Tag: Canalys

Chinese smartphones conquering Europe

Posted on February 19, 2019 by - News

Despite the US crackdown, Chinese devices are doing really well in Europe, according to Canalys beancounters.

According to Canalys, preventing the likes of Huawei and Xiaomi from operating in the States means they are investing in Europe to make up for their lost US business and have experienced significant sales gains.

Although Samsung still ranks number one in the continent and Apple remains a number two, Huawei’s market share now stands at 23.6 percent, compared to a market share of 14.8 percent last year.  Xiaomi’s grew from 3.6 to  six percent, the fourth position.

Opportunity knocks for Microsoft’s rivals after Azure direct sale

Posted on February 12, 2019 by - News

Microsoft might have created an own goal with its decision to flog off Azure direct.

Beancounters at Canalys think that partner uncertainty around the deal will allow competitors to exploit the opportunity and gain more share in the cloud market.

The analyst predicted that this year would see partners handle an increasing share of the cloud business, particularly in the areas of services, deployment and integration.

Lifts fail to elevate themselves at the Arts

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Gossip

The few remaining hacks of the Channel Free Press found themselves on the 41st floor of the Arts Hotel tower in Barcelona today when they felt an enormous noise and rumbling shake their minds out of concerns about Lenovo and generalised lethargy.

Fiona O’Brien, an Irish woman from Lenovo, sought to reassure us wee timorous cowering beasties  but actually we just wrote it off as just one of those things that happen when you’re isolated hacks afraid of heights and depths.

The Arts Hotel shut down its network of elevators because of an escalated security alarm and the staff decided to temporarily stop the lifts from working.

We have reached out to the PRs at the hotel to dig out the truth, going forward.

Goodness knows what would have happened if you desperately needed to visit the wazzeria and you were stuck in the lift. It took me right back to the days I got stuck in the lift at Hampstead-on-the-Hill, and found myself stranded with a beautiful woman and a lovely Indian man. We didn’t panic. We just gritted our teeth and carried on, carrying on…

Channel needs to support the free press

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Events, Moving People, News

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Boys thrashing tops in 1560 – Brueghel

The Canalys Channel Conference closed at 3PM prompt this afternoon, Barcelona time,  but not before one of the few channel journalists left standing was given a five minute slot to stand and address the thousand or so attendees at the conference.

Cristoph Hugenschmidt, a journalist at Inside Channels CH, made an impassioned speech about how the community of vendors, distributors and resellers need the independence that real journalism – rather than fake news or marketing spin – offers that influential group.

Cristoph reckons – and ChannelEye agrees – that the hugely lucrative market needs independent journalism more than ever before. He gave as an example a Canalys event he attended a year or two back where a marketing spinner told the assembled hacks that journalism wasn’t necessary any more because his company could put out the message it wanted via social media and using impoverished hacks to write online press releases.

Nevertheless, after delivering this insult to the hackettes and hacks at the table, according to Cristoph, he tipped up a couple of hours later and said: “I do expect you journalists to be at my 9AM roundtable tomorrow.”

The Swiss hack was basically saying that unless the channel supported free and independent journalism as part of the community, we’ll all wither away and companies will lose the insight, gossip and spinicide that hackettes and hacks deliver.

Why does the channel need journalists like Cristoph and the few of us that are left? My feeling is that despite the noise of Twitter and other social media, and PR and marketing executives spinning like tops, there is a need for a cool third party appraisal of what’s going on. “Going forward”, to use an infamous marketing perversion of the phrase “in the future”, company CEOs need to decide whether they can afford the ridiculous price of marketing spin and decide whether it’s worth it.

ChannelEye of course,  is notorious as purveyors of “fake news” – via The Rogister and theINQUIRER.net,  and coined the term “wide awake news” two years after Donald Trump was born.

Lenovo pulls up its channel socks

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - Events, News

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 11.27.37At a keynote speech at the Canalys Channel Forum yesterday, analyst-in-chief Steve Brazier said Lenovo had a poor set of tools for its partners and made decisions too slowly.

But senior executives at Lenovo told ChannelEye this morning that it’s already taken significant steps to turn that position round.

Lenovo said it recognised its tools and processes weren’t perfect, but said it had been investing and making improvements. It’s committed to speeding up the way it works with resellers and investing money to improve the matter.

“We’re turning things round – we need a more sophisticated way of helping the channel.”

Lenovo recognised that it’s a big investment that it has to undertake. It’s been working on the project for 12 months.

“We have further to go but we are making progress. We [now] have the ability to give split second decisions on deals and on pricing.”

It claimed it was getting good feedback from its distributors and channel partners on the improvements it’s already made.

It recognises that it needed to be more collaborative at sharing material with partners and need to be more agile and have a bespoke method of getting its product message tailored to the customers that they’re pitching to.

