Ranting Canuck

Here is some more coverage on the acquisition of Orbex by Compugen, so far I have not seen and negative coverage of the acquisition.

I have spent much of the last three weeks talking to Orbex’s current clients and pretty much everyone has seen the move as being a very positive one for Orbex and for their organizations. They like the fact that we are still going to be focusing on small and medium business (SMB) and also for the most part the Orbex team has staying the same. Our clients still have the ability to call the people they have gotten accustomed to dealing with and we are able to help them solve their technology issues.

The main difference now is that we are able to bring a lot more resources in to help as needed. This also gives Orbex the abilities to offer solutions such as Citrix, Vmware and Cisco Unified Communications to our clients without have to bring in a third party.

Here is a copy of the article:

“The Formal Part”IT in

“The Interesting Part”Harry began our conversation by describing the Orbex acquisition as an opportunity to learn about serving the SMB market – and especially, the “S” part of this market. He makes the point – one which I’ve made in the past as well – that SMB isn’t a single market, but rather, can be segmented into many groups.Harry’s approach to segmentation is very interesting. He believes that success in the small business market will hinge on the ability to “assess the customer before they become a customer,” through use of a maturity assessment such as that provided by Gartner, or as part of the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization model. Harry believes that while an account doesn’t need to be large to offer the prospect of a good long-term relationship, they “need to have an understanding of where they want to get to.” This is, Harry says, the hallmark of “an account where we have a chance to be successful.”To evaluate customers in this way, Harry finds that his firm needs to get “beyond looking at IT.” Instead, they need to explore questions like:·                                 What is the customer’s vision?·                                 What are the growth opportunities in the customer’s business?

·                                 What is the “leverage in the business” – i.e., the extent to which they look to outside firms to provide non-core functions?

·                                 What is the level/pattern of delegation of authority within the customer’s business?

In the small business market, Compugen is looking for an engagement model that is “different from (that used with) traditional clients.” They look to act not as a product vendor, but to “take over day-to-day operations/management” of the IT infrastructure, while the customer “provides the business insight” needed to align IT capabilities with business requirements.In Harry’s view, most of the challenges involved in reaching this _object_ive revolve around “sales/sales engagement”. He is confident that Compugen’s managed services offerings – such as the eMerge asset management approach, which provides the ability to build to a consistent platform level and evolve customer infrastructure over time – will scale to meet demand in smaller organizations. What is tricky, he says, is to alter the traditional high-cost “press the flesh” sales approach with something that is better matched to the spending potential of small accounts.