Segmenting the target market remains an inexact art form. Technology as an industry has increasingly depended on intermediaries to ease the flow of business between suppliers and customers.
Traditionally, these middlemen have been classified as the channel who are ultimately responsible for delivering systems to customer sites and sometimes providing services to ensure effective production environments.
More recently, a new type of intermediary has emerged. We call them aggregators. They pull together processing, storage, application capabilities and sell them on as ‘services’. These aggregators typically have large data centres and the capability to bundle a number of technologies together to deliver exactly what the customer requires, in flexible pay-as-you-go contracts.
While some vendors have specific sales programmes that serve this aggregator community, we believe the opportunity for growth is significant. Our aggregator series of reports illustrates pain points, demand profiles and supplier preferences to enable sharper business development plans. Our profiles include BT, Singtel, Rackspace, Telecity, Joyent and Telefonica.
Are you recognising the growing importance of aggregators in your customer base?