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Distribution is undergoing rapid change and, especially in Europe, is finding a new role as a provider of cloud services, e-commerce, specialist logistics and support for the channel during its transition to new revenue models.

So says a new report for the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) by IT Europa.

As well as providing coverage, onboarding and recruitment of new channels in all the markets in Europe, which usually means some element of localisation and cultural fit in IT supply, the report identifies some of the ways that distribution is now able to work to develop new business lines, especially in services, where the move to cloud adoption makes it a lot easier for developers and solution providers to create solutions, but where they still need ways to reach their markets.

Vendors cited in the report say they are using distribution for access to markets that would otherwise involve them in setting-up local offices and providing local more resources.

As Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready says, "In the past we have used a single-tier model, but now we can use distribution to run and promote the channel relationships."

"Having a true value-adding distributor is important and it plays a big part in making the channel part of an effective community."

Channels are often faced with a wave of new potential product lines, each requiring careful evaluation. Few channel players have the resources to research the market continuously.

"Work closely with distributors and they will be able to guide you as to which products are going to be the winners," GTDC Europe's General Manager Peter van den Berg told the Managed Services and Hosting Summit in Amsterdam in April.

Distribution is no longer just about pick, pack and ship, he said. The services on offer are many and varied, and are used to complement what the channel is doing.

"65% of the business of one of the GTDC largest members is now in services," he told the conference, and in the last two years, the GTDC members "have added over 600 new vendors, so they are a good source and indicator for channel partners looking to see which products and services are likely to be successful."

The report draws on GTDC's own research which points to a heightened sense of confidence in the European IT industry this year and identifies key growth areas for distribution and partner channels, including IoT, mobile, managed services and cloud.

Report by IT Europa: Cloud data availability firm Veeam says the channel distribution model is rapidly changing as distributors become aggregators and resellers morph into service providers.

As a result, the intelligent data backup solutions vendor is rejigging the way it develops its channel, mainly as a result of its growing cloud and enterprise business.

Last month Veeam said first quarter new enterprise license bookings grew 17% annually. Also, cloud revenue enabled by Veeam Cloud and Service Providers (VCSPs) grew 59% YoY.

At the last count, there were 47,000 Veeam ProPartners and 15,000 VCSPs globally. A large number of ProPartners - predominantly resellers - are now expected to turn into a VCSP to reflect market changes.

Veeam held its annual VeeamON customer and partner event in New Orleans this week, which was attended by around 3,000, including Veeam staff.

At the event, Veeam senior vice president of worldwide sales Daniel Fried told IT Europa: "We are now seeing customer defined channel strategies with customers moving towards the cloud. It's not about large vendors anymore deciding whether to move into the cloud or not and moulding the channel as a result, we had that a number of years ago.

"Customers want agnostic vendors who can work with partners to deliver their cloud, storage and other infrastructure needs, which is what we are trying to be. While we have strong relationships with the likes of Microsoft, VMware, HPE, Cisco and NetApp, for instance, we don't dictate to customers what other technologies should be used in conjunction with our solutions."

Fried said Veeam was now spending more time in re-organising its partner structure instead of simply adding to partner numbers, which is what it has done in impressive fashion over the last three years to reach a critical mass to take a large chunk of the intelligent data backup space.

Fried said many distributors were now aggregators of many different technologies and were effectively becoming cloud service providers themselves in offering additional services to their service provider customers, like cloud training, technical services and marketing, for instance. He also added that 50% of Veeam service providers were also resellers.

Such changes are a major reason why Veeam used VeeamON to launch its Veeam Accredited Service Partner (VASP) programme, to enable members to deliver high-quality professional services related to Veeam solutions, to "help customers realise increased reliability" and 'achieve greater return of investment from Veeam solutions', said the vendor.

The VASP effort offers a range of member benefits including marketing promotion and visibility and increased technical services. There will also be dedicated senior pre-sales advisors, demonstration and training aids, and co-branding and marketing.

"We want partners who are enthusiastic about working with us and we want to make it easier for them by making sure they have the right specialisations and competencies," said Fried.

