Despite the current economic doom and gloom there are still pockets of positivity for the channel, according to Gartner.

The analyst has forecast that overall IT spend ­ including hardware, telecoms, software and services ­ in 2009 will decrease by 3.8 per cent to $3.23tn compared to $3.36tn in 2008.

“It is going to continue to be a bumpy 2009, but there will be growth over the next couple of years,” said Tiffani Bova, vice president of research, indirect channel programmes and sales strategies at Gartner.

In a presentation specially formulated for CRN’s Channel Expo event in Birmingham this week, Bova outlined several technology growth areas that top CIOs have identified to the analyst as key spend targets. These are: business intelligence; enterprise applications such as ERP, SCM, CRM; and server and storage technologies. Other channel money-spinners included hosting/outsourcing, infrastructure utility, and cloud computing.

Bova also drilled down into the needs of medium-sized businesses ­ which listed PC upgrades, security hardware and server virtualisation as top hardware initiatives. Networking priorities included network security, wireless networking and voice over IP; and software priorities included security, database management and operating system upgrades.

On the SME front, 72 per cent of those questioned planned to use indirect channels for IT fulfilment, with 28 per cent going for a direct approach to either manufacturers or ISVs.

However, the biggest challenge to resellers is still a shifting business model, said Bova.

“We class resellers in four boxes: reseller, VAR, solution provider and managed service provider,” she told CRN. “Europe is far more advanced along the continuum than the US, with more channel players falling into box three and four. This is mainly because there are emerging markets in Europe and newer firms jump straight into the most advanced model.

“Longer-standing resellers need to continue focusing on their existing customers rather than chasing new business, and to keep transforming their business models.”
Ian French, managing director of consultancy firm Siceo, questioned whether the channel will be able to capitalise on that growth.

“There is going to be growth in must-have technology areas, and the channel firms that have the resources and skills to deploy that technology will get bigger and bigger, but they are few and far between,” he said. “Where does that leave the average reseller in the UK? I do not think that the majority of the channel is ready for the cloud or hosted yet.”