Whether you’re talking about the addition of cloud, IoT, OT or IIoT, information technologies are responsible for more and more systems, devices and users than ever before, notes Martin Hodgson, country manager at Paessler.
He believes these represent the most significant trends and challenges for customers of Paessler — and therefore partners — when looking ahead.
„The broadening of IT is happening daily, and I see this heading in just one direction,“ Hodgson [pictured] confirms.
For Paessler, the next most exciting and important challenge for partners particularly will be supporting IT and OT convergence, by helping customers develop an overview of both IT and OT worlds. This takes the flagship solution, PRTG, into the industrial, process and operational spaces.
„It’s a given that we can monitor all things IT with PRTG, but we’ve added capabilities that broaden the scope of PRTG, allowing us to monitor OT, IoT and IIoT,“ he says.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve re-architected some of our technologies. You could say we’ve taken a small step backward to accelerate the rate at which we can develop PRTG.“
As a result, Paessler has been able to respond really quickly to customer demands in these turbulent times. Hodgson points to the Zoom sensors and video conferencing as examples of things that used to be just „nice to have“ but have in the past year become a key service for many IT teams.
Paessler has gained significant on-the-ground experience in this area, like many companies and customers. The UK team has been home-based and was already making extensive use of remote technologies but for the Nuremberg, Germany headquarters last year posed „a bigger challenge“.
„In 2020, our IT folks did a sterling job, and we’ve continued to develop our product, and build our customer base through these challenging times,“ he says.
How does that success carry through to channel partners?
„Personally, I’ve always favoured the consultative selling approach, and when I look at my most successful partners, they’re the ones that form a trusted advisor role with their prospects. I would encourage sales folks to understand what challenges their customers have, and help them address them,“ Hodgson says.
If everything worked perfectly, first time, every time, and companies had infinite computing resources, Paessler products — arguably — might not be needed, he suggests — which means the channel is needed to help solve those challenges, and will continue to add value through 2021 and beyond.
(© Photo of Martin Hodgson courtesy of Paessler 2021 – All rights reserved)