Pipeline 2021: The big tech trends influencing the channel

The last 18 months have been dominated by the shift to working from home and the main technologies which have emerged revolve around facilitating our ability to work from anywhere.

For more great insights from this year's CRN Pipeline click here.

The 2020 CRN Fast50 was dominated by companies providing collaboration, modern workplace, networking and security solutions.

So how will this influence what technologies we look to next? Gartner analyst Derry Finkeldey says that those who have been able to understand what a good outcome looks like, are better equipped to pick the specific solutions which will deliver the best result.

“As technology providers, what becomes really important is that ability to a understand what good looks like and be able to recognize the confident buyer, and the well-informed buying organization from the less well informed you know, who's more likely to get stuck into a long-drawn-out cycle where they can't get consensus in the enterprise, because they haven't agreed what the real purpose and value of it is upfront,” she says.

"We've been talking about this for a long time, but now the data is really there. Now it's becoming really acute. We have to as tech providers not sell but help our customers buy and help our customers make really good decisions.”

Of course, with the increased flexibility technology provides, it brings increased risk. The last year has seen the Prime Minister commit to a cyber strategy for business, showing just how much of a thereat cybercrime is to the economy.

For Unisys APAC advisory director Leon Sayers, the increasing number of cyber-attacks has put security top of mind for people in all industries.

“When we start hearing about breaches and governments being concerned around the level of security, the concerns around vulnerabilities in people's environments, and when the government starts talking about vulnerabilities, [this has a significant impact],” Sayers says.

“I think a lot of organisations have been focused on the technology side of security. So, they've been making sure that their perimeters are strong, they've got detection processes in place.

“But some of the organizations weren't focused on the phishing training and the ransomware training for their staff.”

But perhaps the most interesting development for Sayers is employees demanding a more of a consumer-like experience in the workplace.

“Organisations are now having staff coming back to them going, ‘I want multi-factor authentication, I want these other capabilities I have in my consumer world. But I want them in a way that is very similar to my consumer world,” he explains.

“So, it's a balancing act, and we're seeing that in the procurement requests of some of the customers who are asking questions around user experience and security and ICM.

"So, I think that's a bit of a shift that we've seen across the landscape in the in the last 12 months.”