Where will channel growth come from in 2015?
Fleur Doidge asks industry watchers and channel insiders where businesses will focus this year
Gartner: Smarter everything, real-virtual blends, digital business
David Cearley, vice president of Gartner, says there will be more emphasis on serving the caprices of the mobile user anywhere, any time.
"This will continue to raise significant management challenges for IT organisations as they lose control of user end-point devices. It will also require increased attention to user experience design," he says.
Meanwhile, the advance of the Internet of Things (IoT) means a focus on how to manage, monetise, operate and extend the combinations of data streams and services created by the increasing interconnectivity. Analytics and context-aware systems will move centre stage, in a related trend, while cloud and mobile continue to go web-scale, virtualise, expand and converge.
Security will be more important than ever, but risk assessment and mitigation will be key as organisations realise they simply cannot protect themselves completely.
IDC: Faster migration to third platform, IT-as-a-service technologies
By 2017, 80 per cent of CIO time will be focused on analytics, cybersecurity and creating new revenue streams through digital services, according to IDC's FutureScape research. These areas will therefore be priorities for the channel.
DevOps will increasingly be used next year to address the glut of mobile, cloud and open-source apps that businesses and consumers are struggling with.
Enterprises will be looking to embrace new, innovative architectures that foster productivity and improve business decision-making.
Importantly, the move to IT-as-a-service is likely to accelerate from next year, the analyst says, as organisations increasingly seek to future-proof themselves against rapidly obsolete IT kit.
Ovum: Agile, cloud, IoT to dominate integration and middleware
Saurabh Sharma, senior analyst for infrastructure solutions at Ovum, says: "With the ever-increasing need to do more with less, enterprises will be keen to adopt Agile approaches to integration.
A significant share of the budget for integration projects will be spent on infrastructure modernisation, including the adoption of new mobile and IoT middleware, B2B integration solutions, and cloud-based integration platforms."
Simpler ways to develop for a range of mobile devices and integration will be needed in the digital business. This means Agile, and IT-as-a-service, Sharma suggests.
Further, the "complex interplay" of data security, governance, and compliance needs will drive uptake of comprehensive managed file transfer offerings. A lack of standardisation will continue to hold back developments in IoT, however.
Juniper Research: Security, NFC, smarter tech
Encryption, tokenisation and biometric authentication will become more important in a year when cloud services providers - and many other IT firms - have to deal with the fallout of recent security breaches.
"We expect to see an increasing array of companies investing in encryption and tokenisation as a means of reducing the risk of data loss," the analyst wrote in its top 10 list, adding that biometrics would enhance security across "an array" of technologies.
"In mobile, the combination of Apple Pay with Touch ID is perhaps the most high-profile example," it says.
Other trends in its top 10 include wearables becoming smarter; big data and analytics; cryptocurrency adoption; e-health solutions for the consumer; budget mobile devices; and more deep linking between apps. Furthermore, 2015 will be the year for widespread near-field communication (NFC) adoption, the analyst believes.
Channel eye view: security, security, security
Dieter Lott, EMEA business development vice president, Avnet Technology Solutions, says: "Security continues to be the most important trend in the IT market. It requires continuous changes and advances. Year after year and into 2015, the channel simply cannot ignore this. The focus will move further into addressing security inside the firewall and not just the perimeter.
"Resellers will need to learn about these new approaches to address this growth area and help businesses overcome this huge challenge of how to secure apps. Distributors can help by enabling partners to take a more holistic datacentre-centric approach including bring-your-own-device and Internet of Things requirements. Such value-added services include not just technical training but also sales enablement activities."
Converged infrastructure, software-defined networking, datacentre skills and analytics, will also require a lot of attention in 2015.
"There are opportunities for ISVs to create optimal software products; for distributors to enable the channel; and for our partners to offer robust solutions around connectivity, datacentre and networking management, security and data analytics, to respond to the needs of the newly connected world," concludes Lott.
Channel eye view: the tablet bounces back
Fridolin Engel, head of Exertis Conect, says: "With Microsoft's push towards mobility in 2015, traditional IT partners as well as those in the mobile space will be ensuring delivery of a complete proposition to their customers including devices, connectivity and applications in addition to their existing fully managed service support offering.
"The key to IT market diversification will be the ease of partner engagement and the on-boarding process into an existing portfolio, ensuring that any preconceived fears are overcome and the service partnerships are seamless and lucrative.
"Businesses have become much more comfortable with subscription service models and leasing propositions. Hardware-as-a-service is now becoming a standard approach for financing large projects. With the significant upcoming reduction in the cost, we anticipate the demand for connected tablets to soar in 2015."
And what about cloud?
