Infinigate Chief Growth Officer: Channel skills market still 'pressurised'
Simon England says finding people fast enough to support growth is the number one issue in the channel
The recruitment market for channel personnel is still pressurised, and finding people fast enough to support growth remains the number one issue in the channel.
That's according to Simon England, chief growth officer of Infinigate, speaking to CRN recently at GTDC (Global Technology Distributor Council) EMEA in Amsterdam.
"Most recently the number one issue in the channel is finding people fast enough to support growth," said England. "Salary expectations have been going through the roof, and everyone has been trying to hire at the same time," he continued.
He added that the recent swathe of redundancies at tech firms has helped to an extent, with partners and end user firms able to recruit the talent released by vendors.
"There's been a lot of change in staffing on the vendor side. So the market was quite pumped up but it's cooling now. For a while vendors were sucking up all the talent, but now it's the opposite.
"Supporting that growth is the task for us. Supporting partners supporting end users in this growing environment - and it's still a pressurised market when it comes to skills."
England went on to discuss the security market, stating that it's not enough simply to operate in the security market, a broad range of capabilities are now required.
"There's a wider definition of cyber now, it also includes secure networking and secure cloud. As a partner you have to have all of those capabilities. That's where our recent acquisitions fit in nicely. We acquired Vuzion last year, and they're now rebranded in the UK as Infinigate cloud. Just before that we acquired Nuvias in the UK, which is a strong networking business. So the proposition now truly is cyber specialisms."
He went on to discuss the way the distribution market has changed, stating that partners can no longer just strike deals with the big vendors, but must look for a broader, more innovative portfolio.
"For many years the philosophy was to get yourself trained up with a vendor and the business will come. Now the vendor's brand doesn't carry the same weight. It's what happens with the tech that makes the difference.
"Land and expand and move to a renew doesn't happen on its own. One way to find interesting new vendors is to speak to your people and find out who they know. Another is to look at the market, the Gartner quadrants and Forrester Waves."
A third recommendation according to England is to look at where investors are placing their bets.
"Or take a look at what the smart money is doing with new cyber businesses. Are they well-funded, are they in the next round of being well-funded? If they're well-backed that means someone believes in them. Do they care about Europe?"
But this doesn't mean partners should strike deals with anyone, he added.
"Apply intelligent filtering to see what's really happening beyond the hype. Check the tech, does it work in our world? You're trying to answer who it's for and what would it take to implement, don't just say is it good enough. We're tech experts but even more so we're channel experts," he concluded.