Six months ago, Irish Computer asked a number of reseller luminaries for their verdict on 2012 to date and what they thought the rest of the year would bring. Now we’ve gone back and asked them what really happened in 2012 and how they think this year will shape up.
Eoin Goulding, managing director, Integrity Solutions
"I’m happy to say 2012 was another great year for Integrity," Goulding reports, adding it was "very similar to 2011". The company experienced growth of 25% during the year and opened UK offices in Glasgow and London. Integrity Solutions also took on new staff in every department. "Overall, we’ve definitely been busy," he says.
The company has taken on "several high profile clients in the UK and Ireland" and has also added a number of clients to its managed security services offering, including "one of the largest financial organisations in Ireland".
In addition to gaining new business, the company also announced in September that it would be recruiting 25 new people by the middle of 2013. "We’re still very much on target with that recruitment drive," Goulding reveals.
He believes that compliance and new EU laws will be a big area of growth for Integrity Solutions. New European directive proposals are clamping down on data security, including mandatory reporting of any breaches in large organisations. To comply, companies will need to adopt a risk management culture and invest in security solutions "which are things we can offer advice on".
Managed security is "a huge area of growth" for Integrity because many companies "don’t have the required skillsets for such a niche specialisation". Managed security can also take the burden of compliance and the new legislation away from internal IT teams.
Goulding reveals that is a lot of activity in the market at the moment. "We’ve seen growth in January which is a very positive sign. People seem to be spending again and there are new projects in the pipeline," he says.
But, while things are progressing well, he admits that "lack of resources and specific skillsets is a hindrance to us". The company is the process of recruiting IT security consultants but is finding it "quite difficult to find the skillset we are looking for". He reveals that one of the reasons the company entered the UK market "was to avail of a larger bank of resources locally there that we could add to our team".
Asked about the quality of vendor resources and support, Goulding observes that a lot of them had cut their support offerings in Ireland over the last year or so, "hence less value add was being offered". But, he believes it is improving again now and vendors are making more of an investment in the Irish market. "Before, there were very few large vendors with a full time person on the ground in Ireland because they didn’t view it as a strategic market. Now, there are representatives being assigned to help develop the Irish market, which is great." Integrity Solutions tends to handle a lot of support issues itself because of the lack of presence from some vendors "but to have the additional support and physical presence here as well would be a bonus".
Looking ahead to the first half of 2013, Integrity Solutions is confident it will go well on the back of good growth in January and February and is positive about the next few months. "We’ve invested in new service offerings – like managed security and risk and advisory – and they’ve really taken off; our two UK offices are also showing fantastic promise." Goulding reveals that it has plans to open a third UK office in Birmingham, "as well as continuing our recruitment drive here and eventually moving to a larger office in Dublin, so I definitely envisage a busy 2013 for us".
Paul Goti, sales director, Sabeo Technologies
On the back of a particularly good 2011, Sabeo Technologies maintained its position in 2012, though revenues were slightly down. Goti, however, says the company still regards last year as "good".
He says Sabeo Technologies "delivered some excellent projects into semi-state and large private corporations" over the course of the year. Hardware and software sales in Oracle and Red Hat "were significantly up on the previous year".
In terms of awards and distinctions, Sabeo Technologies was named Symantec Partner of the Year for the second year in a row and also secured the title of Red Hat Partner of the Year. After Symantec announced it was no longer delivering professional services around its services, the vendor invited partners to gain master accreditation in its solutions. Sabeo Technologies was the first local partner to gain the Symantec Master Accreditation in archiving and e-discovery, and data protection solution sets. It was also the first Irish company to become a Red Hat premier business partner.
Asked to identify areas of growth and opportunity in 2013, Goti agrees that channel partners cannot ignore the growth in areas such as cloud and Big Data, but he reports that Sabeo Technologies is "still seeing a large demand for in-house projects, resourcing of people and supply of software and hardware products". He explains that is probably a consequence of the restraint on budgets for a number of years. "Company infrastructure is now under pressure and projects have to be fulfilled," he says.