* The company said it is likely to be protected in the event of a continuing trade war between the US and China. It has a factory in China but also in other territories and has the ability to switch production if it needs to.

Brexit: The channel is more of a mouse than a man

Posted on October 11, 2018 by - News

Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 09.47.40There’s one thing clear from the Canalys Channel Forum here in Barcelona and that is many of the major players are individually, and in the words of Robert Burns scared out of their pants.

Burns described a frightened mouse as a”Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie; O, what a pannic’s in thy breastie!”

In short, the channel mice are terrified of what might happen in the case of a hard Brexit.

Translated from the Scots dialect, the poem also suggests the channel hasn’t a clue and needs leadership. Maybe the future is too horrific for it to face the plain and simple truth.  The channel may suffering what’s called in posh words “cognitive dissonance” but, in a short Anglo-Saxon phrase, cacking its pants.

We put this to Steve Brazier, the lead analyst at Canalys this morning. And he’s far more outspoken than his customers and clients.

He said that if there’s a hard Brexit from the European Union, the pound will crash, tech prices will rise and the UK will suffer a major recession.

The point is that while other manufacturers in say, the car industry, have spoken out loudly about the dangers to business, only one of the Big Six has said anything. We talked to Lenovo which said that it’s in favour of open trade and implied strongly that a soft Brexit or no Brexit at all was preferable to falling into the abyss.

The primary impact of a hard Brexit is the UK, but Ireland will be affected too, because the Irish tech channel is similar to the UK, said Brazier.

Specifically, distributors and vendors will be affected and because no one knows what the outcome will be – that’s anyone, right from timid resellers and vendors right up to Her Majesty’s Government, and perhaps even the devil. However, she or he probably has all the detail.

Channel is still a very male preserve. Reserve?

Posted on October 10, 2018 by - News

Many many men

Many many men

Hundreds and hundreds of channel delegates here at the Canalys Channel Forum in Barcelona have one thing in common and that is that to the best of our knowledge the majority of the blokes here have willies.

But that may change in the future and reliable sources at one of the Big Six vendors here at the conference agrees with Dell and EMC and thinks that it is likely that change in the gender gap in the channel community will happen sooner rather than very much later.

Dell EMC, without being personal, agreed with that view and has already  put in place several programmes to assist both its channel partners and employees working with it to welcome diversity.

It has set up both a woman’s partner network and a unit promoting female entrepreneurs, a company representative said. Dell EMC has achieved near parity with approximately 45 percent of its staff women.

It is also actively encouraging young girls to develop their computer science skills, and also has a programme to allow its male employees to emphasise with the strengths women can bring to the industry.  It promotes diversity in all fields.

A male executive at the conference who spoke on the condition he and his company remained anonymous, told ChannelEye: “Women traditionally find themselves on the PR and marketing side. Women are more efficient than men. They get things done and when they say they’re going to do something they do it, unlike men.”

Which, of course, begs many questions and there are more questions than answers.

Vendors need to oil the resellers aching joints

Posted on October 10, 2018 by - News

Steve Brazier, the top analyst at Canalys gave his views on the future of the channel in the European market right now in the European forum held in rainy Barcelona today. And apparently there are more storms on the way.

And as well as giving his predictions on the way things are going, he turned his attention on the top six vendors and the way they were disappointing distributors and resellers.

In a wide-ranging keynote, Brazier said that the trade war between China and the USA introduced uncertainties into the market and no-one can predict the shape of things to come. It could be that we see large shifts in manufacturing and companies like Samsung that manufacture in Vietnam rather than China could reap huge benefits from not facing heavy tariffs.

He said that partners make most of their money from the top six and it’s all down to a question of margins. The channel and the vendors, he said, had introduced friction into the border between direct selling and through partners.

He said that there’s more friction between vendors and the channel. The vendors demand loyalty from their channel while the channel wants vendors to stop selling directly. There’s a danger that vendors are not being open about the data they get from their “partners”.

“We’re expecting some tough questions in the private sessions.”

PC sales about to pick up

Posted on September 26, 2018 by - News

The seven years of lean times in the PC industry will be over next year as Windows 10 adoption increases, according to technicolour dreamcoat analysts at Canalys.

The analyst claims that a “slight recovery” next year will see shipments of desktops, notebooks and two-in-ones edge up 0.3 percent. Hardly time for the seven fat cows, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Canalys chief analyst Alastair Edwards said: “Windows 10 refresh will continue to be the main driver of commercial demands for PCs in 2019.

“This will be buoyed by strong economic performance and business spend in the US, the largest PC market in the world, as well as a continued global push to upgrade on the back of heightened IT security concerns. Furthermore, 2019 is likely to bring about an easing of component supply constraints that have recently plagued the industry. Intel and its partners have admitted that slight supply of 14-nanometer processors will delay PC shipments this year, while DRAM shortages will start to ease towards the end of 2018, with the effects to be felt next year.”

