Which established manufacturers will kick on this year? We asked executives from VARs and MSPs including Softcat, OCSL and ANS for their tips
Martin Hess
Chairman, OCSL
Tips: Cisco, Microsoft Azure, Pure Storage
OCSL is traditionally an HPE house, but its chairman Martin Hess said the firm is getting "closer and closer" to Cisco as it pushes deeper into software and annuity revenue streams under new(ish) CEO Chuck Robbins.
Although Cisco remains heavily dependent on routing and switching revenue streams, Hess praised the giant for making "smart" acquisitions that have made it a more relevant player outside its network manager stronghold.
"AppDynamics is the biggest play for them because it takes them into that DevOps world," Hess (pictured) said. "It's going to be quite a challenge for their salesforce to get to grips with the sort of people who will buy AppDynamics, but it does put them into quite a pivotal position in terms of running an account. And it takes them into the AI space and makes them a much more business-relevant player than where routers and switches have ended up."
Pure Storage will "continue to do well", while OCSL is also "betting a lot of its future" on Microsoft Azure, Hess added.
"I don't know who's going to come out on top between AWS and Microsoft," he said. "It doesn't matter to us. They have different starting places. If you're in the app dev community, AWS is a logical go-to partner, whereas if you come from the enterprise applications and Office space, which is where we and most of our customers come from, then Microsoft is the go-to partner. We are certainly getting an awful lot of our new logos and leads from Azure."
