Can the status quo threaten your LAN?

In times of economic crisis people tend to seek the safety and security of the status quo. "Doing what you've always done, and what everyone else is doing, is the most prudent course," goes the thinking.

I contend that the "safe and secure" route of the status quo is actually neither safe nor secure.

Recall that a major tenet of technology buying is to gain a competitive advantage. Where's the advantage if everyone's buying the same product?

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In times of economic crisis people tend to seek the safety and security of the status quo. "Doing what you've always done, and what everyone else is doing, is the most prudent course," goes the thinking.

I contend that the "safe and secure" route of the status quo is actually neither safe nor secure.

Recall that a major tenet of technology buying is to gain a competitive advantage. Where's the advantage if everyone's buying the same product?

And buying the status quo has another problem. The major manufacturers do not drive innovation; that is the job of the next-generation companies arriving with disruptive technology. After all, the established vendors have no motivation to drive change, because that could jeopardize their installed base.

So businesses buying the status quo pay a premium commanded by the established brands and get no functional or operational gain from the additional expense.

A critical area where organizations can't afford to stick with the status quo is security. Internet attacks are growing more potent, and users today are left to protect themselves from malware and malicious content.

Over the past decade some of the very business practices that have made companies more efficient and productive have put them at greater risk. The increased use of contractors, offshoring and automation can leave intellectual property vulnerable, with data such as customer and patient details, product designs and financial information stored online and accessed over the network.

Network security is so complex that there has to be a better way for organizations to implement control of their business, employees and partners. Security needs to be automatic —- to the network, user/device and application. Businesses can't rely on company policies to prevent virus attacks and intellectual property theft.

A second example where status-quo thinking breaks down is with the technology sellers themselves. Channel partners and integrators sell technology, implement systems and provide consulting services to organizations. While some succeed in carving out a particular niche, typically in their service offerings, many of them end up jockeying with each other for the privilege of selling equipment from the biggest network manufacturers.

And here is where resellers find themselves in a conundrum. Yes, the leading manufacturers clearly command mindshare and preference among buyers. But, given the breadth of distribution, resellers routinely find themselves competing with their brethren.

That competitive process, together with the manufacturers' stingy revenue sharing, ends up squeezing partner profits. One reseller recently lamented that he finally did a true cost/profit analysis of selling one of the big brands. He learned he was essentially, in his words, "taping dollar bills" to each of the boxes of one vendor's gear he was selling. His only recourse was to look for a differentiated product, that's not overly distributed, to offer his customers. This separates him from channel competitors and provides a foundation to sell additional consulting services.