Resellers had a pretty good year and are expecting things to be even better next year, according to a survey by Context.
According to Context’s has produced its latest ChannelWatch report which is based on the 6,500 resellers across the EU, optimism is higher now than it was at this point a year ago. That is largely down to the momentum that has been generated in 2019 and a feeling that it will continue into 2020.
There is an expectation that product categories, including IoT, are going to be revenue producers for the channel. Investments in some of the traditional areas is running in parallel with moves to make sure that emerging technologies are also covered.
Context has drilled down into where B2B resellers are looking to make investments over the next 12 months: cloud (49 percent), networking (46 percent), cybersecurity (38 percent), workplace optimisation (31 percent), datacentre solutions (24 percent), and IoT (18 percent).
B2C specialists were continuing to be more hardware led: PCs (57 percent), software (39 percent), storage (37 percent), components (36 percent) and printers (36 percent).
Adam Simon, global managing director of Context, said: “Although B2B resellers expressed a more positive opinion of the coming year than B2C resellers, sentiment overall has strengthened overall across the region, driven by a sharp increase in optimism in the UK and Germany. This is despite continued Brexit-related uncertainty and slowing GDP in Germany.”
“It appears that many resellers experienced far higher growth last year than the headline figure for revenues in the distribution channel. We believe this is due to corporate digital transformation efforts, investments in cloud and IoT as well as classic drivers like the Windows 10 upgrade”, Simon said.