On partner numbers, Oliver Robinne, Veeam VP of EMEA sales, said: "With 22,000 in EMEA we've probably got enough in most parts of Western Europe but there are always places where we could do with more coverage to meet and generate market demand."

He said there are big differences in some geographies. Veeam only has around 100 VCSPs in Russia where it mainly supports large enterprises. But it has 430 VCSPs across the other major Eastern Europe markets, where the size of customers is more varied.

"Resellers increasingly have two jobs, to sell and to also support cloud and services business, so we expect a number of resellers will become VCSPs," said Robinne.

Cloud giants such as AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM have swung their gaze onto the channel as a means to sustain and drive their stellar growth rates; and their interest in the enterprise and mid-market space where competition is fierce will see them prioritise indirect partnerships to extend their reach, claims Canalys.

In Q1 2017 AWS maintained its dominance, holding a stable global market share of 31% on 43% revenue growth. Microsoft grew revenues by 93% and Google was up 74% compared to the same quarter a year ago, while IBM witnessed 38% revenue growth.

The overall worldwide cloud infrastructure services market was up 42% year-on-year to reach $11.4bn, according to Canalys.

"Competition for enterprise customers is intensifying among leading cloud service providers which are investing heavily to secure key national and global accounts," said Canalys Research Analyst Daniel Liu.

"Timing is crucial, as many large accounts are assessing, formulating and executing strategies to move existing workloads and infrastructure to the cloud and develop new types of workloads as part of digital transformation initiatives."

Cloud players are looking to the channel to expand their reach, especially when it comes to mid-market opportunities, says Canalys Senior Analyst Jordan De Leon. "The channel has become integral to winning in the enterprise, with top cloud players focusing on channel expansion plans," he said.

AWS has an established channel programme that is growing and is cited by the company as helping to win key global clients. And Google has revamped its partner programme to reflect the the technology and feature requirements of large enterprise customers.

"Go-to-market strategy, including both customer and channel partner engagement, will ultimately determine vendor success in this segment," stated De Leon.

"Larger enterprises will adopt a multi-cloud strategy to distribute risk. Ultimately, to challenge AWS, vendors will need deep financial resources to continue to participate and advance."

Pan-European cloud managed services firm Claranet has received an £80m investment from French asset management firm Tikehau Capital in return for a minority stake in the expanding company.

Claranet has 1,300 employees and operates in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands. It also recently entered the Brazilian market.

The investment follows the firm's move in February to set up Claranet Italy in response to growing demand for managed public cloud solutions in the Italian market.

The new entity based in Milan focuses solely on public cloud services working with partners including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Also in February, Claranet acquired Dutch IT services provider Rely which has a leading position within the Dutch notarial sector, offering its clients a range of IT infrastructure services, including public and private cloud solutions and application management services.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms is to extend its network footprint by unbundling an additional 40 BT exchanges in 'prime' business areas around the UK with high performance Ethernet services.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms has also been confirmed as one of a small number of service providers in BT Openreach's recently announced Dark Fibre Access trial.

Subject to the satisfactory outcome of this trial, SSE Enterprise Telecoms will use the newly regulated dark fibre services to provide connectivity to the 40 new exchanges.

This will be the third phase of the network expansion programme SSE Enterprise Telecoms dubbed Project Edge and will bring the total number of exchanges served by its national fibre optic network to 140.

The total number of postcodes in prime business areas that are served by the full Edge service will now increase to more than 300,000.

The Project Edge footprint is further extended by SSE Enterprise Telecoms' Edge Plus service, which provides its customers with access to the Ethernet services of six other suppliers across the breadth of the UK.

The 40 new exchanges, as well as all of the existing Edge 1, Edge 2 and Edge Plus sites, will be available to quote and order via SSE Enterprise Telecoms' online price comparison engine, LIVEQUOTE.

The 40 exchanges will be unbundled during the course of the next nine months and will be named in batches as they come on-net.