Canalys said that the channel will see the success it has found with Windows, both through sales and services, continue for a period of time.

However, it warned that this will not last forever, claiming that the spell could come to an end in the first half of next year. Canalys added that the most “successful partners” will be the ones that build out managed desktop and subscription services.

This trend has been supported by two recent vendor announcements, with both Microsoft and HP launching desktop-as-a-service offerings.

Ruckus launches Dogfather Technical Community

Posted on September 25, 2018 by - News

banner_220x220 Ruckus Networks has launched its Dogfather Technical Community in EMEA.

The programme gives partners a series of educational initiatives with the idea of giving Ruckus partners  a competitive edge and solutions.

Ruckus claims that partner enablement is the cornerstone of its channel ethos. The Dogfather programme comprises several components, each with their own dedicated and focused resources such as easily accessible technical training via monthly-webinars, seminars, workshops, events and social media, all available in 15 different languages.

Matthew Ball, Principal Analyst at Canalys, said that the channel was experiencing constant disruption, with technology innovation firmly at the forefront of partners’, and  their customers’ minds.

“Enabling partners to stand out in such a competitive market is key to making a real difference as a vendor and to drive loyalty. Giving partners the knowledge and skills they need to deliver and meet their business goals is a huge differentiator and shows real commitment to the industry.”

Following the launch of the Ruckus new two-tier partner programme at the end of 2017, channel growth has become paramount. As a channel-first company, Ruckus recognises the need to serve its partner community and provide them with the tools to be profitable, competitive and win–and Ruckus’ superior technology is driving this.

“With the introduction of our Dogfather programme, we expect to see a much closer-knit partner community,” said Massimo Mazzeo-Ocello, director of systems engineering, EMEA, Ruckus Networks. “The best partnerships are based on the simple principle of making each other’s businesses better–sharing the risk and the reward. As vendors, we need to invigorate partners, not hold them back. The channel cannot just survive, but must be allowed to thrive, in a world with technology at its core.”

 

The Dogfather Technical Community Programme consists of:

Big Dogs: Ruckus’ annual EMEA sales and technical event for senior partner executives
Mini Dogs: regional partner roadshows for regional sales and technical teams
Dogfather remote enablement: monthly webinars and tech-newsletters on select topics open to all partners and available in 15 languages
Dogfather Days: Ruckus- driven live events with technical engineers, available in 15 countries
Distributor Days: Distributor-supported, live Ruckus-driven technical events with their relevant partners
Social Media: easy to use, with pre-written blogs, social posts and spotlight promotion
The benefits of the Dogfather Community are available to Ruckus’ Elite and SMB partners immediately. For more information please visit:

 

Partner programmes are a waste of time

Posted on September 12, 2018 by - News

banner_220x220Analyst outfit Canalys has warned that vendor partner programmes are losing relevance to the channel.

Canalys found that 77 percent of channel companies rate partner programmes as important when evaluating vendor relationships compared to 94 percent in 2016.

To make matters worse nine percent of respondents surveyed in 2018 rated partner programmes as “not at all important”, while almost a quarter rated them as lacking importance.

Canalys said vendors must get partners aligned as the market faces disruption from the cloud and digital technologies.

Alex Smith, senior director of channels research at Canalys, said: “Partners have more levers to pull. They can provide more of their services or make new technology vendor partnerships to fulfil specific opportunities. Meanwhile, vendors often change programmes to reflect changes in partner business models and to spur loyalty, but such changes can have the unintended consequence of increasing complexity, leading to frustration.”

Consistency or changes to programmes as the top complaint, with 16 per cent of respondents selecting it among their top issues. Complexity in achieving certifications and specialisations was the next highest at 15 percent.

Canalys analyst Sharon Hiu said: “As partners develop different service models, the most successful vendors will be those that effectively help partners adapt their technical capabilities. The huge challenge is to keep programmes simple while our industry embraces complex new technologies,”

“Vendors must take action, such as investing in stronger digital tools, including integrated automation and AI-enabled capabilities, to help reduce partners’ manual administration work.”Partner managers must also become more empowered and offer personalised support for individual partner needs. The channel is pressuring vendors to do just this,” Hiu said.

Channel firms dominante 2017 infrastructure shipments

Posted on March 16, 2018 by - News

Beancounters at Canalys have added up some numbers and divided them by the flight ration of a swallow carrying a coconut and reached the conclusion that channel firms dominated 2017 infrastructure Columbus-flagship-Santa-Maria-discoveredsments worldwide and boosted the market to a record year.

The analyst outfit said that the market was worth $142 billion this year which is a seven percent increase on 2016.  Servers grew 12.2 percent to $66 billion; networking grew 4.3 percent to $50 billion and storage 1.6 percent to $26 billion. .

