IN PICTURES: The Distributor is the New Age Facilitator - An ARN Roundtable, Sydney, 18.02.16 (+45 photos)

The market has disrupted – the traditional IT distribution channel is being challenged and it is impacting business models. As such, the role of the distributor needs to evolve to keep up with current times. In addition, the engagements between resellers, distributors, facilitators, and vendors are changing, causing ISVs to become suppliers and competing vendors to collaborate with each other. From a distribution perspective, competitors are now working together too. As the discussion moves away from talking about the push down from vendor to reseller to partner, to how knowledge sharing flows through the channel, businesses should start looking for ways where they can add value to this changing role of the partner. This exclusive roundtable discussed the way the channel is changing, how partner go-to-market strategies are evolving to become integrated networks, how businesses should collaborate with each other to go quicker to market and ways it can support an end-to-end Cloud strategy. The roundtable was sponsored by rhipe. Photos by ARN Editorial Director, Mike Gee