Five eye-catching statements from day one of Canalys Forum 2021

The biggest talking points from the headline speeches at the Canalys Forum 2021

The Canalys Forum 2021 kicked off today with headline speeches from three of the company's top analysts.

Operating virtually once again this year, chief analysts Matthew Ball and Alastair Edwards, as well as VP of channels Alex Smith addressed resellers to highlight the key trends they see shaping the channel.

Here are five of the boldest statements made by Canalys across the first day of its Forum…

Matthew Ball: ‘Our dependence on semiconductors for digital transformation threatens to impact our recovery from the pandemic'

In his headline speech at the Canalys Forum titled ‘The Race Against Time', Canalys', Ball highlighted the key areas where tech companies are being forced to quickly adapt.

Among those key issues included the global semiconductor shortage, which Ball said "threatens to impact our recovery from the pandemic" because of the massive difference between demand and supply.

"We are in a crisis, with demand exceeding supply by an estimated 30 per cent and lead times extended up to a year," he said.

"Current supply issues threaten to delay projects further. We're already seeing it, with some customers pausing their plans until supply increases and prices fall.

"Stock availability is now a key competitive differentiator for both vendors and partners. Supply issues will ease over the next three years as factories catch up with all the backlog and as new capacity comes online, but this race to fulfil demand will continue."

Matthew Ball: ‘The rise in ransomware highlights we have fallen short of what is required'

Another issue highlighted by Ball was that of the rise in ransomware, and how attacks have exposed weaknesses among businesses which is made worse by shortages of cybersecurity skills.

He said: "We are in a race against time to be cyber resilient. This means withstanding existing threats and adapting to detect new ones, as well as responding quickly to attacks. It also means recovering quickly after an incident.

"The rise in ransomware highlights we have fallen short of what is required. This has not been helped by the expansion of our attack surface as we made a digital leap. More remote working and acceleration of cloud services adoption has exposed vulnerabilities.

"Governments are now providing best practices, but we also have a people shortage in cybersecurity, particularly in penetration testing, incident response and forensics analysis."

Alex Smith: ‘The global supply chain looks to be in disarray for years to come'

Canalys' VP of channels, Alex Smith, used his headline speech at the virtual event to pick out "five major forces" which are shaping the IT industry.

And one of those forces was the challenges facing the supply chain, particularly given the rising costs of rare earth metals that are used in devices.

He said: "The global supply chain looks to be in disarray for years to come. There are many reasons as to why - COVID related factory closures, global freight disruptions, component shortages - just to name a few.

"But one crucial factor at the end of the chain is the inflated prices and limited supply of rare earth metals. Prices of these rare earth metals have increased significantly over the past year. Lithium is up 150 per cent as demand for batteries surge, gallium, which is used in circuits and semiconductors, is up over 50 per cent.

"The tech supply chain will continue to compete with the automobile markets and the green energy markets as rare earth metals become critical to the things that we want to build in the years to come. The reality is that these prices will continue to increase, adding to the global inflation challenges that we are faced with."

Alastair Edwards: ‘The PC renaissance has created growth that's going to fuel the industry for years to come'

Chief analyst at Canalys, Alastair Edwards, developed on what his colleagues had said in their speeches by relating the impact of their predictions and analysis to the channel.

Among the most notable of his statements was that the growth in the PC market driven by the shift to hybrid working during the pandemic will continue to fuel growth for years to come - even if PC shipments are expected to slow over the next few quarters.

"While the PC market is facing an inevitable slowdown in the next few quarters on the massive growth from consumer education and business we've seen over 2020 and 2021, Canalys still expects a wave of PC refreshes over the next few years as well as the fulfilment of order backlogs across the world," he said.

"The PC renaissance has created growth that's going to fuel the industry for years to come and the good news for the channel is this creates an opportunity to extend solution sales beyond the device to include the back-end infrastructure, the tools and the applications to support this new hybrid work model."

Alastair Edwards: ‘More and more customers, particularly the largest, but also mid-market and SMBs, are finding the skills they need to make decisions are actually lacking in their channel partners'

Edwards identified the main threat facing channel firms as the failure to keep up with the demands from customers to help with their digital transformation.

"What they're doing is shifting from infrastructure-led to an application and workload-based planning model that supports the direct needs of their business and the business outcomes that we all talk about," he added.

"And that's what we now see driving acceleration in multi-cloud hybrid IT and now edge investments, as well as automation and AI technologies. So from a channel's point of view, more than anything, customers are looking for a partner who can help them on that journey.

"The biggest threat that we see to the channel is a failure to keep up with these demands and more and more customers, particularly our largest, but also mid-market and SMBs, are finding the skills they need to make those decisions are actually lacking in their channel partners.

"And that's going to drive customers to do one of three things. They're going to turn to vendors to provide those skills, they'll find alternative IT partners, or they're going to build those skills internally."