Significant proportion of Europe's resellers still reject cloud

Averse to taking advantage of what many researchers and some vendors have discussed as a long-term trend in IT, researcher CONTEXT’s channelwatch study shows that a high proportion of a 6000+sample of European resellers are not interested in selling cloud. The UK was most disinterested, with almost half those surveyed in that country saying no cloud for them, but other major European economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain) also showed around a third missing out, due to concerns over security and complexity, but also because they said they were not seeing demand from customers.

This may also be due to the established nature of the businesses, reaching that time in their lifecycle and that of their owners when the costs and upheaval in traditional sales and work-practices are not desired, particularly in the UK. This phenomena has also been noted in the US.

Looking at which solutions are being old, most of those selling cloud had sold back-up, as expected, but security has also started to figure strongly this year, particularly in the UK and Germany.  Storage in the cloud was on offer from over half the resellers in France and Spain. Reporting the results at the Global Technology Distribution Council’s European Summit in Vienna, CONTEXT fortunately reported that a high proportion rated what distributors offered through hosting in the cloud as excellent or good; it was also clear that most resellers rated their distribution partners highly overall, particularly in Spain and Poland. CONTEXT MD Adam Simon reported that some resellers in the UK and Germany had expressed concerns over rising costs and value, but they were in a minority.

Certainly, distribution’s partners were optimistic about 2017, with around half the major economies expecting a better, or the same outcome as in 2016. Spain stood out as forecasting a much better time this year with 71% expecting an improvement after some difficult times.