Technology Reseller v35

Gary Sievers 01732 759725 24 PREDICTIONS 2021 2 AI will free resellers to focus on adding value Over the course of 2020, AI and machine learning have become more pervasive, and we expect that to continue well into the New Year. In the data protection space, bots will play a bigger role in monitoring the success of backups and in self-healing should file copies become corrupted. With this bread-and-butter activity handled automatically, channel partners that manage this on behalf of their customers will be free to focus on value-added activities instead. 3 Extended multi-cloud complexity will increase reliance on the channel Recent Veritas research shows that the average business is using more than 11 different cloud providers to build its networks. This diversity allows organisations to acquire best-of-breed features and drives down costs, but it also introduces management challenges. We foresee businesses becoming more reliant on channel partners that can overlay third-party management and protection solutions onto these cloud environments so that consistent policies can be applied across their networks. There’s a real opportunity for resellers to partner with vendors of cloud-agnostic solutions to simplify reporting and ensure holistic best- practice can be enforced. 4 A new talent pool will open to the channel – but beware the feeding frenzy! We’re all hoping that 2021 will see COVID-19 beaten and enable a more normal return to work. However, the new ‘normal’ may not be the same for every company – some will want their teams back in the office five-days a week, others will want them to work from home full-time, with most opting for a hybrid approach between these two extremes. As a result, there is likely to be a period of worker migration as employees vote with their feet and find employers whose idea of the working week matches their own. We expect to see a lot of talent on the market in 2021, which will be a great opportunity for channel businesses to acquire the skills they need. Now is a good time to think about the talent your business needs and how to attract it. What Despite, or rather because of, its many challenges 2020 was a transformational year. Along with business disruption, cancelled projects and distressed customers, it brought new opportunities for resellers/MSPs and reinforced their value as trusted advisors to businesses of all sizes. The events of the last 12 months have clearly accelerated underlying trends, notably digital transformation, and these will continue to influence investment decisions in 2021. But what else will 2021 bring? Will we face more of the same challenges and opportunities as 2020, or will we finally conquer COVID-19 and start re-building the economy with confidence and imagination? Over the next 16 pages, we ask the experts for their views on where resellers and MSPs should concentrate their efforts in the year ahead. CHANNEL BUSINESS A world of opportunity Gary Sievers , Senior Director of Channel & Alliances, APJ, Veritas 1 New opportunities for the channel to support remote workers Three quarters (76%) of CEOs in a study by Fortune and Deloitte say that they will need less office space in the future as organisations around the world transform themselves, following the shift to remote working prompted by the COVID pandemic. With companies closing some buildings and more workers operating far away from any kind of corporate facility, new opportunities will emerge for channel businesses to offer their services. From laptop provisioning and repair to in- country data hosting and management services, there are plenty of functions that have the potential to transition to the partner community in the absence of a physical corporate presence. Ensuring that data, which has become disparately spread across remote infrastructures, is protected, available and stored compliantly is a great place for resellers to start. sort of packages are you offering? And do your vendors have reliable products with a decent margin? Getting this right early on may help you later in the year. Cloud skills, in particular, will be in short supply in 2021, following the huge uptick in cloud adoption due to the pandemic. While this is likely to create competition amongst channel businesses for talent, it is also a huge opportunity for resellers to provide services that augment the abilities of over-stretched in-house teams. 5 Cloud protection conversations will open doors for the channel in 2021 2020 was the year of cloud and digital transformation for businesses around the world. As organisations rushed to empower a newly remote workforce during the pandemic, many businesses condensed years of modernisation plans into deployments that lasted only a matter of months. In the rush to deliver improvements in the production environment, security often fell by the wayside. In our survey, 64% of businesses said they felt their security transformation had failed to keep pace with their IT complexity, highlighting a resiliency gap that leaves them vulnerable to attack. We expect recognition of this risk amongst IT leaders to translate into spending in 2021 as they look to close the gap. Channel businesses that start sales conversations by offering cloud protection solutions should find a receptive audience in the New Year. 6 MSPs need to get ahead of their own transformation gaps It’s easy to think of challenges and solutions in a binary way: businesses have technology challenges and the channel provides solutions. In 2021, it’s going to be more important than ever to remember that technology challenges can affect us all. The transformation gaps that 64% of businesses highlighted in our research are also starting to appear in the networks of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). It’s critical for these to be closed if MSPs are not to face enormous reputational damage. Cybersecurity will remain a hot topic throughout 2021 and MSPs should make sure they’re on the right side of the story, closing their own gaps first so that they can provide reliable solutions to their customers. 2021: Goodbye to all that? Predictions