FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
commitments. Services will also help
distributors differentiate themselves in a
crowded marketplace.
Trends or emerging trends we can
expect to see which will shape the
operations of VARs/VADs in the
channel going forward
Avinash Advani
Cloud adoption in the region, especially
in the enterprise and government spaces,
has lagged due to local regulation, as well
as FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and
therefore has had minimal impact on the
VAR/VAD model so far.
But regulatory authorities have started
rolling out new cloud-first policies and
processes and local cloud environments have
started to emerge rapidly.
Therefore, organisations have begun
the transition to cloud services and so the
structure of the VAR/VAD model will need
to evolve by incorporating cloud-technology
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
INTELLIGENT
TECH CHANNELS
Issue 24
aggregation and marketplace capabilities.
Also, the shortage of skilled security
professionals is a global issue and most
organisations in the Middle East also have
such resource limitations. Simultaneously,
due to the rapidly changing threat landscape,
numerous security technologies are being
purchased, creating complexity. These
technologies need constant monitoring
and tuning to derive good insights. So
increasingly, security vendors and thereby
their VAR/VADs are moving to As-a-Service
models to alleviate both above-mentioned
challenges and to ensure agile delivery of
innovation/protection to customers.
K.S. Parag
I believe the next phase of IT distribution
in the Middle East will be based on the
cloud and therefore will be services-led.
The cloud is poised to be a key component
in how businesses will transform in this
region. Distributors will adopt a cloud
strategy and will be able to provide cloud
The structure of the
VAR/VAD model will
need to evolve by
incorporating cloud-
technology aggregation
and marketplace
capabilities.
offerings, while cloud services will be key
for IT distribution in the region. Another
trend that will shape the channel in the
coming years will be that more VADs
will start to function as managed service
providers as well – this will give them a
solid competitive edge.
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