Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
IT spending is set to rebound this year to hit $4tn globally, according to Gartner, as customers make remote working a permanent part of their culture.
Devices, enterprise software and IT services are set to be the hottest growth areas this year, Gartner claims, but where do channel partners see opportunities in the months ahead?
CRN asked 10 reseller bosses to tell us which technologies they're tipping for success over the coming months.
Alex Louth
Job title: UK managing director, Logicalis
Biggest opportunity: Cybersecurity
Quote:
It probably would've been my answer 10 years ago and it would still be right. I think security is unbelievably important for us now. We've got to bake security in from day one. It can't be something where we have 87 solutions in our datacentre and we don't have a real vision of what it is.
That market has changed quite a bit over the last few years. And I think it's really, really important for us to be able to talk to customers and say, ‘right, we're talking about security on day one rather than introducing it later down the line'. One customer I spoke to had 100-odd security vendors aligned - and you're not going to drive the results you want from that. So that's going to be a real focus.
We're all in our own extensions of our offices now as well. So we need to look at what has come out of the pandemic, what has changed, but also how we're working it in with our hybrid cloud messages. How is security going to form a huge, important part of that journey for the customer? Because you're never going to move a secure environment on-prem to a not-so-secure environment in the cloud. You want that consistency, and that is the place that I think us and others will be will be looking to mature as much as the cloud will let us.
Click through to find out which reseller boss is betting on Cato Networks, Palo Alto and Riverbed this year
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Etienne Greeff
Job title: CEO, Flow Communications
Biggest opportunities: Mellanox, Palo Alto Networks, Cato Networks, Riverbed
Quote:
Mellanox and their datacentre switches are really, really interesting and for me is really interesting vendor. I know it's an old vendor, but they are doing some really smart things. Then Palo Alto are doing things that are difficult for an established vendor to do; they're innovating and bringing new things to the market in interesting ways. If you look at their recent acquisitions, Twistlock, Aporeto, they're really becoming an extremely credible cloud player. And of course they've recently acquired an SD-WAN vendor. So if you look at Palo's strategy, it's the same as the Flow strategy in this converged network with datacentre, cloud, and with cyber underneath.
Then, of course, there's some other vendors, which are coming up like Cato and of course Riverbed is doing some really interesting stuff at the moment. They're becoming more and more relevant, because, again, they talk to this whole converged infrastructure way, which is where most customers are.
Click through to find out which cloud partner is backing managed DevOps and managed detection and response
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Susan Bowen
Job title: CEO, Aptum
Biggest opportunities: Managed detection and response and managed DevOps services
Quote:
Managed AWS has been very popular for the mid-market. We also added new cloud connectivity providing dedicated secure connections for all of the cloud services such as AWS Direct, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft ExpressRoute. So by providing that Cloud Connect availability, which was obviously taken up very quickly, we launched those products at the time that COVID hit so that we could benefit from that demand we anticipated.
In parallel, those two products going extremely well are managed detect and response with Alert Logic which we partnered with. That's a technology that helps us to provide security and meeting that board conversation right now around security demands across all organisations. And here at Aptum, we're actually Alert Logic's exclusive Canadian partner and we're very pleased to be able to do that. But we also provide those services, of course, in Europe too. And then disaster recovery as a service, which we actually provide into Azure. We saw that grow.
The product, which surprised which has seen growth but not as fast as we expected is the managed DevOps service. And that's really about trying to engage with clients who need sought-after skill sets, such as DevOps, containerisation and Kubernetes work. We did see some take up but I think it was very early to market. We're starting now, as the pandemic situation is becoming more known. We're seeing customers now start to look at what application they need to convert to the cloud, and what's involved in doing that. So everything managed DevOps services is something we'll start seeing grow over the coming year.
Click through to find out which top 50 reseller is backing automation as a key opportunity during the Covid recovery
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Scott Dodds
Job title: CEO, Ultima
Biggest opportunity: Microsoft Power Automate
Quote:
Microsoft Power Automate and what they've done with their acquisition of Softomotive, and how companies are now looking at how they automate some of their core processes using embedded technologies. As far as the Microsoft piece is concerned, that's a big shift, and I think we'll see a lot more of that this year and I think it has just highlighted that whole point about efficiency and automation generally.
I think automation of the workspace as well. We have a product that we call Autonomous Workspace. I think this hybrid working thing is going to be forever, frankly. I think most companies will have some office space and some remote working, and managing that remote workspace is a really interesting one. I think the concept of desktop as-a-service or devices as-a-service or workspaces as-a-service; all those things have been played with in many ways but they've not actually been really deeply deployed, so I think you're going to see a big shift in that.
Where I'm sitting the device I'm using has been remotely managed for the best part of 12 months and nobody's ever been near it, apart from updating the software, and it has never missed a beat. So, again, that's the point about automation; you can deliver this quality of service without any issues whatsoever. I think that's another area which will extend the automation story and a lot of that is going to be topical this year and next year.
Click through to find out what Bytes' boss Neil Murphy sees as the biggest opportunity
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Neil Murphy
Job title: CEO, Bytes
Biggest opportunity: As-a-service/subscriptions
Quote:
I don't have my crystal ball with me today but customers are continually refreshing, upgrading, they need to maintain their own competitive advantage on a continual basis.
So what's good about our industry is consistent upgrading, refreshing as IT continues to keep us all employed. We're quite heavily focused on the software side of the business and a great majority of our business is subscription software as a service, which is renewed annually.
