A Millennium of Change In the Blink of a Decade

This industry evolves at lightspeed and a decade seems like a millennium in Internet time. We asked the board members and faculty of VARBusiness University what they thought the most significant events and trends were in the last decade. Here's what they told us:

Windows 3.1

"Windows 3.1 solidified Microsoft Corp.'s position. The AT computer was its platform. Without Windows, Macintosh probably would have been the platform. PS/2 probably would have been the platform. The only reason ISA (industry standard architecture) worked was because Gates delivered the graphical interface for it. He also made the application program interface (APIs) open source

What occurred was almost a domino effect. The AT computer allowed everyone to start selling ISA PCI architecture. IBM started losing money. Intel Corp. took off. Gateway Inc. came out of the ground. Compaq came out of the ground. Dell came out of the ground. All those companies were built on ISA architecture. Almost everybody who was there benefited. Gates is the one who did it. There's no getting around that."
--Tom Adelstein, CIO of Bynari Inc., a Linux reseller and integration consultants and VBU Linux Clinux advisor

E-Commerce

"Given the nature of our times, the most significant event is the one that is happening most recently. And it has to be e-commerce, the possibilities of doing and changing your business online. It may be the most significant technological lever of all times in its ability to affect the fundamental economics of our society and our businesses. When you look at most industries the cost of marketing is, by far, the most expensive. E-commerce has the potential to make mass marketing efficient by turning it into a one-to-one experience. The economic implications are absolutely enormous."
--Keith Davidson, president of Xplor International professional association of document processing, e-commerce and knowledge management professionals and VBU advisory board member.

The Direct Hit

"The most significant developments in the 1990s that impacted high-tech sales forces are the Internet and the emergence of direct model selling. As a result of those two trends, sales forces throughout the high-tech industry have been forced to change the way they sell to their customers. Value is not longer always defined as 'extra product or extra product-related services.' Value is now in the eye of the beholder. It can be as simple as being able to get a price online and placing the order at any time of day or night, or it can be as complex as having a staff of IT consultants on site to implement a multi-vendor supply-chain solution. So much information is readily available to customers that they are technically savvy. Sales reps need to understand what is the individual customer's needs. It is a new sales world out there."
--Kendra Lee, president of The KLA Group, sales training and consulting, and instructor for VBU's "How To Sell Against Dell" seminars.

Economics & Entrepreneurs

To pinpoint a single event or trend would be an oversimplification of an incredible melding of several major movements and political events that have changed our world in the last decade. If I had to narrow it down, I'd say the net effect of this magical trinity was especially significant:

1. A tough economy in the early '90s, which offered a reality check and spurred everyone into action--a new focus on growth, the bottom line, and the need to balance near-term profit with long-term investment

2. The upheaval of a mass reengineering revolution and associated layoffs that shook people up and said, 'Take responsibility for your own destiny, because there is no such thing anymore as Job Security.'

3. Mainstream access to and adoption of the Web, which has given rise to an optimistic entrepreneurial epidemic among both the young and the old, the creation of a free agent economy, and a can-do attitude that has encouraged people to "just do it."
--Theresa Lina, president of The Lina Group management consultants and faculty member in VBU's School of Management

The "Co-Merged" Channel

"The convergence of technology. In 1990, we were primarily selling data solutions. Ten years ago we weren't selling phone systems in this industry and we certainly weren't selling video. Now we have convergence which has produced technologies like Voice Over IP. And we're looking at a new customer base from that perspective.

Ten years ago we weren't selling phone systems we certainly weren't selling video. Now we've got a convergence of voice over IP. It's not just a Westcon experience I'm talking about . Traditional phone resellers are now entering the data market, selling one solution that is a convergence of data and voice. We have the data networking VARs who are now selling video and becoming telephone experts so that they have one solution to sell to a customer. There's a new breed of reseller that's co-merged. We have this new term now we call the "co-mergence VAR."
--Jenny Pappas, vice president of worldwide marketing for Westcon Inc., a global distributor of networking technology products, and VBU advisory board member.

The Ubiquitous Internet

"The most dramatic aspect of the past 10 years is the revolutionary impact the Internet has had on small businesses--the way the Internet has literally leveled the playing field for small businesses that leverage the Internet. It has affected everything. I see it in my own business. A couple of years ago, I was sending out business letters, making contacts, establishing relationships. My wife bought me some beautiful letterhead stationary. I've only used a few sheets of it. Now I'm leveraging the power of the Internet, discussion lists, bulletin boards, and Web sites. E-mail has been my 'letter head'."
--Ramon Ray, editor of the Small Business Technology Report and Technology And Your Business, and VBU small business instructor.

Model Movement

"On the business side, the biggest challenge and most significant thing is the continuing evolution of the business model. Probably the most significant is the change from the separate and distinct franchise model and the separate and distinct distribution model to a single model that has come together along with open sourcing. Even that model continues to evolve. All the companies, franchise and distributor, have evolved into competitors of each other. They're all doing the same thing. For the VAR the impact poses a double-edged sword. They have more options and choices, especially VARs who were locked into a certain model according to their size. Now even the smaller VARs have greater choices in terms of where they get the product. But as franchisors have gone by the wayside, so have the services they delivered.

On the innovation side, the whole integration of computing and telecommunications is having a tremendous impact. You see this especially overseas. In Japan they are not just using cell phones as cell phones. They use them as mini-computers. This will happen also in the United States and that will be our next big challenge and opportunity in the year 2000."
--John Venator, president and CEO of CompTIA and VBU Advisory Board Member.