Monday Morning Impact – May 30

Study: IT Product Sales Accelerated in Q1 2022 with 13.1% Growth Through Distribution

Total IT product revenue reported by members of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) approached $18.9 billion in the first quarter of 2022. The year-over-year increase of 13.1% was up significantly from 7.9% growth in all of 2021. The total was also the third highest overall behind only the fourth quarters of 2020 and 2021 as reported in the North America Weekly Distribution Tracker from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Despite the upward trend for the quarter, growth slowed from almost 18.9% in January to 8.1 in March, although each month still bested the 2021 growth rate, and the last week of March was the largest on record. AV, Security, and Consumer Electronics products led growth, each increasing more than 24% from the prior year. Imaging, Peripherals & Accessories, and Personal Computing were the slowest categories in 1Q22, growing in single digits from the prior year with growth slowing from pandemic recovery highs. Other categories all grew in double digits for the quarter.

“Despite continuing logistics, economic and political headwinds, as well as more difficult comparisons to last year, North American IT sales through tier one distribution remained strong in the first quarter,” said Ruth Flynn, director of operations for IDC Tracker & Data Products. “Throughout the pandemic consumers and businesses have been reminded of the value of tech investments and continue to prioritize IT purchases.”

IDC’s North America Weekly Distribution Tracker is built on the exclusive partnership between IDC and the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) and provides the industry’s most comprehensive view of technology distribution data and market trends in the U.S. and Canada. The data in this Tracker is actual sales data collected weekly from sales receipts across the largest distributors in North America for more than 1,700 brands over several years. This data is mapped to IDC’s taxonomy with nearly 200 categories organized into 14 distinct product groups with detailed product attributes across categories.

Channel Impact^®
The data point to a level of success achieved by top tier distributors seeking new ways to add value in a substantially cloud-based environment.

Updates to the Fortinet Rolls Out a Host of Updates to its Engage Partner Program

Fortinet has rolled out updates to its Engage Partner Program, seeking to enhance partner growth and education. Highlights include a new Preferred Services Partner Accreditation aimed at partners with an established professional services practice. Participating partners receive access to specialized training, best practice methodologies, and direct assistance from Fortinet on advanced end-to-end security support.

Fortinet has also added two cloud productivity kits for Engage partners: a Cloud Starter Kit and a Cloud Enterprise Kit designed to help organizations increase sales and implement an online demonstration environment. The Starter Kit includes a pre-selected SKU pack of FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiCASB, FortiWeb, and FortiMail solutions. And the Enterprise Kit consists of a pre-selected SKU pack of FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiCASB, FortiWeb, FortiMail, and FortiSandbox. Both kits come with an 80% discount.

A new Enterprise Agreement program for MSPs, initially launching in the U.S., is designed to provide a more predictable cost structure and revenue stream with quarterly true-ups. It also helps partners simplify the management of their estate of assets. That includes the assets they own, the ones being delivered as a service, and even those they inherit to manage, making it easier to centrally coordinate all assets under their control.

The company has also eliminated the SOC requirement for Select-level partners. Going forward, for those Select-level partners who have completed the MSSP Business Model’s NSE certification requirements, Fortinet will provide a free FortiCloud premium license.

In addition, the company has issued a pledge to provide cybersecurity training to one million people as a means of helping to address the highly publicized talent shortage in this space.

Channel Impact^®
The updates are intended to help partners evolve their service offerings or cloud capabilities to keep up with the changing digital landscape.

Avaya Enters Partnership with Microsoft to Deliver OneCloud Solutions on Azure

Avaya and Microsoft have expanded their global partnership by pairing the Avaya OneCloud Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) portfolio with Microsoft Azure. Avaya will work directly with Microsoft sales teams and partners on joint selling and enablement opportunities.

Through the agreement, Avaya CCaaS customers also gain access to Nuance’s Contact Center AI technology integrated with OneCloud.

Avaya OneCloud CCaaS customers attain increased customer insight via CRM data maintained within Dynamics 365, and benefit from Microsoft’s powerful AI capabilities via Azure Cognitive Services. Later this year, Avaya expects to further expand OneCloud CCaaS capabilities with Microsoft Teams integration.

“The global scale of Microsoft helps ensure that our joint customers rapidly deploy Avaya OneCloud solutions in any cloud environment of their choice with speed, agility and cost competitiveness,” said David Austin, SVP of Strategy and Alliances at Avaya. “This represents a tremendous opportunity for customers to accelerate their journey to the cloud, and a tremendous opportunity for Avaya to expand our go-to-market reach through the co-selling efforts we have identified with our trusted partner.”

“Together, we are working to help customers around the world transform their businesses and drive digital transformation and implement workload migration initiatives more rapidly,” said Casey McGee, VP of Global ISV Partner Sales at Microsoft. “This is a significant opportunity, particularly for Microsoft customers as they move more workloads to Azure.”

Channel Impact^®
The combination provides customers with the agility to create communications and collaboration experiences using the public, private or hybrid cloud while, at the same time, expanding Avaya’s customer and channel reach.