We want to make sure customers are getting good value for money so they keep coming back to us.
For us, it's not so much about IT and IT trends, it's about delivering good products and services to our customers, so that they can take advantage of whatever IT, whatever new technology is coming down the road. We want to be there to fulfil it for them, to make sure they have access to the best IT, best software and best hardware and the best services.
I think a continued focus on customer service, customer satisfaction should is a big component of our growth plans for literally years ahead.
All of the big software publishers globally now are pretty much doing everything on a subscription basis via the cloud. It's easy for customers to consume, it's easy for vendors to put these annual programmes in place, and it's easy for partners as well to work with vendors to deliver subscription based licencing services. I see that trend continuing.
We've seen a little bit of un-clouding with some of our customers, so it is a bit of a mixed picture.
I think hybrid cloud, hybrid data centre solutions will be playing their part continually. A lot of customers want to keep control over a lot of their data and workloads in their own datacentres.
We have seen a lot of customers investing more in that side of things this past year. I think that that's going to continue.
Gartner and IDC and all these analysts, they're predicting continued growth over the next few years. That gives us all the confidence in the business model for the future.
Click through to see what By It Direct's Nick Glynne sees as the biggest long-term opportunity
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Nick Glynne
Job title: CEO, Buy It Direct
Biggest opportunity: Connected devices
Quote:
The question for us, because we're not just in IT and we also bring our own products in from overseas, is: can we, in an e-tail environment, leverage connected devices from the point of view of having customer relation, can we support those products better in a connected way if those devices were all connected?
And we still have to figure that one out. That's probably our big technical challenge. It's not just an IT challenge, it's a connected home challenge, whether it's washing machines telling them and us that their motors about to run out and giving us detailed technical information, as well as providing the customer with a connected home.
That's our challenge, how can we commercialise it properly and how can we benefit from the service benefit from connectivity?
From an operator support point of view, how can how can we understand what's happening with devices in our customers' home or premises so that we can better support the customer?
Things like pre-emptive support that we know something's going to happen before the customer does. How can we provide a wow experience around support using that connectivity inbuilt in devices?
It's there on the horizon but we haven't given it enough thinking time yet.
Click through to see what Insight's UK boss Darren Hedley sees as the biggest opportunity in the post-Covid market
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Darren Hedley
Job title: UK managing director, Insight
Biggest opportunity: Cloud-based and as-a-service solutions
Quote:
It's an interesting question because the market moves really quickly. I think where we're going to see benefits and the biggest opportunity is around that enablement for hybrid working for customers, more of the cloud-based solutions that we're seeing.
It links in to the as-a-service conversation and the moves around Capex and Opex for customers.
Any technology that enables that agility, not just for us to be able to respond but for customers to be able to respond to the unknown, which I guess is what we're all trying to work to now, I think that's where the opportunity is.
We're seeing lots of uptake here around digital innovation. Things like how customers can work digitally smarter whether that's app-based deployments or whether that includes virtual technologies. I think we're seeing much stronger demand in those areas at the moment.
Click through to find out which Northern Irish partner is betting on security and secure access this year
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Iain O'Kane,
Job title: managing director, Xperience Group
Biggest opportunity: Secure/remote access
Quote:
I'm sure you've spoken to many providers, and the first thing we're going to say is remote working. That has been interesting because everything happened really quickly.
You have supply and demand problems and you've only got a finite amount of resources. But remote working is not just a matter of ‘here's your laptop, away you go'. Whether they can get access to their systems is a big thing and security and access to systems remotely is a huge issue.
We've actually got some very, very focused work going on to ensure we can offer adequate security solutions, because the financial consequences of those type of fraud hacks, if you want to call them that, are significant. The mischievous type of activity where it's just designed for disruption is damaging. We're seeing more and more clients come to us and say ‘we need a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan' because they won't get, for example, business insurance without having some form of continuity plan.
The common questions: ‘how do I get more out of my system, how do I protect my system, and how do I grow by using the systems rather than by using people', those are more important than ever. Customers are not necessarily trying to reduce headcount but are trying to scale and deliver more with the same headcount.
Cliff Fox
Job title: COO, Pure
Biggest opportunity: IoT
Quote:
For us, everything right now is on the cloud piece and that's what the market is wanting and needing. But for the last few years, we've been pushing ahead with the IoT piece, because where we're at with cloud now is where IoT is going to be in a few years' time.
So it's incumbent on us as our customers' advisor to do the work on new and emerging tech that they're going to need going ahead and also put them on the roadmap for that. So for me, IoT is top of the agenda in terms of our innovation piece.
Click through to find out where Air-IT boss Todd McQuilkin is placing his bets during the UK's Covid recovery
Ten reseller bosses reveal which technologies they're tipping for success post-Covid
Bosses from Logicalis, Ultima, Bytes and more reveal opportunities amid the UK’s Covid recovery
Todd McQuilkin
Job title: Non-executive director, Air-IT
Biggest opportunity: Microsoft Dynamics, cybersecurity
Quote:
For us its business transformation and Dynamics and getting companies to understand it, invest in it, and use data so they can drive their own businesses forward to best of class like we do in our sector. We're really pushing the cybersecurity piece too, which is very important. People are lagging behind on that and need to understand how important it is for their business as well. So investing in future technology around security as well.