How To Make An IoT Partner Channel Strategy Pay

Bottom Line: Avnet’s all-in approach to enabling its channel partners with IoT Platform development tools and services is what’s needed for indirect channels to achieve their revenue growth potential.

Avnet’s announcement this week at CES 2020 of their IoTConnect platform, Partner Program, and Marketplace sets a precedent in channel programs designed to provide resellers with what they need to compete, win and monetize IoT-based client engagements. The IoT Connect Platform is powered by Microsoft’s Azure IoT Suite, which has a proven track record providing developers with APIs and integration technologies to connect devices integral to delivering software and hardware-based IoT solutions. Avnet is best known as one of the world's largest distributors of electronic components and embedded solutions and reported $4.7B in sales for their latest fiscal quarter. Their IoT pipeline rose 5% quarter over quarter to $630M and continues to expand to new markets including retail and healthcare.

What’s Behind Avnet’s All-In IoT Channel Strategy?

Avnet providing the IoTConnect platform, Partner Program that includes automated management of recurring billing, and Marketplace at the same time eliminates barriers resellers, system integrators (SIs), and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) face. The all-in approach of providing the technologies, development support, sales enablement and Marketplace are exactly what every channel partner needs to launch their own IoT business. To further accelerate time-to-market for their resellers, SIs and OEM partners, Avnet is offering a proof-of-concept deployment via the platform’s “Play Zone” feature, which enables members to test new technology solutions in a safe environment. “IoT is complex, with unique hardware, software and security requirements at every stage of the development cycle,” said Pete Bartolotta, president of business transformation for Avnet. “With our Partner Program and the upcoming Marketplace, we are putting proven IoT solutions in the hands of partners and systems integrators so they can scale their businesses and accelerate the adoption of IoT.” The following are the key components of Avnet’s IoT strategy announced this week at CES 2020:

• IoTConnect’s open architecture is designed to provide resellers with the flexibility of integrating into traditional, legacy IT and operation technology (OT) environments while streamlining new solutions development with microservices and a full set of DevOps tools. IoTConnect is also designed to capture, analyze, and present recommendations based on the contextually rich, real-time data stream IoT sensors are capturing across client deployments. Avnet chose to provide data streaming and real-time monitoring in the same data structure as their data analysis, machine learning and Connection Bridge modules, removing another major barrier to resellers wanting to add greater value to the solutions they offer with more advanced recommendation engines and predictive analytics.

• Insight- and intuition-driven decision making from the shop floor to the top floor is becoming achievable with IoT data combined with supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Its apparent Avnet’s IoTConnect architects thought through the many varieties of data their resellers will need to interpret and provide insights, recommendations, and predictive analytics from. Another benefit of having data stream, real-time monitoring and machine learning on the same data structure is the accuracy of historical and operational analytics captured. Using a stable, reliable, unified data set, IoTConnect provides descriptive, predictive and perspective analytics that can be used in real-time dashboards. The graphic to the left shows the IoTConnect platform analytics workflow, with the result being a real-time dashboard with insights shown on the right.

• IoTConnect resembles an operating system more than a reseller enablement strategy, further reflecting how all-in Avnet went in creating the technology stack for its resellers. It’s rare to find a distribution-centric business prioritize platform stability and end-to-end scale over the short-term gains of Marketplace sales. Avnet realized early on that for their Marketplace to succeed and drive revenue for every reseller, SI, and OEM partner, the platform would need to overwhelm their partner’s customers with value first. The following graphic reflects the mentality of putting their partner’s customers first, even above their Marketplace revenue requirements. Creating a world-class IoT platform that looks more like an operating system is going to make Marketplace revenue easier to drive – making their reseller partners and Avnet more successful in the process.