Our take: The trends that will shape the channel in the Twenties

Tom Wright talks through some of the themes that CRN expects to be prominent next year and beyond

We're now in the final days of a decade that many fearmongers warned would mark the end of the reseller.

Instead, we're entering the Twenties with the channel in arguably the best health it has been in for a long time. Even the humble PC has enjoyed a renaissance, to the point where components cannot be made fast enough to keep up with demand.

In the UK, the biggest resellers keep getting bigger, while smaller, boutique specialists and managed services providers continue to take the fight to large, sluggish telcos and SIs.

The success being seen in the channel makes it a relatively easy time to be a channel journalist. If anything, our time is more in demand from vendors that perhaps were edging towards a direct route in the past, but now realise how valuable partners are in an IT world that is only getting more complex.

Looking at a list of our most-read stories this year it's clear that, in many ways, the biggest trends in our industry have remained the same for a while.

Stories around consolidation and acquisitions, especially larger deals like Insight buying PCM, will always garner much attention.

Moving into next year, we can expect managed service providers in particular to continue to drive high multiples, as a panel of private equity investors told us earlier this year. The high valuation placed on SecureData is perhaps the most dramatic example of this.

You can view our round-up of 2019's biggest acquisitions here.

Our stories around Microsoft received the most traction of any single vendor by far this year, particularly when it revealed it would be ending IUR support - leading to the most angry channel reaction I've seen in my three and a half years here and, eventually, a U-turn from Microsoft.

But in terms of long-running trends, it was very much a case of business as usual.

Brexit was inescapable - particularly at the start of the year, when the industry was preparing for an end-of-March EU departure. Most people were fed up of talking about it by the middle of the year, but it's likely that 2020 will start in the same fashion as 2019 - with Brexit preparations. A Boris Johnson-led, Conservative-majority government at least provides some clarity around the country's future.

Other geopolitical issues have been bubbling under the surface all year, particularly the US-China trade war which has had vendors scrambling to overhaul supply chains and avoid Trump's tariffs.

Most of the biggest vendors in the channel have seen their businesses impacted, including Dell, HPE and Cisco. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in 2020.

In terms of CRN's plans for next year, we'll continue to push an agenda that we consider to be important for both the channel and wider society.

Our diversity coverage, which started in 2018, was even stronger this year - with the success of the second Women in Channel Awards proving the channel's willingness to address the gender imbalance in our industry. We also launched the Women in Technology Festival with our end-user sister title Computing, which was received better than we could have imagined. This event will return in September 2020.

We'll also be revamping CRN's MSP series of events, having worked hard to improve the quality and relevance of the content at these conferences this year.

Stand-out keynotes included ANS' leadership team revealing how they "burned the boats" of product resell, and cybersecurity expert Graham Cluley talking through some of the stranger security breaches of recent years.

Finally, we expect sustainability to become a bigger factor when businesses make IT decisions - creating both a challenge and opportunity for the channel.

Former England rugby star Andy Gomarsall, who now runs a green IT business, told delegates at a CRN event in October that we are entering the era of re-usability.

Devices as a service is gathering pace, meaning that customers will be regularly returning devices to suppliers; businesses need to squeeze as much money as possible from their current assets before refreshing; and many feel a moral obligation to be more environmentally friendly.

It's something of a perfect storm, and a big opportunity for the channel. You can expect some in-depth sustainability coverage from CRN in 2020.

From the CRN editorial team - thank you for your support this year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.