As for factors that could inhibit growth this year, he says they are "likely to be outside of Ireland and ones that we don’t have any control over" such as a slowdown of growth in the US or in Europe. As for Ireland itself, he believes there "is definitely a feel-good, demand for growth within the country at present".
Not just in the country but in the channel too. From talking with many of his peers in the channel, he says that "the general feeling is that the market has been on the turn for a while and is set to continue. Most are happy with their performance in 2012 and feel positive for 2013".
While others might be concerned at the depth of vendor support, Sabeo Technologies’ experience is that support from vendors (and distributors) "has never been higher. They are all very keen to support any initiatives to help grow their share of the market", Goti comments. Needless to say, their enthusiasm "is very welcome from the resellers’ point of view".
Asked to predict how Sabeo Technologies will fare in the first half of this year, he says the company expects to continue the strong growth it has enjoyed since mid-2011.
Andrew Miller, head of sales and marketing, Unity Technology Solutions
"2012 was an extremely busy year for Unity Technology Solutions," Miller reveals. Net new customer wins were up significantly on 2011 and it continued to develop business within existing accounts in the private and public sector. With the number of companies looking to outsource some or all of their IT increasing, Unity Technology solutions has increased its own staff numbers, particularly in support.
The company won the Best Use of Technology in Education and Training award for its Citrix VDI-in-a-box project with Rehab Group and National Learning Network at the ICT Excellence Awards. It also won Microsoft Ireland Voice and Unified Communications Partner of the Year 2012. Miller says both awards "represent a real achievement for us and we are delighted to see our expertise recognised by peers and partners within the industry".
Key growth areas for the company continue to be unified communications and virtualisation. The move towards cloud-based solutions, primarily in the private cloud, the adoption of Office 365, Lync and other business productivity applications ‘as a service’ continue to provide growth opportunities.
There has been "significant growth" in virtualisation, particularly in application and desktop virtualisation. Unity Technology Solutions held a number of ‘bring your own’ events throughout 2012 which were hugely positive, demonstrating the potential of that market.
"With the Consumerisation of IT, there is a huge opportunity as a result of the increasing focus on security, particularly due to the proliferation of smart devices and the increasing demand for the use of social media in the workplace," Miller believes. "Businesses will also place a greater emphasis on adding value through innovation, resulting in an increase in the adoption of cloud services and a greater focus on collaborative tools (like Microsoft Lync) in the workplace."
Another interesting development is Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS). UCS is a unified data centre platform that combines industry-standard x86 architecture blade and rack servers, networking, and enterprise-class management into a single system. Miller argues it is "changing the way organisations do business through policy-based automation and standardisation of IT processes". The company is witnessing lots of interest and demand around Cisco UCS "which sits particularly well for us given our Citrix and Microsoft expertise".
The company is also constantly evaluating new solutions in areas like security, voice, voice recording and infrastructure. MetaCompliance, Spam Titan, Web Titan and Forefront Identity Manager are some of the new security solutions it is deploying "very successfully; and we continue to increase our market share in the voice and voice recording side of our business".
If they represent opportunity and growth, economic uncertainty and lack of credit continue to be the main obstacles to growth. "The lack of finance for capital investment in infrastructure remains a growth inhibitor," Miller says. While the shift to an operational expenditure model "suits many businesses, it does not suit everyone".
He believes that overall channel performance will continue to improve during 2013, "but at a gradual pace". The most important thing the channel needs to keep in focus is "the ability to adapt to changing customer demands".
Unity Technology Solutions is very happy with the "excellent sales and marketing support and training" provided by its vendors and is working extremely closely with key partners like Microsoft, Citrix and Cisco. "Their facilities and resources are available to us on a continuous basis and that has proven to be extremely beneficial. Our distributors also provide a superb service and excellent support," he adds.
Looking at its prospective performance in the first half of 2013, Miller says that pipelines are healthy and targets are increasing year on year "but there are always the unknown curve balls which we must be prepared for. Unity’s mission is to respond quickly to changes in the market and to provide the solutions our customers and prospects need and want, whether it is delivery of a partial or complete IT solution, on premise or from the cloud".
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