Tag: Canalys

Cybersecurity channel set for a solid 2021

The cybersecurity channel is set for a solid year ahead, according to the beancounters at analyst outfit Canalys.

The firm is forecasting a potential 10 per cent increase in worldwide spending on security in 2021 if everything goes as it is now.

In terms of product categories, Canalys is forecasting a 12.5 percent climb in web and email security, while vulnerability and security analytics will increase 11.0 percent. Growth in endpoint security will slow to 10.4 percent after a solid 2020.

Alibaba Cloud continues to grow

Alibaba Cloud saw sales rocket in its Q2 as it continues to outpace the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Revenue for the period ending 30 September increased 60 per cent year on year to $2.2 million.

CEO Daniel Zhang said that organisations in the public sector and financial services sector made the biggest contribution to cloud growth.

“We announced at our investor day that Alibaba Cloud is expected to turn profitable by the end of this fiscal year.  We believe cloud computing is a fundamental infrastructure in the digital area, but it is still in the early stage of growth. We are committed to further increasing our investments in cloud computing.”

PC market growth surges

Beancounters at Canalys have added up some numbers and reached the conclusion that remote working has lead to a boom in PC sales.

The PC market grew at the fastest rate in a decade during the third quarter of 2020, thanks to the surge in demand for hardware due to offices physically closing and employees working from home.

Recently released Canalys data shows the global PC market climbed 12.7 percent from a year ago to reach 79.2 million units in Q3 2020 as it continued to benefit hugely from the COVID-19 crisis.

Channel to see more merger and acquisitions

SSC boss James Rigby has said that the Channel could see more mergers in the coming months and said that his outfit could do  small acquisitions to bolster its customer base.

Addressing the assembled throngs at the Canalys Channel Forum Rigby said that SSC will not be doing anything huge, but new business is always a challenge.

“SCC, along with a number of the other bigger players, have that end-to-end capability on the infrastructure, so we have broadly got the portfolio of services we want and we now need to layer volume on top of that, and more clients”, he said.

2020 was the year of Channel profits says Canalys

While the year has gone down in history for being packed full of doom and gloom, analyst outfit Canalys thinks that it has been pretty good for the Channel.

The technology sector has had a stronger year than many would have expected at the start of the pandemic. Over the past three quarters, the tech industry as a whole has increased by five per cent. Distribution across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has increased by four per cent, as have resellers.

Canalys CEO Steve Brazier (pictured) addressing the assembled throngs at the outfit’s Channel Forums event, said that while GDP across EMEA was expected to fall by nine percent this year, the tech world had defied gravity and come out fighting, helping customers solve real problems caused by COVID-19.

“Technology has won, the channel has won, distributors have won – it’s  turned into a very good year and we couldn’t have predicted that. The channel in Europe will see the most profitable year ever.”

He said that several factors, including higher revenues, created all that but there has also been a focus on spending and costs.

HPE wants channel to focus on SMEs

HPE’s CEO Antonio Neri said the company will focus on the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market with its channel.

Talking to the assembled throngs at the Canalys Channels Forum EMEA he said it was clear that there is more scope for the channel to make in-roads into the SME segment.

“Together with our partners, we have made incredible progress, and I am more optimistic about the future than ever. Next year, we will increase our focus on SME for partners and will introduce enhancements and new initiatives, promotions and solutions to enable our partners to assess sales in our core business and drive share”, he said.

Channel should be worried about increase in private investment

Increasing in private investment might be putting the channel at risk, according to analyst outfit  Canalys.

The IT industry has seen a surge in private equity (PE) investment of late. Traditionally a source of funding for start-ups, larger vendors such as LogMeIn, McAfee, Sophos, Veeam and Veritas have all benefited from PE funding over the last year.

But Canalys thinks this is a bad thing saying that the continued investment by private equity firms in technology vendors is a lit fuse which is designed to ignite value (and return) for shareholders, but which often ignores the long-term value brought by the channel.

Canalys names 12 Channel heroes

Analyst outfit Canalys has named its 12 channel champions for the year.

The EMEA Channel Leadership Matrix puts 12 vendors in the champion category with a magnificent seven of which have maintained that status since 2018: Fortinet, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, NetApp, Palo Alto and Veeam. Making up the rest of the dirty dozen are APC, Cisco, Kaspersky, Nutanix and Trend Micro.

HPE, AWS, Dell EMC and Juniper Networks were seen as contenders and Canalys noted that they had made significant channel investments but needed to work harder getting partner sentiment to improve. The growers: Apple, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft and VMware, had improved over the course of 2019.