Colin Sempill, Managing Director of SSE Enterprise Telecoms, said: "We understand that to function in today's economy businesses need reliable, high capacity connectivity in all corners of the UK. It is through detailed analysis of LIVEQUOTE data as well as ongoing dialogue with direct customers and service providers,that we have selected these additional exchanges to which we will expand our network."

Vodafone's annual loss of 6.1bn euros (£5.2bn) is largely down to the sliding value of its Indian business, with the operator writing down the value of its Indian unit by 3.7bn euros following a price war.

Matthew Kendall, Telecoms Analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, observed: "Vodafone's results are a measure of just how cut-throat the Indian mobile market is at the moment.

"The low-price offers from new market entrant Reliance Jio have completely shaken the market and operators are struggling to compete."

In the UK last year Vodafone was hit by a £4.6m fine for misselling and poor handling of complaints.

A new report by CompTIA has re-confirmed the influence of cross-company execs in the ICT buying process.

"CIOs and information technology (IT) teams remain involved in the process, as their expertise and experience is valued," said Carolyn April, senior director, industry analysis, CompTIA.

"But business lines are clearly flexing their muscles. It's another strong signal that technology has shifted from a supporting function for business to a strategic asset."

Among the organisations surveyed for the CompTIA report 45% said that ideas about technology come from different areas of the organisation; and 36% said more executives are involved in the decision making.

More than half of respondents used business unit budget to pay for technology purchases in the last year.

Lines of business are also staffing their departments with technology-oriented job roles, from data scientists and business analysts to software developers and social media managers.

CompTIA says this shift is impacting the IT channel - vendors, distributors and solution providers.

"The amount of greenfield, untapped space for business is huge," added April. "But lines of business have little knowledge or interaction with the channel. It's incumbent on the channel to get their faces in front of line of business leaders."

"They need to speak the language of business because this new generation of buyers doesn't want to hear about the technical implications of their purchases.

"Channel partners need to position themselves as consultants and service providers who can help customers make informed decisions about what they buy."

ScanSource Imago has signed a distribution agreement with Vaddio, a pan-tilt-zoom camera, AV and VC manufacturer.

The new deal will enable ScanSource Imago to meet increasing demands from the reseller channel for flexible 'huddle room' solutions supported by Vaddio's video conferencing products.

ScanSource Imago will be providing resellers with Vaddio's PTZ cameras for conferencing, lecture capture and general AV, as well as its enterprise video collaboration and bridging systems.

ScanSource Imago will also deliver services and support including education and training, technical and marketing support.

"Vaddio's solutions present additional opportunities for our reseller partners," said Phil Boyd, VP of Merchandising, ScanSource Imago. "There is particular interest in huddle space technology."

Volume sales of PCs (desktops, notebooks, workstations) through Western Europe's largest distributors continued to decline at -2.4% in Q1 2017 compared to the same period one year ago.

Revenues, however, increased +8.3% due to a shift in sales to higher value products, according to latest data published by Context, the market research company.

This was most noticeable in the UK where a 10% drop in sales was translated into a 14.6% rise in revenue in local currency.

"Revenue growth was driven by a significant rise in distributors' average sell prices for the quarter", said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context. "Across the entire Western European region, average selling prices were up by +11% to €553 compared to Q1 2016. Across just the eurozone countries, ASPs for the quarter rose +7.3% to €535. "

Context says that average selling prices in the PC segment have been on the rise since Q3 2016, driven by currency fluctuations, the effects of recent component shortages on pricing, and by a unit-mix shift to higher value products such as gaming systems in the consumer segment and powerful high-end notebooks in the commercial sector.

Pennine has achieved Elite Specialist and Platinum Partner status under Motorola Solution's new PartnerEmpower programme.

The accreditations are the highest achievable under the global two-way radio and communication solutions manufacturer's reseller programme.

"That we have secured top tier status on both revenue and expertise parameters speaks volumes about our standing in the market," said Pennine's Sales Director, Steve Watts.

"Crucially, these accreditations give Pennine Radio staff access to the widest range of Motorola sales, technical and training awards. Being an Elite Specialist also secures higher profile positioning in the Partner Finder tool Motorola promotes to organisations seeking its solutions."