The channel is on fire (in a good way) says Canalys

“The channel is on fire.”

These are the words channel-centric analyst firm Canalys boss Steve Brazier said multiple times during his opening keynote for the analyst firm’s 2019 APAC Channels Forum in Taipei.

And he meant on fire in a good way! 

The chief executive’s words sought to bolster the confidence of channel partners who might be feeling dwarfed by large global system integrators, which continually eat away at the market and expand aggressively through acquisition.

“I bet there is a group of companies that you guys are jealous of: the global system integrators,” Brazier told the audience of partners in Taipei. “You go through every airport and they seem to be the ones that are advertising the most.

"Accenture, through many acquisitions of small, specialist born-in-the-cloud companies, has become the largest provider of public cloud services in the world.”

In Australia alone, Accenture has snapped up four channel partners in the past year. It bought Canberra’s Apis in December, BCT Solutions in June, Analytics8 in August and PrimeQ in December 2018. Local acquisitions by other major consultancies are also common.

While Canalys notes that those acquisitions and an increasing cloud services focus is driving growth for big SI’s, the analyst’s numbers suggest the IT channel shouldn’t doubt their worth for a second.

“We’ve done a little bit of an analysis about how well these companies are doing, and I wanted to share something with you,” Brazier said.

“Had you invested in the [major global system integrators] five years ago, you would have doubled your money. It’s been a very strong performance.

“But if there’s one slide I want you to take away from this presentation and reuse, ..

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