What can Rommel teach us?

 

What can the Desert Fox teach us about competing as a VAR today? Plenty. Early in 1944, Field Marshall Rommel was asked to inspect the entire French coastline to assess its effectiveness in thwarting the inevitable invasion by allied forces. Contrary to propaganda, Rommel reported the coastal fortifications to be grossly inadequate.

 

As a result of Rommel’s assessment and instructions, the Germans spent the next several months adding pillboxes, guns, mines, obstacles, and anything else he thought could stop the allies from breaching the Atlantic Wall. Rommel felt certain that the ONLY way to thwart an invasion was to stop the Allies on the beach. If this was not accomplished, defeat could only be postponed, but not avoided.  Thankfully, Rommel’s efforts were too little, too late.

 

My question to you, the VAR, is where are your beaches and how strong is your wall? If you are selling Unified Communications but not strong in networking or security – can you afford to let your competitors on the data network beach? As they gain ground on your customer, can you really defend the voice infrastructure or are you living on borrowed time as Germany was?

 

If you are a networking partner who has no voice practice, can you really afford to let your competition transform your client’s business processes through collaboration and unified communications? Once they are on that beach, can you continue to defend your sacred network?

 

This is the reality we live in. The network and voice platform are becoming increasingly symbiotic.  The VARs that are growing the fastest have strong UC and Networking practices which proves the point. If you can’t excel in both markets, how long can you maintain account control?

 

Listen to Erwin. Stop your enemies at the beach.