From the Trenches: A look into the future

OPINION: I hate doing this. It’s that time of year where we look into our crystal ball, or more to the point, take a stab in the dark, in an attempt to find out which technologies and solutions are going to fill channel coffers in 2006.

This year was arguably the year of consolidation in the vendor and reseller/distributor channels.

It seemed as though there was a vendor acquisition every week, an indication that only the strong will survive in this vibrant, yet shrinking industry.

In the distribution market, giant Ingram Micro was charged with the massive job of integrating the Tech Pacific operation, possibly one of the most significant mergers in the channel this year. Numerous resellers, under pressure as a result of shrinking margins and more competition in the market, were desperately looking for merger partners in order to stay alive.

Technology-wise, 2005 was the year when things like storage, security and convergence solutions such as Voice-over-IP became more convincing (despite the vendor hype) and adoption picked up.

In my mind, 2006 is shaping up to be a year when mobility, enterprise application integration (EAI) and security technologies start to get some real traction throughout corporate Australia (see our Outlook 2006 cover story on page 18, Issue 187).

It will be interesting to see what role channel partners will play in the rollout of mobility solutions. As for security, we are already seeing an influx of resellers/integrators getting trained up in data security technologies driven by new vendor and distributor programs that are making it easier for channel players to get a piece of this high-margin market.

So, 2005 was tough and it’s only going to get tougher next year if you don’t identify markets that are on the rise, or worse still, focus on the wrong markets, the ones that are in decline.

Looking into the future is always a difficult thing but from what I am hearing from analysts, the industry should be quite healthy as new and interesting technologies are released and new channels start opening up to take these products to market. So get in early if you can!

What do you think? Click here to mail me your thoughts.