The UK networking and technology landscape is constantly evolving to meet customer needs. At the same time, it's increasingly clear that the partner-vendor relationship is developing and improving with the goal of providing end customers the ability to deliver exceptional user experiences.
With the continuous progression of artificial intelligence (AI) networking and its increasing capabilities, many enterprises are leveraging AI to drive innovative and unique personal experiences for their customers. Partners need to be ready to adopt a new era of partnerships with vendors who are leading the way in rethinking networking architectures to maximise an experience-first approach.
Why partners are key
In recent times, the role of a partner has transformed significantly from reseller to trusted advisor. Now, this role is further growing because the partner role is central to both customer and vendor. Partners can offer a host of differentiated, valued-added services, with the knowledge to offer the best networking solutions and the expertise to manage networks for enterprises. Partnering with the right vendors can equip partners to offer the best products and services to their customers, and increase their overall success and profitability.
Partners are crucial to supporting networking services and meeting unique customer needs at scale, through accessing them in specialised, niche areas across many industries and local regions. Many enterprises across different verticals have relied heavily on a great connection, but today they are also looking to create a superior, connected experience for end-users to enhance their services. Enterprises in healthcare, education and retail are leading the way in creating improved digital experiences for the people they serve, offering smart healthcare to ensure the safety of patients, agile learning for students, and connected shopping experiences for shoppers. A network solution offering the most progressive yet simplified technology - delivered via a strong partner-vendor relationship - is at the heart of customer success.
Partners who hold the special expertise to make the most of the latest networking capabilities for specific industries can help the customer to deliver, not only a great connection, but also a tailored, personalised experience for end-users. Partners that have a strong relationship with innovative, willing vendors can ensure they stay ahead of the curve. Great vendors are the ones that offer great training and resources to partners in order to maximise the potential of true AI-powered networking and support tailored deployments to fit specific customer needs.
In addition, many partners are now offering managed services to their customers, taking the complexity wholly away from the in-house IT team and providing a trusted service, which enables IT teams to focus on strategic priorities and further innovate the digital experience for their end-users.
Because of the change in customer needs, and increased digitalisation day-to-day, best-in-class partner-vendor relationships are evolving to harness these opportunities. Looking at specialisations within verticals and working together to make digital possibilities real, partners and innovative vendors are seeing success together.
AI-powered networking
The UK networking industry is now increasingly focusing on further exploring the abilities of AI-powered networking to further enhance innovation within the networking space. AI, running on the right data, can provide accurate real-time responses to network issues and provide reliability and security to networks, able to identify and action insights without human intervention. True AI-native networks remove complexity and provide a reliable architecture which acts as a stable baseline, leaving ample time and resources for in-house IT teams and their partners to focus on digital services and applications for the end user.
The role of partners and vendors is shifting to help customers realise the vast potential of AI, which is fundamental to enable the enterprise to deliver unique AI-powered experiences across verticals. Smart partners are working more closely now with the right vendors to provide a transformed network for customers and are leveraging AI to re-think networking. It’s not just about a great connection anymore, it’s making every connection count by using the network to enhance areas of an organisation to create unique, tailored experiences on a reliable, secure network.
With an AI network, customers also have the confidence that their network can sustainably grow with workload demands. Solutions built on AI for networking, combined with the right infrastructure to support networking for AI, can ensure customers have the highest performing hardware, operating system, architecture and software to handle the increasing demands of the networks of today and in the future. Through a strong partnership between partners and the right vendors, customers can seamlessly deploy a fully AI-powered network to deliver high performance at scale.
Current network demands
Finally, the importance of delivering sustainable solutions to keep up with the demand of a modern business strategy is imperative for vendors and partners. Many businesses are incorporating a sustainable network into their wider plans to reduce energy consumption and their overall carbon footprint, and network infrastructure is a key component. It also needs to be compliant with regulations and laws for businesses in their respective regions to meet regional and global sustainability goals set by governments and industry bodies.
Thankfully, many UK vendors have had genuine network sustainability top-of-mind for a while, and partner-vendor relationships are improving to work on this goal together. Partners should work with their respective vendors to ensure they are offering energy-efficient solutions, with considerations on packaging and recycling as part of this. Willing vendors should recognise and support partners in this area, as it likely a key consideration for customers when choosing a networking solution.
AI networks, of course, offer a reliable solution to this important customer need as AI can be used effectively to create lower-consumption networking architectures and ultimately save on costs for enterprises too. More reliance on automation and software-driven solutions also minimises 'truck roll' site visits by IT technicians and reduces hardware replacement cycles, too.
Delivering success together
Partner-vendor relationships should, and, in many cases, already are progressing due to the evolving role of the partner, innovation through AI-powered networks and the need for sustainable solutions delivered by national vendors and partners that have sustainability at the heart of their services. With these three focus points in mind, partners will continue to drive success by working in tandem with the right vendors.
A strong relationship between vendors and their channel partners is a key component in delivering experience-first success for customers; this will enable both partners and vendors to maximise profitability and shape the future of the overall networking industry, as well as assist customers in their goals to increase profitability and efficiency through enhancing their end-user experiences through the latest network offerings.