When I entered the world of IT sales a few years back, I said “No” to selling for the dominating traditional manufacturers. You know who they are—EMC, IBM, HP etc. Many industry professionals have been working on their technology or have been issuing extremely high-dollar POs to them for years. After all, no one ever gets fired for buying from the traditional OEMs. While that line of thinking has some validity, I also don’t know many people who get fired for saving their company tens of thousands of dollars, while filling the rack with a quality product that improves the business.
Throughout my time at ReluTech, this theory has proven true. We have helped many of our partners escape the wearisome cycle of forklift upgrades and overpriced maintenance renewals every three years, and we’re able to do that because the mainstream players aren’t changing the way they approach the market.
Right now, everything is transitioning to a more software-oriented focus, and hardware is becoming commoditized. The more agile, disruptive technologies are embracing this phenomenon and driving real value and cost savings for their customers. Newer technologies like Nimble Storage, Nutanix, Actifio, Tintri, and ExtraHop now have a seat at the table with the traditional players, and they’re often beating them with a much smaller army.
Additionally, buying and selling these disruptive technologies is a much simpler process. Say goodbye to long, drawn-out whiteboard sessions, a lack of options, and incomplete answers from engineering that end in confusion and frustration.
I see a lot of these deals ending with the major manufacturers scrambling, which causes the customer to wait weeks or even months to see a final proposal. This results in endless follow-up meetings in which the vendor tries to convince the customer that his legacy product can actually match the capability, flexibility, or price point of the competing disruptive technology.
All that being said, if you are in the market to solve a problem that a legacy OEM has been promising to fix for years, don’t be afraid to look into a disruptive technology, especially if you have a partner who can help you navigate those unfamiliar waters. There’s a good chance you’ll be happier with the technology—and with the process.
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