Canalys principal analyst Matthew Ball said the channel continued to dominate infrastructure shipments, collectively representing 74 percent of the worldwide total.

Server growth was partially due to hyperscale cloud service providers’ “ongoing” datacentre expansion, Canalys’ announcement said. It noted: “The start of a new enterprise refresh cycle following the launch of the next generation of Intel and AMD processors increased server shipment value.”

The growth of Chinese and Taiwanese ODM server vendors selling large volumes to cloud service providers meant that direct sales grew faster than channel sales in the overall infrastructure market. Ball said that 34 percent of server shipments were direct sales (compared to 19 percent of storage and 20 percent of networking shipments).

“The massive CapEx planned by the data centre cloud service providers in upgrading and expanding existing data centres, as well as increasing their geographic presence, will maintain this trend in 2018”, Ball said.

Storage, meanwhile, saw a return to growth following “a period of disruption” from all-flash and software-defined, which Canalys says offset traditional HDD storage arrays’ drop.

Canalys highlighted the strength of datacenter switching and 11ac Wave 2 wireless LANs (WLANs) for campus and branch environments. It says ethernet switching grew seven percent and WLANs nine percent. Service provider routing stayed positive at one percent, while enterprise routing fell nine percent.

Cisco, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) represented 50 percent of infrastructure shipments Cisco maintained a 20 percent lead thanks to its networking strength. Dell EMC grew its infrastructure shipments market share to 15 percent and “was one of the fastest-growing vendors through the channel”, Ball said. HPE controlled 14 percent market share.

 

Resellers flooded with optimism

Posted on March 1, 2018 by - News

3016188605_b86c94f3f2_bResellers 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.

Terrified customers spending on protection

Posted on December 14, 2017 by - News

krayPunters are terrified of cyber attacks and are spending cash to make sure they are not the latest victim according to the most recent survey by the research analysts at Canalys.

Canalys has been asking around and added up some numbers and decided that the worldwide security market grew by nine percent in the third quarter.

Content security enjoyed the fastest growth, up by 13 percent  year-on-year, with network security (eight percent) and security management (five percent) seeing rises in the third quarter.

Canalys research analyst Claudio Stahnke said that high-profile ransomware attacks and increasingly sophisticated phishing techniques had proved the need for businesses to reinforce their IT security to safeguard data assets and ensure continuity of operation.

The top five security vendors have commanded a third of all customer spend, with Cisco grabbing the most with nine percent. They were followed by Symantec, Check Point, IBM and McAfee.

“Cisco grew seven percent year on year, thanks to its strong channel partner focus and a broad product portfolio boosted by acquisitions”,  said Stahnke.

The prospects for the fourth quarter and next year are also looking positive as the pressure on protecting data increases against a backdrop of the introduction in May of the GDPR regulations.

“In 2018, as hackers intensify the use of AI, attacks will become more sophisticated. This will increase demand for comprehensive security solutions, favouring those vendors with broad product portfolios”, said Stahnke.

Next year should be good for the security channel.

“Security threats have never had more public awareness than they do currently. 2017 saw major events such as Wannacry galvanise the public’s attention and affect organisations all around the world. In 2018, security breaches will continue to hit the headlines and influence businesses into reviewing their data protection. And of course GDPR will be a major factor in promoting sales of security solutions”, said Ian Kilpatrick, EVP Cyber Security for Nuvias Group.

“The reality is that security will continue to be a high growth area for the channel. In a market which is already overcrowded with solutions, 2018 will bring great opportunities for resellers to build on their position as trusted advisors and guide clients through what may seem like a worrying and confusing scenario”, he added.

VR will be a bit hit in education and healthcare

Posted on November 29, 2017 by - News

Abraham-discovers-virtual-reality--128960The people of the divination division at beancounters Canalys have been shuffling their tarot decks and concluded that virtual reality headsets will be a hit in verticals such as healthcare and education.

Canalys said the emerging device category has just racked up its first million-unit quarter and shipments reached seven figures for the first time in the third quarter.

This was due to a price war among leading players such as Oculus and Sony which saw consumers start to buy.

Canalys analyst and auger Jason Low said that VR headsets are set for “strong uptake” in the business market from next year as new A-brand PC entrants supporting Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality platform begin to push their products through the channel.

“VR in business can be applied to many industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare and education,” said Low. “As top-tier PC vendors, including HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Dell launch their own VR headsets, using their distribution channel efficiencies, one can expect a strong VR uptake in business.”

Canalys’s definition of VR excludes simple viewers, such as Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream View. Oculus – one of three players alongside Sony and HTC which together account for 86 percent of the market according to Canalys – recently slashed the price of its Rift headsets to $399.