Why you should have gone to Canalys...

Just over a week ago I had the opportunity to host some of our key partners at Canalys 2019 in Taipei.

Canalys Channels Forum has grown to become the largest independent IT channels event in APAC, bringing together both the global vendor, distributor and reseller communities to discuss industry trends, opportunities and develop new relationships. Dicker Data is extremely proud to support this key networking event, the team is already looking forward to next year!

This year we were hosted by Steve Brazier (CEO, Canalys) and Gemma Edwards (Snr Marketing and Events, Canalys) in the amazing city of Taipei, Taiwan.

On the opening day, Steve delivered an excellent keynote that I felt resonated well and was very applicable to our market in New Zealand. I also got to see the new Lenovo X1 tablet and Razr smartphone foldable in person – and boy I am excited to see this development hit our shores!!!  It was difficult to see any faults in the fold (time will tell), and it the retro Razr face harked back to the good old days! Really interesting to see a “flip up” over the favored “fold open” of the Samsung Fold.

In talking mobility Steve discussed was the drive around 5G, Wifi6 and LoRa increasing connected devices to 32.3 billion by 2023! That is not a long time from now, and certainly no Jules Vern novel – this is now. 

These connected devices might be smart phones, but they might be cameras, robots, vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, obviously PCs and other technology products – like LED light bulbs perhaps!

Highlighting the global pressures and political unrest around the world, including the extreme weather events that are placing incredible stress on economies, Steve also talked to trade wars and the slowing Chinese economy meaning that business flexibility and the ability to react to change has now become the number one business requirement.

In terms of the market Canalys estimates that networking is still growing but that growth has dropped from 6% globally. Hyperscalers that invested in 2017/18 have slowed in 2019 for servers.

Data growth is growing and set to increase – and Asia is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the world.

Interestingly the handheld market has plateaued, but Steve suggested this was most likely in line with expectations for 5G.

Cloud is the "big boy" in the market and in the Asian region, it is "off the hook" – but the adoption is based in a mature market where Hybrid Cloud is being best adopted.

This has set up an interesting “fight” between on prem infrastructure and public cloud. The winners emerging at the end of the day are the RedHats, VMware’s and Nutanix’s of the world, driving the the ability to be able to move data and applications from on premise or private cloud to a public cloud and maybe back again to optimize for latency and for pricing.

However, the key takeaway for myself from what Steve said was “Each of those products, need to be sold, maintained and delivered, perhaps “as a service” – and that is the job for the Channel!

A cool discussion was a click bait type set up that reinforced this. We saw an array of large global SI’s that had you invested in them 5 years ago you would have doubled your money…. However, in contrast had you invested in a Channel organization like Insight in the past 5 years you would have tripled your money!

“The channel is on fire. Investors are recognising it. We're seeing private equity firms investing in channel companies… [people that say] the channel doesn't have a future it's run by aging people they haven't transformed.

They are completely wrong…” 

Channel revenues globally have risen 11%! I love this, and possibly why it was so easy for me to move back to a channel-based role this year at Dicker Data NZ.

For me the most interesting topical discussion was around the importance of security. Here Steve also highlighted from a long list of security related subjects:

1.     Building surveillance – physical security. Attacks can happen inside your organization, so knowing who accessed what and when is a thing….

2.     Ethical hacks – authorised hacking to find vulnerabilities (as apposed to un-authorised hack, and a BOM for the things you need to solve them…)

3.     Devices for travel – more businesses that trust their people, but don’t trust the environments that they do business in, driving more and more client devices to isolate the business from treats.

4.     Monitoring dark web – “Do your customers know how much of their information is already available for sale. How many of their passwords are available for sale because they were part of one of the great hacks” – Marriot, Starwood, Sony…. The list is extensive.

5.     Cloud access and API’s – leveraging external links of you customers or your customers customer to you!

We know security is important and cybersecurity is a well monetized concern for businesses – but I didn’t realise how broad this has become!

Finally, the Predictions!!  And I quote:

1.     “Google Cloud will buy at least one big hardware and/or software company within 12 months”. Google needs to grow its customer base and needs a channel.

2.     [Cisco and VMware’s] “great leaders will not share the same stage by 2021”. SDWAN and control of the multi-cloud environment will be a battle ground.

3.     “Within three years, Chinese companies will become the leaders in AI, smart cities, 5G, Exascale computing and microfinance.” The forced reduction and reliance on American companies is changing the world.

An interesting time ahead….

Canalys for me – albeit a whirlwind of 22hrs in a plane and 48hrs on the ground – was a much more insightful and interesting event than I had expected.

It was a great opportunity to gain insights and network with known and new company representatives. Also, to gain 1-1 time with executives from customers and vendors we represent in New Zealand like Lenovo, Dell and APC was awesome, and I am looking forward to hosting the NZ contingent next year – bigger and better than before.