Editor's Note: Beware the Bundle

Oct. 14, 2015
The all-too-common residential services sales tactic is poised to invade the enterprise business space

If you do any personal business with the huge telecoms, or cable and satellite television providers and others, you are probably familiar with the concept of “bundling.” This is when the savvy giant company ties together multiple services — such as phone, internet and cable TV service — so you end up with a single, presumably lower bill for all those services.

Of course, most bundling was targeted at consumers, as the lynchpin to these bundles was generally the cable or satellite television plan. In today’s world of streaming video; however, it seems the business plan is changing. As more and more consumers opt to “cut the cord” with their television provider company in favor of AppleTV (and the like), mobile-only phone service and more, those giant companies are going to be muscling into your business.

If you just thought, “not me, I don’t mess with the residential market” — think again...the newest bundling target runs from small to enterprise corporations.
I just received a press release from one of those huge providers that caught my attention. I don’t want to say which company it is directly, so, for the sake of conversation, let’s just call them “Bombast.” The release goes into great detail about the creation of a new sales unit within Bombast’s company that is specifically targeting Fortune 1000 and other large, multi-location enterprises.

“This new enterprise-level service and delivery organization will offer a portfolio of managed enterprise solutions that includes Broadband, Ethernet, Voice, Router, Security, Business Continuity and Wi-Fi. The company also acquired a managed services company and has signed network agreements with other cable operators to further support national accounts,” the release says.

That is an impressive array of business services that will probably catch someone’s attention among your enterprise business clients at the very least. Undoubtedly, some multi-location enterprise companies will take advantage of this big beneficial bundle to put all these services under one roof and have a positive impact on the bottom line.

“Bombast” is using its connectivity solutions as the backbone for the bundle; in fact, this entire offering is based on the managed services angle, with the rest thrown in as a value-add. Notice how they tossed security and business continuity there near the end of that laundry list. And of course, there’s your opportunity to pounce.

Yes, a security dealer or integrator probably isn’t going to lead with its broadband connectivity solutions, but in this age of enhanced security threats — both cyber and physical — I would venture to guess that many of these same large corporations would be uneasy about just “throwing security in at the end of a laundry list.” In other words, now is not the day and age to be relegating any company’s security services as a simple value-add!

All that said, we live in our world and the CEOs live in theirs, and you shouldn’t take for granted that they aren’t thinking about that pretty bottom line number shining brightly enough to relegate all the risks into the background.

As a security-centric integrator or dealer, it is vitally important for you to know about what is being offered to compete with your own services; thus, beware the bundle! ■

Paul Rothman is Editor-in-Chief of Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine (www.secdealer.com).