Resellers are seeing their glasses half full and are expecting a year of growth according to a new Citrix report into the doings of Northern Europe suppliers.
According to Canalys CEO Steve Brazier, things started to improve last October, and Citrix and Canalys decided to find more evidence that things were getting better.
Apparently, 59 percent of those respondents Canalys asked were expecting double-digit growth this year.
That growth was going to come from a selection of areas including security, cloud applications and infrastructure as a service. Slightly over a third of those quizzed in the survey revealed they had taken on extra staff to support the sale of subscription-based services.
Three quarters said that managed services would be ‘critical’ to their revenue this year with most recognising that the way to do it is by working with a public cloud provider or third-party data centre, rather than trying to do that themselves.
Citrix Northern Europe partner director Justin Sutton-Parker said businesses were embracing significant change to remain competitive. There were new, disruptive players entering markets, armed with best-of-breed cloud software and the incoming GDPR legislation, some factors are forcing significant numbers of organisations to evaluate their IT infrastructure and business models.
“These industry changes appear to be encouraging increased dependence on the channel, with end-user customers relying on partners’ knowledge and expertise – especially about cloud deployments. Alongside this, new technologies – such as analytics and artificial intelligence – are also set to play a more significant role for channel partners this year, as organisations seek to improve operational efficiencies and take their end-user customer experience to the next level,” he said.
Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys, picked up on that complexity theme and said that customers were looking for support from resellers.
“As end-users adopt these complex technologies, the need for a highly-skilled, consultancy-led channel becomes even more critical. The challenge facing the channel is a shortage of critical skills, both from a technology and a business advisory point of view. Vendors that succeed will be those that enable their partners with the resources and support to capitalise on these massive emerging opportunities”, he said.
