The General Technology Distributor Council (GTDC) in collaboration with Vation Ventures, LLC has published a report that predicts the role distributors play in the channel will significantly expand as providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and cloud services increasingly rely on distribution partners for “virtual warehouse” support and integration services.
Distributors today are mainly relied on to provide global logistics and inventory management. However, based on a survey of 50 industry executives, the report suggests virtual support for various types of cloud services along with integration services provided in collaboration with channel partners will play a bigger role for distributors by 2025.
The report notes distributors that are part of the GTDC already account for $150 billion in annual revenue. More than half (61%) of the survey respondents said they anticipate greater than 10% growth through 2025.
Security, cloud computing and artificial intelligence practices ranked highest in terms of being expected to be the top three most important technology areas in 2025, followed by the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data analytics, data center, DevOps, and collaboration solutions.
The report also notes that as far as startup companies are concerned, most of them begin to look to distribution to expand indirect sales once they’ve landed their 50th customer.
Regardless of size, however, the one thing that will change little is the degree to which IT vendors will rely on distributors partner enablement, partner credit and financial services, and partner recruitment through 2025, the report finds.
The report also highlights the fact that in addition to providing new services, many of the existing services provided by distributors today will remain highly relevant five years from now, says GTDC CEO Frank Vitagliano.
“The distributors have made the transition over the years to continue to remain relevant,” says Vitagliano.
Of course, it’s too early to say just how many distributors there will be five years now, but the ones that are in the game are likely to be making larger investments on behalf of the channel partners they support.
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