Canalys puts Lenovo on top

Beancounters at analyst outfit Canalys showed that Lenovo is the supreme ruler of the PC market, followed by HP and Dell.But the analyst has warned market factors are sustaining a short-term boost that could wear off as early as Q1 2020.The end of Windows 7 support in January next year and the ongoing migration to Windows 10 is one of the current factors, along with seasonal inventory stocking ahead of the key Q4 holiday season, the outfit said.

Europe was hit by the Brexit effect with the ongoing political uncertainty being blamed for customers showing caution about hardware investments. As a result shipments came in at two  percent in EMEA for Q3, which was below the global average. Apple was the only vendor to see increases in the region.

Rushabh Doshi, research director of Canalys’ mobility services said: “The PC market high is refreshing. However, there is a limit to how quickly leading vendors can ramp production. Intel remains a key bottleneck, with pressure on its 14nm CPU supply not likely to see improvement until Q1 2020. However, the Intel CPU shortage provided leading PC vendors an advantage over smaller rivals drove HP and Lenovo to their best Q3 performance to-date.

“Going forward, leading vendors will have an opportunity to further consolidate the market and squeeze smaller vendors’ market share, if the Intel supply is not able to satisfy the spike in orders.”

At the same time research from Context showed that consumers were driving demand for another hardware category, premium monitors, with home office users, gamers and creatives some of the key buyers.

Sales of monitors across Western Europe through consumer channels, retail and etail, continued to grow and were up by fore  per cent year-on-year in August.

 

 

 

Apple and Huawei’s European smartphone sales tank

Apple and Huawei saw their European smartphone market shares fall in the second quarter as Samsung took its stake to above 40 percent, according to Canalys.

Canalys said that Apple fell by 17 percent and Huawei fell by 16 percent respectively, as Samsung increased its dominance with its A-Series range of devices.

Canalys said that Samsung moved fast to take advantage of Huawei’s woes as the vendor continues to be restricted by the US government.

Security as a Service demand increasing

Beancounters at Canalys  have added up some numbers and worked out that  that hosted security offerings are growing at a much faster rate than traditional hardware and software sales

A new report says that demand for Security as a Service continues to increase with that model of delivering applications to customers gaining more ground in the first quarter and solutions for public cloud and as a Service increased by 46 percent year-on-year.

The cloud and managed services approach now command 17.6 percent of the security market, a climb from 13.8 percent.

Cybersecurity protected from slowdown

Beancounters at the analyst firm Canalys claim that cybersecurity spending will be immune to a worsening economic and political in Blighty.

It has claimed its data showed the market expanding by double digits in the first quarter and global cybersecurity spending boomed 14.2 percent year on year in the first three months of 2019 to hit $9.7 billion, with the channel representing 92.3 percent of shipment value.

Canalys principal analyst Matthew Ball said that investment in cybersecurity shows no sign of slowing down as it remains a priority for all organisations.

“Recent high-profile ransomware attacks have resulted in large organisations paying large sums to regain access to critical IT systems and data. Strengthening security strategies across devices, infrastructure, perimeters and applications will continue to be critical. Increasing employee training and gaining more comprehensive cybersecurity insurance will also be important to counter these threats.”

US/China trade war will harm smartphone shipments

The US and China  trade war will hurt global smartphone shipments in 2019, according to Canalys.

The research outfit predicts that smartphone shipments will reach 1.35 billion units this year, representing a 3.1 percent year-on-year decline.

Chinese manufacturer Huawei has been a key figure in the dispute between the two superpowers, with the US last month banning the vendor from using American components and code for its products. It then issued a 90-day reprieve in order to prevent huge disruption to Huawei’s supply chain and users.

Security world going subcription

The security world is moving ever closer to a subscription-based model, according to the analyst outfit Canalys.

In a report, the analysts noted that although the vast majority of cybersecurity sales remain traditionally delivered, this is starting to change to something more subscription based and  Canalys expects it to speed up over the next couple of years.

Cyber security spending topped $10 billion for the first time in the fourth quarter of last year.  It thinks that by 2020 $42 billion will be spent annually worldwide on products and services.

Intel chip shortages to end soon

The PC market will return to growth in the second half of this year as the Intel processor shortage begins to ease,

Beancounters at the analyst outfit Canalys has been gazing into the office crystal ball and reached the conclusion that PC shipments will rise 0.4 per cent year in the second half of the year.

Chipzilla’s chip supply shortage in the first half of the year will result in an overall decline this year.

Canalys thought that 57 per cent of the 270 channel partners it surveyed expect a “medium to severe” impact to their business this year as a result of the Intel shortages.