5 Channel Predictions To Help You Plan Your 2016 Strategy

By Mark Conley, Director of Worldwide Channels, SolidFire

From increasing adoption of cloud computing to ever-growing customer demand for the agile delivery of IT services and the restructuring and consolidation of the IT infrastructure industry — such as the Dell/EMC deal — 2015 left a lot of unanswered questions for channel partners. While 2016 will certainly bring some answers, it will continue to be a challenging year for the channel. The channel’s traditional client base will continue to shift some or all of their compute requirements to managed solutions providers. Channel partners who have not invested in solutions provider sales strategies or launched their own solutions provider businesses will struggle. Technologies will continue to get more complex and it will be more difficult to spot the eventual winners and losers. Here are some high-level predictions which may help you think about your channel business and plan a successful strategy for 2016.

1. The Year Of Big Consolidation   

InBev has agreed to buy Miller-Coors; Marriott is buying Starwood; and we will see the merger between Dell and EMC consummate in 2016. For partners, this means they will need to decide if they see a business benefit or detraction from this merger and how they will deal with this new world order. While there may be other M&A announcements coming in 2016, it is this one that will cause each reseller to make tough decisions. As a Dell partner, will EMC resellers face increased competition from Dell’s resellers, driving down margins? Will partners of either look to other sources of revenue because the new company doesn’t fit their business strategies? Will Dell resellers double down on their relationship, believing their portfolios just got a lot broader? Many strategies to consider and so much uncertainty mean challenges for the new company and opportunities for the rest of the players in the industry.

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