHE will continue to in invest in our partnership with CyberArk. This investment has already been recognised with blueAPACHE being awarded the Global CyberArk MSP Partner of the Year.
Is vendor diversification a priority for 2022? If so or if not, why?
blueAPACHE is built on the strength of our reference architecture that underpins our market leading service catalogue. As part of the lifecycle management process of this catalogue, we are constantly evaluating the market to ensure our vendor partnerships are fit for purpose.
This approach allows our team to build strong relationships and technical capabilities which forms the foundation for strong partnerships, whilst our lifecycle management methodology ensures we don’t accept the status quo and are consistently evaluating the market to ensure we have the right strategic partnerships in place to execute our vision.
What are the key attributes of a strong partner accreditation or certification program? What improvements would you like to see?
A co-investment approach to technical enablement and product development are important factors that we look for in vendor partnership programs. I believe a missed opportunity for vendors is a programmatic approach to thought leadership. We are partnered with some of the world’s most innovative companies, many with their own, significant consulting business units. These are rarely leveraged by the vendors in a meaningful way to enable partners.
What are your biggest pain points when it comes to gaining these vendor certification/accreditations?
With industry-wide resource utilisation at all-time highs, carving out the time to meet the demands of training programs against other competing priorities is undoubtedly our biggest challenge.
Anthony Woodward – CEO of Logicalis Australia
Credit: Anthony Woodward Which vendors are you investing your technical and sales skills in this year in terms of accreditations and why?
Microsoft and Cisco. We have global strategic alliances with both vendors, focused on taking joint solutions to market, that will meet the digital transformation goals of our joint customers. These solutions include the recently announced:
- Secure OnMesh (a managed security service powered by Microsoft Sentinel, centrally managed by Logicalis and combined with the strength of Cisco Secure X).
- Logicalis Collaboration Suite (built on Cisco and Microsoft technology and delivered as a managed service, designed to help organisations scale their digital collaboration experience as part of a broader digital workplace offering).
We have already significantly invested in assuring the highest levels of accreditations for both Microsoft and Cisco.
Logicalis Australia recently announced our achievement of 11 Microsoft advanced specialisations across Microsoft’s Azure, Security and Modern Work solutions, along with renewing our status as a Microsoft Azure Expert MSP. These achievements strengthen our commitment to our global strategic alliance with Microsoft. Logicalis will continue to invest in Microsoft based solutions, as a Gold Certified Microsoft partner.
Logicalis is also a Global and Local Gold Cisco Partner, holding four advanced specialisations across the Cisco Architectures and is one of only five global Gold Certified Partners. Logicalis has also met the requirements to be a Global Gold Integrator Partner. Logicalis globally employs over 130 Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts that bring deep knowledge of Cisco offerings to their engagements.
With our lifecycle solutions and end-to-end security, underpinned by our strategic partnerships with Cisco and Microsoft, we will continue to deliver business outcome led solutions for the digital era.
Is vendor diversification a priority for 2022? If so or if not, why?
We have a proactive partner strategy, to ensure continued alignment with our vendor partners to our global strategy, local business strategy and go to market plans, with the primary driver to deliver more value for our customers.
We continue to assess our vendor partner landscape as part of a structured process that focuses on those partners who align with our local go to market plans for globally aligned and developed solutions.
As part of this strategy, we have a disciplined approach to onboarding new partners which means that we only engage with new vendors that met a strict criterion and ultimately help position us a trusted advisor for our customers.
What are the key attributes of a strong partner accreditation or certification program? What improvements would you like to see?
- Alignment to our business strategy and goals.
- Market relevance and brand recognition in the market and with customers: We ensure that attainment of certifications will continue to differentiate us among competitors and demonstrate clear value to customers.
- Career progression and employee value proposition: Some certifications can be a significant investment in time for employees. We think it is important that throughout the training process our employees have the opportunity to grow professionally as we invest in their personal career journey.
- Ongoing involvement and support from the vendor: Support and dedicated resources to guide and assist our employees through the training and certification process, taking into account our focus and go to market, is an important value add.
- Intuitive/easy to use training portals: The ease of use of the training/exam portals is important in ensuring a positive experience for our employees undertaking the certification. We feel for some vendors, this is an area that could use more investment and improvement.
What are your biggest pain points when it comes to gaining these vendor certification/accreditations?
- Time investment: For some of the certifications, there can be a significant investment on time to complete.
- Relevance: To ensure alignment to our business goals and go-to-market, we value customisable options within certifications that help us focus on the most relevant certifications to our market approach. It can be frustrating to have to complete a module for a product or solution you know you won’t be taking to market.
Sachin Verma — co-founder and managing director of Oreta
Credit: Supplied Which vendors are you investing your technical and sales skills in this year in terms of accreditations and why?
Security and cloud vendors are top of our list for us to investment. The landscape around security is everchanging especially with the adoption of SASE. In order for us to maintain the trusted advisor status with our customers its paramount we continue to invest in the training of cloud and security.
Are there any new or emerging vendor[s] are you intending to pursue accreditations and certifications across sales and technical?
Not really, we see that the customers want consistency/consolidation when it comes to their vendors. We are focusing on becoming niche in the lines of offering of our current vendors rather than focusing on new emerging vendors.
Is vendor diversification a priority for 2022? If so or if not, why?
We aim to have at least two to three vendors we work with any each practice areas (network, cloud and security) to ensure that we have the ‘right’ fit for our customers. So, at this stage, we don’t want to go beyond these top two to three vendors, as it dilutes are subject matter expertise and messaging to our customers. Jack of all trades doesn’t cut it any more.
What are the key attributes of a strong partner accreditation or certification program? What improvements would you like to see?
Tying in commercial benefits to tiering is one of the key ones. Lead gen program based on the status of the partner. Improvement wise, don’t do long training courses; it’s very hard for a business to do five day training camps
What are your biggest pain points when it comes to gaining these vendor certification/accreditations?
The length of these courses are painfully long — class room training. Also, they need to be fit for purpose for the real job on the ground.
Craig Sims – co-managing director at CCNA
Credit: CCNA Which vendors are you investing your technical and sales skills in this year in terms of accreditations and why?
CCNA will be focusing our vendor certification investment on innovative cloud-focussed application vendors who are investing and developing their products. The other area CCNA will be extending our certifications in will be in the cyber security and newer connectivity vendor partners as this is the fastest growing area we see in the IT market.
Is vendor diversification a priority for 2022? If so or if not, why?
You only need to focus on a few vendors, know what they are driving for and hold and maintain good relationships. You can’t spread to wide and stretch your resources around too many certifications
What are the key attributes of a strong partner accreditation or certification program? What improvements would you like to see?
A strong partner accreditation or certification program is a program that doesn’t change every six months – the accreditations should last for a minimum of two years and give the partner community time to build their skillsets and certification levels. The certifications need to be easy to follow and consolidated (streamlined) across the vendors portfolio.
What are your biggest pain points when it comes to gaining these vendor certification/accreditations?
Some change way to often, are too broad and have too many certifications.
With contributions from Eleanor Dickinson and Julia Talevski.
