By Dhaval Valia
 Over the last six months, all of us have been largely focused on analyzing the impact of the global recession on our businesses.
And have come to accept that the next 6-12 months are going to be tough for businesses of all kinds across the world and India is no exception.
In which case, smart businesses need to start looking beyond 2009. With or without the current recession, there are two distinct trends emerging in the market that are most likely to change the way the channel will do business over the next five years.
The trends that will dictate the future of channels are: the mass proliferation of computing devices and consolidation and centralization of business IT infrastructure.
Netbooks based on Intel’s Atom processors are already available in the range of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 today and as the ecosystem develops and economies of scale build up, these mobile PCs will cost less than Rs 10,000.
While this explosion will create large volume opportunities for IT channels, they will then have to contend with competition not only from the LFRs but also the white-goods channel and the mobile phone channel. This would shrink margins further and, as is the case with the mobile phones market today, the business of selling computer options and accessories will become prominent.
With mass adoption, vendors will need more ASPs on ground; hence resellers who want to succeed going forward must start focusing on services. IT retailers will have to increase focus on options and accessories, home networking, broadband etc.
On the other side of the spectrum, for enterprise IT, consolidation and virtualization and on-demand computing will be drivers of future growth. It’s almost like going back to the old mainframe computing days, but with open and interoperable platforms.
On-demand computing will become increasingly popular and the current economic crisis will expedite its adoption.
Cloud computing is going to change the rules of the game. We have already seen web platform companies like Google and Amazon announce their cloud computing platforms and services.
A prominent Indian ISV, I recently spoke to, is already test piloting his business intelligence application on Amazon’s cloud computing platform. This would enable him to reach out to customers around the world!
Consolidation of IT infrastructure means consolidation of the channel and very likely only the large solution providers and systems integrators will stay in the fray.
To succeed, smaller solution providers will have to build depth in their solutions provision capabilities.
So, where do you see yourself in the next five years? |