Guy Golan
CEO, Performanta
Recession-fuelled technology tips: Protecting digital assets from laid-off employees, vendor consolidation and stack alignment services
In the danger zone: Cloud spending
What technology solution or service are you betting on to help customers in the event of a recession later this year?
In my view there will be two dominant categories, namely cost saving and protection of digital assets from laid-off employees/unhappy employees.
Cost saving:
- Technology and vendor consolidation and stack alignment (ie merge of IT and ItSec - eg E5 that includes security, voip etc)
- CFO sale more than a security team sale (need to position value holistically)
- Technology integration and ecosystem that will leverage security fabric across disparate tech. Ie vendors that don't play well with others will be at risk
- Maximising existing investments, before new spend
- Customers would be more inclined to invest for longer term to secure discounts, however this means selecting the right tool becomes even more important. Rip and replace will become less viable.
- "As a service" - subscription-based outsourcing (tech and license wrap) ie true MSS thus becomes very relevant
- Highly effective/low cost point/low TCO (ie MDR/XDR/WAF, Zero trust)
- Security partnership and an effective roadmap, based on low TCO, high value return and turnkey
Protection of digital assets:
- hybrid data governance, data loss prevention, data classification and identity & access management tools.
- I presume most will be accelerated to be properly utilised in organisations as most companies will have some/all of these tools.
Conversely, are there any technology areas where you are anticipating a spending crunch?
Personally, I think there might be a move back into datacentre/on prem (cloud cost is accelerating, especially on the strong US$). Alternatively, companies will slow down cloud adoption and major programmes, which normally consume a hefty amount of money before any value is shown (cloud may be one of those).
I think there might be a move back into datacentre/on prem (cloud cost is accelerating, especially on the strong US$)
How do you feel an economic downturn will play out for the UK IT channel more broadly?
I don't think this will massively affect highly regulated and enforced markets. The cost of not doing security is much higher than recessionary costs from a tech sale perspective, however customers will increasingly look for "proof of value", in tech and services, so good service providers with relevant tech and services mix will stand out.
Vendors may be tempted to approach the market directly and marginalise the channel. This may turn to be a short-sighted view that will cause credibility issues between the vendors, distributors and resellers.
See next page to find out why Highgate's Bob Sahota thinks tier-two vendors and distributors might win during the downturn...
