Specialist distributor Intact Software Distribution has introduced skills-on-demand (SODA), a cloud- and Web-based platform which directs organisations to professional IT skills and services.
According to Intact Software Distribution, the portal connects companies to under-utilised skills in various IT fields such as security, virtualisation, cloud, networking and data centres in the African and Australian markets.
The platform consolidates all these skills onto its gateway, enabling resellers and customers to find and utilise skills and services from IT companies and independent contractors as they need them, irrespective of whether they are under their own brand, or as a white-label service.
Simon Campbell-Young, CEO of Intact, says SODA is an ideal solution for customers who are looking for a specific skill or service for a certain period of time.
"The SODA gateway harnesses the potential of on-demand skills found within the channel and white-labels or rebrands these services for resale to other SODA partners or customers.
"SODA's professional services are certified, cross-platform and across IT brands, and are vendor endorsed. The sheer number of solutions needed to move, store, manage, secure and virtualise data in today's complex environments puts technology partners under enormous pressure to have the necessary skills in place to cover all these areas, let alone be able to service their customers."
There aren't many resellers and distributors that can afford the economies of scale needed to hold professional service skills across all brands, technologies and platforms on a permanent basis, Campbell-Young explains.
Many highly skilled contractors are now looking to work for themselves, and the platform provides the perfect ability to 'bill them out' on an ad hoc basis, he continues.
"SODA allows these businesses to fill any gaps in their skillsets as and when they are needed, and only for as long as they are needed. Having these skills in-house has been the norm in the past, he says, as they are needed to fulfil contractual agreements with vendor partners and clients, and this translates into excess or under-utilised skills within the channel. Of course, this cost is transferred up the line to the customer at the end of the day. Moreover, excess skills come with other challenges, such as retention and operational costs," he continues.
The service, geared for a global rollout, offers services covering areas including software applications, convergence, BI and analytics, CRM, accounting, storage and IOT.
"As we bed the platform down across the current geography, we will start to work with partners who share our vision in other territories. SODA is an ideal fit for us as we centre our offerings around customer satisfaction and providing all-round peace of mind to our clients. Intact, through its management team, has the knowledge and experience, and is well positioned to bring all the benefits that SODA offers to South African customers," concludes Campbell-Young.
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