Tag: Steve Brazier

Informa Tech will buy Canalys

Posted on July 27, 2023 by - Moving People, News

Canalys Forum EuropeCanalys is to be acquired by Informa Tech with the deal completed in the third quarter of this year.

Informa Tech said the acquisition will mean it will now be the world’s biggest channel research and consulting group.

Gary Nugent, CEO of Informa, said: “Channel and Mobility are two incredibly exciting areas for our industry, where technology, supply chains and ways of going to market are ever-evolving. Over 70 percent of all business technology is sold via the Channel and this is why it is of huge importance to our customers.”

Steve Brazier, the CEO of Canalys said: “We have lived and breathed Channel and Mobility for 25 years while growing into other spaces such as Automotive. Now by combining with Informa Tech, and specifically leading brands Omdia, Channel Partners and Channel Futures, we have the platform to offer our clients even greater breadth and depth of expertise on a global scale. We are looking forward to working together to shape the future of technology research.”

No financial details are provided.

2020 was the year of Channel profits says Canalys

Posted on October 12, 2020 by - News

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.

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.

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.”

Canalys thinks that things are getting very indirect

Posted on October 9, 2017 by - Moving People, News

directListening to Canalys CEO Steve Brazier bang on in Venice you can’t help but think that the direct model is going to die a death.

Talking to the annual conference over cheese on a stick and drinkies Brazier said that channel partners are doing well and the European economy is looking better that it has done for the last ten years.

He said that there were more opportunities for the channel now than there have ever been.

This year, over the first half, distributors grew 4 to 5 percent and channel partners improved by seven percent on average.

Brazier, at the Channels Forum event, spoke of the way vertical markets, from retail, transport, health and public sector, were all “embracing” digital technology and using the channel to roll out those services.

The move towards edge computing is also driving a lot of growth and Brazier expected a growth in ‘micro clouds’ as resellers provided services closer to user data and applications.

There was also a mention of security, with that segment enjoying the strongest growth as a result of the increasing threats and factors like GDPR driving spending across Europe.

However the wholesale move towards becoming a predominately software and services business is probably going to be as grim as the life expectancy of a wedding guest in the Game of Thrones.

“This has been the year where the vendors have been preaching digital transformation to you. They are not only trying to talk to you about selling more stuff, they are trying to battle for your thought leadership in where you will take your thoughts forwards,” Brazier said.

“I’m sure you have been told you need to change the way you engage with customers and invest more in digital marketing and retrain your sales force,” he added.

Brazier warned that listening to the vendors, which had their own agendas, could undermine the future strategy.

“Should a partner that’s reselling infrastructure, PCs and software should they change? Probably yes,” he said.

Canalys is predicting that hardware will still contribute over 50 percent of revenues for 90 percent of partners in 2020.

“Whoever told you selling hardware was dead is completely wrong. The PC is suddenly the most profitable part of your business again”, said Brazier.