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Distributors lose industry share in 2011
2011-08-31
According to the last Canalys report, the growth of the distributors does not match those of the rest of the industry. The Canalys IT Industry major vendor (Apple, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Lexmark, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP) grew revenue 18% worldwide on average in the first quarter of 2011. In comparison, the big four distributors (Arrow ECS, Avnet TS, Ingram Micro and Tech Data) managed 11%, with many smaller distributors faring worse than this. Distributors have blamed recent disappointing results on excess inventory, poor retail demand, sluggish sell-out and weakening economies. They have comforted themselves by making peer group comparisons where sales-out data shows "we are performing as well as the others, so please blame the market for our results, not us!" And while these reasons are valid justifications, Canalys argues that distributors need to see the bigger picture and realize that for the first time in a decade industry trends are conspiring against them.

According to the report, distribution thrived for the last 10 years thanks to rapid notebook and netbook adoption and the virtualization of the server room, with two-tier distribution at the heart of the routes-to-market for both B2B and B2C vendors. But the growth drivers of the industry have now changed. Mobility is still booming, but now on the back of smaller devices, notably smart phones and pads, which are more and more sold either directly or through service providers. The server and storage markets are healthy, driven by data center activity and cloud applications. On top of these industry changes, the world economic growth is mainly coming from economies beyond Western Europe and the US, where the top 4 distributors are at best weak, at worse absent (MEA, Russia, Japan, etc.) : in these countries, local distributors will outgrow them, with already some local giants like Merlion in Russia for example. All of these factors combined are set to cause headaches for distributor executives for at least the next two years. The report concludes with a list of recommandations for the distributors to follow, if they wish their growth to match the industry, one of which is to go East as soon as possible…

Arrow ECS gets a Cloud-service director for EMEA
2011-06-02
Network, security and infrastructure VAD Arrow ECS has hired Frédéric Braut from Websense to become its new Cloud Service Director for the EMEA region. Operationally, Frédéric is also in charge of the Cloud business of Arrow ECS in France, ASPlenium, a business which may very well be duplicated in the other countries where Arrow ECS is present.

Arrow ECS opens an education portal
2011-04-18
As part of its European channel services strategy, network and security VAD Arrow ECS has launched its education portal. It is designed to increase solutions skills and certifications, as well as to better support the promotion and sale of education services for its resellers. The portal includes helpful features such as customizable European schedules, strong search capabilities, comprehensive certification curriculums, intuitive downloads and immediate access to course details and dates. This will help them acquire competencies and certifications that will allow them to build complete data-center infrastructures, as well as bring them tools to promote their offering, including providing education to their customers through their own print or online training-offering catalog and white-labeled websites.

Registered at http://www.edu.arrowecs.eu, the portal has been developed in 14 languages, and will ultimately be available in 20 countries. Arrow ECS signed several agreements in 2010 to expand its course curriculum, adding training for IBM, CheckPoint, NetApp and the EC-Council in countries across Europe. Also, the distributor has opened new solution demonstration centers in the United Kingdom and Czech Republic and expanded its training center in Sweden.

ASPlenium manages assets with Pytheas
2009-07-21
France : service specialist ASPlenium has signed a distribution partnership with Pytheas. This vendor is specialized in asset management and help desk tools, whose ASP and SaaS versions ASPlenium will distributed through its reseller network.