Schneider Electric: Healthcare, manufacturing and education leading edge spend

Schneider Electric is continuing to point resellers in the direction of edge computing having discovered that downtime is a major headache for a significant number of customers.

The power management specialist has been talking about edge for the last year or so but has commissioned research from Canalys to identify the issues impacting users and the targets that resellers should be setting their sights on.

The research uncovered reports from resellers that three quarters of their customers cited downtime as ‘detrimental’ to their business and many were looking for help with security and management.

Robin Ody, channel analyst at Canalys, said that there was plenty of debate out in the market about the definition of edge computing but it had been able to get a clear idea from resellers about which verticals were good sources of revenue.

Although retail is always quoted as the typical example of an edge computing scenario, because of the distributed store environment, it only came in fourth place behind healthcare, manufacturing and education as the best vertical customers.

“What was driving that edge infrastructure more and more is if the customers were looking to digitise some of their business,” he added “One of the opportunities for partners was in managed services.”

Canalys has rolled the research into a couple of eguides, including “How to Capitalize on the Edge Computing Opportunity”, that Schneider Electric is sharing with its resellers.

Nick Ewing, managing director of EfficiencyIT, said that resellers needed to start by working out where the edge was for customers, rather than trying to deliver a general pitch.

“We have seen growth in the healthcare area and we have seen a huge amount of projects planned by government in the next year or two around edge environments,” he said.

Fay Barrow, vp marketing, Schneider Electric, Secure Power Division, Europe, said that there was growth in the edge environment and that was being enjoyed by the channel.

“This is a great opportunity and profitable for our partners,” she added that it was encouraging resellers to focus on delivering some of the in-demand technologies like physical security, remote location management and helping users get a standardised approach to dealing with their distributed environments.

The vendor is working to make sure it its partners are up to speed with edge computing and in a position to help customers across numerous verticals.

“It is about enabling for partners and our customers,” said Giles Pattison, global channel sales, APC by Schneider Electric.