Monday Morning Impact – February 3

Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Reach $3.9 Trillion in 2020

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.9 trillion in 2020, an increase of 3.4% from 2019, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.

“Although political uncertainties pushed the global economy closer to recession, it did not occur in 2019 and is still not the most likely scenario for 2020 and beyond,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. “With the waning of global uncertainties, businesses are redoubling investments in IT as they anticipate revenue growth, but their spending patterns are continually shifting.”

Software will be the fastest-growing major market this year, reaching double-digit growth at 10.5%.

“Almost all of the market segments with enterprise software are being driven by the adoption of software as a service (SaaS),” said Lovelock. “We even expect spending on forms of software that are not cloud to continue to grow, albeit at a slower rate. SaaS is gaining more of the new spending, although licensed-based software will still be purchased and its use expanded through 2023.”

Growth in enterprise IT spending for cloud-based offerings will be faster than growth in traditional (noncloud) IT offerings through 2022, according to Gartner. Organizations with a high percentage of IT spending dedicated to cloud adoption is indicative of where the next-generation, disruptive business models will emerge.

Despite last quarter showing the sharpest decline within the device market among all segments, Gartner expects the segment will return to overall growth in 2020 due to the adoption of new, less-expensive phone options from emerging countries.

More detailed analysis on the outlook for the IT industry is available in the complementary webinar “IT Spending Forecast, 4Q19 Update: Emerging Technologies in 2020.”

Channel Impact^®
The research demonstrates key areas in which channel partners may choose to invest.

LogMeIn Rolls out New Marketplace and its Latest Partner Integrations

LogMeIn has announced the launch of its GoTo Marketplace, a single point of access to all of the applications and productivity tools that integrate with LogMeIn’s GoTo suite of Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) products. The Boston-based company also announced new integrations for the GoTo portfolio, including Salesforce Lightning, Theta Lake, Clio, Zoho and Prezi. The new integrations, built by both LogMeIn and their partners, are intended to help drive productivity and efficiency within their customer’s communications and collaboration workflows.

“Working the way our customers want to work, and helping to improve their productivity and efficiency, has been — and continues to be — one of our top priorities,” said Mark Strassman, Senior Vice President and General Manager of UCC at LogMeIn. “This means supporting them from a product standpoint with our meeting, webinar, voice and room solutions, and working within their ecosystem to integrate with the tools they already use.”

The latest integrations include Clio and Jive/GoToConnect through which legal practices receive alerts through automated screen pops; Prezi and GoToWebinar, through which content appears on the same screen with the user, thereby removing the need to switch to a separate screen to show visual references; Theta Lake and GoToMeeting for enhanced video archiving; Salesforce Lightning and GoToMeeting, enabling users to launch GoToMeeting straight from Salesforce; and Zoho and Jive/GoToConnect for call management.

Channel Impact^®
GoTo’s new integrations are designed to help customers drive greater productivity and efficiency in their communication and collaboration workflows.

Telesystem to Expand Master Agent Focus with Channel Realignment

Telesystem announced plans to realign their channel program to provide added support and simplification at the master agent level. Going forward, the program will be aligned around two National Channel Managers, each with statically assigned master agent relationships throughout the United States. Channel-focused account executives will be populated in target markets around the country to assist with customer sales presentations.

Telesystem currently has account executives in the mid-Atlantic, the northern Midwest, and will be adding positions in Louisville, Kentucky and Springfield, Illinois in the near future, followed by positions to be determined in the western, US.

“This is the next step in the evolution of our channel program,” said Telesystem’s Chief Business Development Officer Bruce Wirt. “For the last 2 years, we’ve heard our Agent Advisory Board members tell us that they wanted a simplified support structure at the master agent level and more field resources available to aide the success of the sub agents. This move will accomplish both goals, and set the program up to better scale for future growth.”

Telesystem specializes in network, communication and collaboration solutions.

The Toledo, Ohio-based company claims 39 national POPs and three privately-owned data centers, delivering enterprise collaboration solutions and networking services to businesses in 45 states, DC and four foreign countries.

Channel Impact^®
The role of the master agent has been on the rise, especially given the emergence of the SaaS model. With that in mind, vendors must keep this constituency in mind as they evolve their channel programs.