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Westcon BlueSky 2015: I am a Box, I target the Enterprise…

Standing in front of a packed audience of Kiwi resellers, Cloud Data Centre CEO, Steve Robinson, heralded the next generation of business computing, in the form of the aptly named Office Box.

Standing in front of a packed audience of Kiwi resellers, Cloud Data Centre CEO, Steve Robinson, heralded the next generation of business computing, in the form of the aptly named Office Box.

Launched by Westcon across Australia and New Zealand in late September last year, Office Box is boldly targeting businesses of all shapes and sizes, from SMBs to large enterprises, as organisations pack their bags and head for the cloud.

“OfficeBox fits any enterprise of any size,” said Robinson, speaking at Westcon’s BlueSky 2015 event in Auckland this week.

“We’re already talking to large organisations in Australia but equally, we’re dealing with 4-5 man businesses also.

“Our sweet spot is within the 10-50 employee space and it’s all about providing the tools needed to deliver an entire Office IT environment anywhere, anytime and on any device.”

And this, for Robinson, is where the reseller comes in…

“Take a look at your customers,” he asked, “they are probably running technology on its last legs knowing their need to upgrade but are unsure how.

“Do they have the cash to buy new technology, or do they want to be locked into a long-term financial contract over five years?

But as the problems of technology upgrades and implementations continue to plague SMEs across New Zealand, Robinson, who founded the company in December 2011, offered resellers a new card to play… and unsurprisingly, it’s called Cloud.

“When it comes to the cloud, business owners have heard it all before,” admitted Robinson, providing a refreshingly different take on the complex cloud provider market. “But at the end of the day if businesses move to the cloud, they want to know how to do it, who to do it with and how will it all hang together.

“We’re moving quickly into a mobile world. In fact, we’re already there, employees want everything at their fingerprints 24/7 which is where OfficeBox offers a significant point of difference.”

With the Office Box, Robinson said organisations can “significantly drive” efficiencies in business mobility, strengthen work force agility, flexibility and productivity while reducing IT Infrastructure and Service costs.

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Through the Office Box App Store, businesses can also tailor IT environments right down to the individual employee.

“The App Store allows you to ‘pick and choose’ different software apps for different staff and bundles it all into one ‘cost per seat’ per month,” Robinson added.

Unlike the traditional Desktop, Office Box is hosted in a Data Centre, running on servers behind secure firewalls.

“This replaces the traditional server infrastructure onsite with storage, operating systems, software, applications and user settings to a much faster and less costly, hosted service,” Robinson explained.

Resellers…

But as Cloud DC, and Office Box, prepare to take the enterprise market by storm across the region, what’s in it for the resellers?

At present, Cloud DC’s current go to market strategy is through a network of resellers whose customers should be able to focus on doing what they do well in their business and not be burdened with maintaining the IT resources it requires.

Despite offering simplicity to the administer and the ability to white label the product by resellers, Robinson warns that the traditional resellers of years gone by, and not guaranteed to be at the front of cloud queue in 2015.

“Our resellers aren’t necessarily traditional IT resellers,” Robinson added. “Products such as Office Box are making it easier for non-traditional IT resellers to move into your marketplace and deliver IT to your customers.

“We’re talking to non-traditional IT suppliers such as print firms and professional services companies, they are encroaching on your turf so watch that space.”

Citing the common example of the out of business book store, Robinson said cloud could potentially do the same to reseller business today.

“Yes you’ve heard it all before, but it’s crucial to move with the times.”