D&H reworked its ProAV practice three years ago, investing significantly in it, and changing tactics around vendor and Go-to-Market strategies, with the result being that it has shifted from a minor area to a highly profitable one.
Norwegian-based Neat, available exclusively through D&H in North America, has some interesting capabilities that stand out, and also has relatively fewer partners here, meaning that partners can make larger margins.
StorMagic’s move into the video market follows up their entry into encryption key management a year ago, also through an acquisition, and continues their strategy of dramatically increasing their TAM.
Zoom also increases the number of Master Agents in the program, and will also be evolving the Zoom Phone program so that partners in geos with different regulatory systems will be able to sell Zoom Phones on their own paper.
Brightcove sees the enterprise market as prime for the introduction of legitimate enterprise grade video solutions, and needs an effective channel to more fully penetrate that market.
The channel angle with this offering is really aimed at the Master Agent channel, as it is targeted at smaller customers.
While the 2nd generation AMD EPYC processors contribute new efficiencies, the big breakthrough here is the new Lenovo servers delivering dual socket performance with a single socket, as well as density and versatility enhancements.
Continuum is a versatile packaging of several Brightcove video products, designed to offer a variety of high-end video tools to enterprises, particularly as they face the need to connect a workforce that is now highly decentralized because of the pandemic.
The new channel and program are focused on taking Zoom’s video-first UC platform to market, which they believe will fit partner business models better through a referral system rather than doing deals on the partner’s paper.
Synacor has a large channel, for whom the addition of Qumu’s enterprise-grade video will significantly deepen their collaboration offerings.
The changes will impact how channel partners monetize Dash, both by selling extra add-on features, and using it as a pre-sales tool to easily introduce customers to the technology on a small scale.
These new devices, which support Zoom natively and will support more third-party apps in the future, offer users greater simplicity, and offer channel partners 3x the margins compared to selling a solution around a PC.
The offer to new customers for both Microsoft Teams and Surface Hub 2 is also intended to get some Pexip channel partners from the AV side of the house to work more closely with Microsoft.
Plantronics sees the HP Elite Slice G2 Audio-Ready as providing formidable conference room advantages, including the elimination of cable clutter from tables, and is transitioning from the Polycom MSR series to these Polycom + HP SRS Bundles for Microsoft room systems.
Avaya Equinox Meetings Online is a rebranded and significantly upgraded updating of Avaya Live Video. It is a service which integrates well with on-prem video, and is aimed at the premium part of the market where video quality matters.
Hitachi adds a Video Analytics solution to its Internet of Things portfolio, which also includes the Hitachi Video Management Platform and the Hitachi Visualization Suite.
With the Mitel deal now off, Polycom needs to build its own bridge into a cloud future. Nick Tidd, who runs their Global Partner Organization, outlines the company’s plans to do just that, with one key objective being to get their own channel to sell Polycom and Microsoft together.
The distributor’s Avnet Services division will provide a first point of technical support around Polycom’s videoconferencing family.
Distributor sees growing opportunity as it rounds out solutions offerings
Video conferencing product consumer-only right now, but the right channel play could change that.
