Bits and Bytes From Around The Channel
October 18th, 2008 by mattAfter a rollercoaster week on Wall Street (hey, rollercoasters are more fun than the free fall ride we’d been on), and a potential loosening of the credit markets, the media is once again talking about something other than economic doom and gloom. Here’re a few items that caught my attention. I’d love to hear opinions from the front lines. Agree? Disagree? Rant away by dropping me a note at trends@onforce.com or posting a comment with your opinions.
* Over at ChannelWeb, they’ve issued their 2008 Annual Report Card, which identifies the winners and losers in each category, including networking gear, VoIP, software and servers.
* The VAR Guy has a brief write-up on open source reporting tool Pentaho, which blipped on my overcrowded radar because OnForce has also adopted Pentaho as our in-house BI system. My take: flexible, powerful and cost-effective.
* The folks at Channel Insider have published a list of recession-proof categories that VARs and solution providers should focus on to grow profitably. Several of these jive with trends we’ll be sharing in our upcoming Q3 report, including POS and managed services, although I was surprised VoIP didn’t make the cut.
#10: Point of Sale (POS)
#9: Network Infrastructure
#8: Application Development
#7: Enterprise Applications
#6: Storage Solutions
#5: Business Intelligence Software
#4: Mobility Solutions
#3: Managed Services
#2: Software as a Service
#1: Security
Again, I want to hear from you — war stories, thoughts or whimsical rants are welcome. Did the pundits get these topics right? Drop us a line or post a comment with your opinions.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
There’s no such thing as recession-proof IT categories. Their #2 pick, SaaS, has suffered major setbacks this year and SaaS stocks are down 40 percent from January through October 17, 2008, according to MSPmentor.net (www.mspmentor.net/saas-20-stock-index).
But there certainly are areas of IT that will hold up better in a bad economy. The VAR Guy agrees with items 1, 3, 6 and POS. And yes, where’s VoIP? Certainly VoIP is a great money-saver alternative to old-time PBXes.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Thanks for weighing in, VAR Guy. Of course you’re right… no category of hardware, software OR service is 100% recession-proof… there are only shades of gray. But in those shades of gray can lie the difference between success and failure.
I’d love to hear from the front lines — what do the VARs, solution providers and independent pros have to say about these categories and how well or poorly they weather the storm?
For what it’s worth, I highly recommend everyone take a look at the SaaS 20 index over at MSP Mentor. It’s a great idea and a cool way to see how Wall Street is valuing the SaaS category of companies.