The channel's best quotes and most impactful predictions of 2023

Which channel leaders had the clearest view of the future throughout 2023?

2023 was a year of key shifts in the IT channel, some of which will continue to impact the industry in the coming years.

Some of the biggest names in the IT channel changed roles, businesses were acquired, new tech was explored and many predictions were made.

Here, we look back on some of the grand commitments and most impactful comments of the year, as well as how some of them have panned out so far.

Stuart Fenton, owner of Ingentive on talent and retention

"During Covid, a lot of companies - including Quantiq - made a decision not to lay anyone off and weather the storm. Keeping these people employed, looking after them in tough times, was the right thing to do," Stuart Fenton, founder of QUANTIC and owner of MSP Ingentive, formerly Akari, told CRN in February this year.

As much as they were an assessment of the previous 12 months, his words turned out to be prophetic, as the channel continued to see layoffs on the vendor side and beyond.

But Fenton's approach - reskill before turning to layoffs - has also been employed elsewhere in the channel during this challenging year - from Westcon-Comstor to Westcoast.

"Given that was such a short time ago, I wondered why the same doesn't apply now. If there's an energy crisis, and suddenly there's a bit of a downturn, it didn't seem right to lay people off when there is still a lot of opportunity in the market. It was an easy decision to lay off, rather than work hard to refocus these people in different areas," Fenton concluded, in words that would turn out to be incredibly apt later in 2023.

Read on for the channel's comments on M&A strategy, the biggest acquisition of the year, and the future of generative AI...

M&A for scale vs capability: James Rigby, CEO of SCC and Mark Cox, director of M&A at Node4

This year has seen a staggering number of acquisitions in the channel. Among resellers and MSPs, two distinct approaches to M&A have emerged. In March, upon buying out reseller Vokhus, SCC CEO James Rigby summarised the acquisition:

"It's not a cost/integration play; it's an enablement play to harvest customers it would have taken us a long time to win, and then go and sell more stuff to them," he said.

"This is a classic scale play."

However, scale was not the only reason why resellers entered the M&A arena this year. On the other end of the spectrum, Node4 completed its third acquisition in 18 months this past September, moving to a more capability-focused approach.

"The M&A strategy has not just been about buy and scale. It's always been about adding capability and this is a new capability as well for us," director of M&A Mark Cox told CRN at the time.

"The last 18 months we've done three quite large deals. I think we have built quite a considerable platform now, and I think the future M&A strategy will be to look to tuck into particular areas that we'd want to bolster in terms of capability around data, different pockets of Microsoft skills where we think there's more opportunity."

Broadcom's acquisition of VMWare was met with scepticism by UK partners

One specific piece of M&A occupied much of the channel's attention this year.

Broadcom's planned takeover of VMWare languished in regulatory limbo for most of the year and was eventually completed in late November, two weeks after the company's stated plan.

But even before the regulatory hurdles, UK channel partners expressed some measured scepticism about the VMWare's stated plan to become a viable cloud competitor, based on Broadcom's backing of said strategy.

"Broadcom's acquisition could provide the much-needed scale for VMware to actualise its multi-cloud strategy, mainly because of Broadcom's resources and expansive reach, Rob Smith, CTO at Creative ITC commented for CRN's reaction round-up at the time.

"The stated plan to invest an additional $1bn a year in R&D, build up deployment support capabilities, and double VMware's professional services capabilities demonstrates a clear commitment to this goal.

However, the efficacy of this move is contingent on whether Broadcom can successfully address the identified areas where VMware has struggled in the past.

The importance of governance in the AI race: Rob Pooley, solutions director at Saepio

As the year unfolded, generative AI took on a larger share of the spotlight - an impressive feat, considering 2022 had already ended with bombastic announcements from ChatGPT creator, OpenAI.

But as the vendors - from Microsoft, to Google, to even the likes of NVIDIA and Zoom touted the benefits of generative AI, concerns about the speed of development and potential lapses in governance became apparent.

"The traditional tech mentality of ‘move fast and break things' is a dangerous culture for AI development," S aepio's Pooley told CRN in reaction to the saga of Sam Altman's dismissal and subsequent return to OpenAI in November.

"I expect the safety concerns arising from profit driven tech firms is a point of debate in the saga that's unfolding at OpenAI.

"Whatever the outcome, I very much hope stringent AI development governance is firmly implemented and no corners are cut in the desire to lead the AGI race."

While the vendors are in a race to the next big thing, a trend is emerging both in comments and data from channel partners to bide their time and adopt the technology strategically.