Distributors must unite AWS and Azure to succeed in cloud: Canalys

All of Australia's major distributors have launched cloud marketplaces in the past 18-24 months, bringing a diverse spread of infrastructure-as-a-service and SaaS vendors to the market.

Ingram's marketplace leans heavily on Microsoft, particularly driving Office 365 migrations. The distributor supports complementary vendors such as BitTitan and SkyKick. Ingram acquired the Odin system behind its marketplace in December 2015.

Both Westcon and Distribution Central (now Arrow) included AWS as they launched their marketplaces. Like Ingram, Westcon went on to acquire the platform underneath its cloud marketplace, which it launched in July 2015.

Arrow has now forged partnerships with both AWS and Microsoft, following its appointment as an indirect Cloud Solution Provider with a heavy focus on Azure.

Synnex launched its cloud automation platform in March with Rackspace and IBM Softlayer as partners, and earlier this month announced the addition of Microsoft following the distributor's appointment as an indirect CSP.

Dicker Data announced its cloud marketplace in July 2015 and has since been appointed as a Microsoft indirect CSP and secured deals with a series of vendors to help partners with cloud migration services.

Rhipe's cloud play also centres around Microsoft as one of Australia's first indirect CSPs. Rhipe also aligns with IBM Softlayer to allow partners to host software on SoftLayer's "bare metal" servers.

Avnet's cloud marketplace offers support for a range of cloud providers. Its Cloud Toolset supports AWS and IBM Softlayer and allows users to track cloud usage and charges, generate bills and invoices and package subscription-based services.

The distributor is a Cloud OS Network partner with Microsoft, which means Avnet's data centre architecture is technically validated with Microsoft Azure. Avnet signed up as the first Australian distributor of US telco CenturyLink in April 2016.

Buttonwood's King said: "There are a lot of companies out there doing billing, there are companies out there doing orchestration, there are companies out there doing aggregation of SaaS services, there are companies out there doing analytics. But you need an ecosystem architecture because none of them can play harmoniously without knowledge of the other."

During Brazier's keynote at Canalys, which is the fifth APAC outing of the company's annual conference, he said distributors across the region are struggling to find growth and this has hastened consolidation. He pointed to Arrow's acquisition of Distribution Central and Tech Data's impending takeover of Avnet TS as two major examples.

"We would expect more consolidation and a move toward a market where there are maybe three or perhaps four dominant players around the globe. When industries stop growing they consolidate – across the board whatever industry that might be," he added.

CRN is a media partner of Canalys. The journalist travelled to Macau as a guest of the conference organiser.