Technology Reseller - v14 2018

One growing area of opportunity for IoT is in smart buildings, to create greater efficiencies in energy use and to create environments that best fit an organisation’s culture technolog y reseller.co.uk 37 RESEARCH MARKET SNAPSHOT CONTEXT IT Distributors Facing Major Challenge from Etailers IT distributors have come under increasing pressure from online retailers this year, with many resellers buying up to 30% of their stock through the likes of Amazon, according to the latest annual ChannelWatch report from CONTEXT. ​The market analyst’s ChannelWatch 2018 report, compiled from interviews with a representative sample of 7,000 resellers in 14 countries, found that 14% of responding resellers buy as much as 20-30% of their stock from etailers; 16% buy 10-20%; and 30% buy up to 10%. A few claimed to buy everything through online retailers, displacing traditional distributors. The countries most loyal to distributors were Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Turkey. Price was pushed into second place from last year by product availability as the main reason resellers are flocking to online retailers. Product availability was a particularly strong factor in Russia and France but less of an issue in the UK and Germany. Pricing was the main issue in Germany, Turkey and Poland. ‘Ease of doing business’ was the number one reason for buying from etailers in the UK, Portugal and Slovakia, highlighting the importance of having a regularly updated website with accurate and detailed product information. Although overall IT distribution revenue grew 5.1% year-on-year in 1H 2018, the growing pressure from online retailers shows no signs of abating, with Amazon launching a B2B business in 2017. The best chance for distributors to cope with this disruption is to focus on value-added services and solution-driven areas where they can help with complex issues such as cloud, which represents a $34bn opportunity for them. They should take account of changing reseller expectations, not just around price and product availability, but also customer service. When asked what resellers liked most about their distributor, the provision of B2B customer portals jumped six places compared to last year’s survey to take the number one slot. There’s also room for growth in terms of educating the channel: training in IoT and sales techniques were in demand across the regions surveyed, with cloud dropping slightly from last year. However, 30% of resellers claimed there were no areas where training would be valuable — rising to 40% in France and Germany. “The transformation of IT distribution has been driven in large part by the growing presence of major etailers and changing reseller expectations. Smaller resellers especially feel increasingly that their interests are not being looked after by distributors, and they’re flocking online as a result,” said Adam Simon, Global MD for CONTEXT. “However, it’s not time for distributors to hit the panic button. By focusing on things like customer service, training and adding value in areas like the cloud and multiple new service areas they can find ways to differentiate. Reassuringly, distributors continue to invest in infrastructure and skills to support their clients. But we may see price pressures push several players into finding economies of scale via acquisition over the coming year — potentially in APAC and LATAM.” www.contextworld.co.uk Putting IoT to work Office furniture manufacturer Steelcase is using Azure IoT to design solutions that improve the employee experience. Last year, it introduced the Workplace Advisor solution, built on the Microsoft Azure IoT platform, which collects and analyses anonymous data to provide organisations with insights about how people work and how their office is performing e.g. the amount of overused/underutilised spaces. It is now leveraging Azure IoT again, this time in its new Find app, which helps employees find and reserve spaces to meet or work. Users can enter specific space requirements, such as room capacity, and find out about factors like technology, whiteboards and natural light levels. www.steelcase.com help managers make decisions about heating and cooling in particular areas and identify if rooms are under or over-utilised as meeting spaces, if a room is too large or small to serve typical meetings and requires modification, and many other drivers toward maximum ROI around facilities,” he said. Angela Evans adds that by incorporating sensors that can connect to Azure IoT, Microsoft is making it easier for partners to develop solutions for customers. “One growing area of opportunity for IoT is in smart buildings, to create greater efficiencies in energy use and to create environments that best fit an organisation’s culture. We’re building spatial intelligence capabilities in Azure IoT to democratise smart spaces for our partners. These features enable partners to focus on innovation at the application level, instead of spending considerable time on foundation and connective tissue that is invisible to their customers. The ability to query data in the context of a space, rather than from disparate sensors sets our partners up for building repeatable and scalable solutions, now and in the future,” she said. www.microsoft.com/en-gb www.avocor.com www.sharp.co.uk