Cloud adoption will accelerate throughout 2015, predicts the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), with end of support for Windows Server 2003 driving even more migration and revenue growth. By December 2015, 90 per cent of UK organisations will have at least one formally adopted, as opposed to shadow, cloud service, its members believe, up from 78 per cent in 2014. Existing users will also expand their use of cloud services.
Alex Hilton (pictured, right), chief executive of CIF, says: "In the period leading up to July 2015 the market faces the most significant IT refresh of the 21st century to date with the end of support of both Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003. These products have not only underpinned the IT server market for the past decade, they have been the basis upon which many local IT providers have built their businesses.
"In the UK alone, an average of 1,000 servers per day are likely to need to be transitioned in the final year of support. Some customers will take the opportunity to move the server workloads to cloud services, some will undertake a rudimentary incremental upgrade and others will take the opportunity to refine their IT strategy."
A penny for your thoughts?
The other public face of the IT channel is of course the vendor aspect. Where will the increasingly sophisticated, multi-headed channel vending machine invest?
Prior to Christmas the CRN team was inundated with reams of releases announcing vendor predictions for 2015. Here we have shaken out a few of the better ones.
Brother chief Phil Jones offered that the channel will continue to see lots of merger and acquisition activity.
"Key players will want to bolt on new portfolio businesses or lower the cost of acquisitions for market penetration, competitiveness and growth. Large players with outdated business models or cost structures will continue to find conditions challenging as margins remain under pressure."
For some, this means further specialisation; for others, continued expansion of direct business models via white-label services or vertical supply.
And even more vendors will move into the SMB space.
"The whole world is becoming polarised between lowest-cost operators and premium," Jones predicts. "The squeezed middle will be the casualties between the volume and value providers. This will put pressure on business models and also highlight any skills gaps in resellers who are not ready."
Lynn Collier (pictured,right), chief operating officer at HDS, predicts: "Expect to see service integrators establishing divisions that sell infrastructure and traditional resellers differentiating by adding
specialist services."
Her bet is that this will support new kinds of service providers, while customers increasingly look to partners to provide end-to-end solutions. Getting wins on the board here will mean partners will need to hire experts who can both articulate and build these end-to-end offerings.
But there is also a great opportunity for boutique partners to grow next year, focusing exclusively on specific applications such as virtualisation, or targeting individual verticals such as banking or education, she adds - with much of this growth in "as-a-service" options.
"In 2015, vendors will no longer be able to simply hand partners their catalogue and expect them to deliver great results; they will increasingly need to accommodate their partner's business strategy and goals and work with them to find the optimal customer solution," Collier concludes.
Juniper Networks forwarded a statement with something to say about cloud and all things software-defined: "We anticipate companies outside the usual IT circles will rely on the cloud in new ways to deliver their products and services to customers. The rise of mobile payments, connected devices appearing left and right, and the accompanying security considerations, will transform verticals in ways we haven't yet imagined."
More companies will build private clouds to deliver the services their customers want; in 2015, cloud-based systems will be built by all types of business, including some you might not expect, such as oil and gas companies. "In 2015, cloud building becomes a competitive advantage across industries," it says.
Software-defined networking (SDN) will spread across the enterprise market as customers begin to realise the benefits, according to one of Juniper's 2014 studies.
"It's great for simpler network management and cost reduction, but what will companies really do? A key use will be that SDN coupled with analytics will enable provisioning of services before they are asked for," the networking vendor says.
That said, the new year will see companies and channel continue to grapple with the move to services, with vendors themselves needing financial help to bridge the gap between annuities. Selling cloud services means a change to the sales culture, sales cycle and sales staff - while those changes within the channel are yet to be bedded in, or in many cases, even made, Juniper notes.
Kieran Harty, chief technical officer at Tintri, suggests that the software innovation in storage will mean the hardware finally starts to realise earlier promises. The obstacle now is data management. Meanwhile, public cloud capabilities will move into private cloud, giving more enterprises the chance the benefit from scale, security, automation and so on.
"Consider tablets: the hardware was available, but it was the simplicity of management with iOS that transformed the market," Harty says. "In 2015, IT generalists will start to take ownership of their server, virtualisation and storage requirements."
Services providers will proliferate and use storage more for a competitive edge, Harty predicts.
And what about security? Intel Security's McAfee Labs says threats will be more about exploiting new standards and attack surfaces in mobile, across the web, in payments, via the Internet of Things, and cyber espionage - against that ongoing global row about privacy. It also warns that sandboxing may become less useful as a detection strategy.
Raj Samani, EMEA chief technology officer at Intel Security, notes: "2014 saw a huge range of industry attacks, which undoubtedly shook confidence in long-standing internet trust models, consumer confidence in organisations' abilities to protect their data, and organisations' confidence in their ability to efficiently detect and respond to targeted attacks."