Monday Morning Impact – January 22

Report: Technology Distributors Primed for Growth

Technology distributors are forging new inroads across all market segments, according to a new report commissioned by the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC), which recently concluded a survey of approximately 50 channel executives.

The GTDC is an industry consortium representing large tech distributors representing more than $150 billion in annual worldwide sales. Members include Arrow Electronics, D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data, and Westcon-Comstor.

Among the findings, more than 70% of vendors expect double-digit revenue growth through distribution in 2018. Cloud, security, IoT and data center are identified as key areas for channel traction. Indirect business is outpacing direct sales for the majority of surveyed companies. And 64% of surveyed vendors cited vertical markets as primary channel business drivers.

“This is a critical juncture in the industry’s history, considering the pace and breadth of innovation,” said GTDC CEO Tim Curran. “Distributors are concurrently at the center of increasingly widespread adoption of indirect business.”

The 2018 report analyzes viewpoints across nine categories: Cloud; Data Center/Hyper-Convergence; IoT; Mobility; Pro A/V; Security; Services; Vendor Relationships; and Vertical Markets.

According to the report, digital technologies continue to transform the way business is conducted and IT is sold, with increased emphasis on multivendor solutions that solve specific industry challenges. Cloud has become “connecting tissue for IT,” with more integration between historically separate solutions. In addition, security needs have broadened beyond the network, as cloud becomes an intrinsic solution driver.

“Comprehensive multivendor solutions are now undeniably imperative,” added Curran. “Vendor partners ‘get this’ and are finding dynamic new ways to work with distributors in addressing increasingly complex channel and end-customer requirements. We expect 2018 to be a pivotal year.”

Channel Impact^®
The report points to prominent technology areas and market spaces in which the distribution community, as well as their respective allied channel partners, has placed considerable emphasis and focus.

SolarWinds Strengthens Portfolio of Cloud Offerings through Acquisition

SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas-based IT management software vendor, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Loggly, Inc., which has developed a SaaS-based, unified log monitoring and log analytics product that aggregates, structures, and summarizes log data to enable extensive analysis by users.

The acquisition advances SolarWinds’ strategy to deliver comprehensive, simple, and affordable full-stack monitoring solutions built upon a common, seamlessly integrated, SaaS-based platform.

“Rapidly visualizing vast amounts of data through log analytics is absolutely critical to solving many problems in today’s diverse, complex cloud-application and microservices environments,” said Christoph Pfister, executive vice president of products at SolarWinds. “Adding Loggly to our industry-leading portfolio will empower customers to accelerate their time-to-insight and solve problems faster, with our usual, disruptive affordability.”

With the acquisition, SolarWinds also will deepen its cloud-software engineering and analytics expertise. Former Loggly executives Manoj Chaudhary, CTO and VP, Engineering, and Vito Salvaggio, VP, Product will join SolarWinds as leaders in engineering and product, respectively. Members of the core development, operations, support, sales, and marketing teams will also transition to Solar Winds as part of the transaction.

Channel Impact^®
This move helps Solar Winds to work towards the company’s vision of enabling a single view of infrastructure, applications, and digital experience management. Loggly will offer a viable solution for situations where customers need log monitoring and log analytics with structured log data and aggregated events.

Egenera Launches New Partner Program for MSPs and Solutions Providers

Egenera, a Boxboro, Massachusetts-based provider of wholesale cloud services, has launched the Xterity Partner Program (XPP), geared for MSPs and solution providers selling cloud services to the SMB and mid-market.

The Egenera portfolio includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Backup as a Service (BaaS), and cloud migration.

In addition to the existing wholesale price structure, the new program provides a complete set of tools, incentives, and features, including rapid onboarding, performance-based credits, improved portal access, white labeled services and collateral, 24x7x365 partner support, and dedicated account management.

“Our partners are in the business of serving their clients, not selling technology products,” said Pete Manca, Egenera’s president and CEO. “Because of this, we designed XPP to be simple and straightforward, with tools that make it easy for partners to add Xterity Cloud Services to their portfolio and offer them to their clients.”

Channel Impact^®
The new program is expected to make selling cloud easy and more profitable.