Yudum Yonak, Channel Director of International Emerging Region at Veritas Technologies shares her thoughts on how the channel will evolve in the year 2023
Partners to take on multi-cloud complexity
Enterprises are increasingly adopting multi-cloud architectures out of necessity for added agility and flexibility to support innovation across the business. According to recent data, 89% of global cloud decision makers have a multi-cloud strategy. And although businesses can now track, manage and provision cloud data in once place with cloud data management tools, they are still having to manage relationships with multiple cloud providers, which can be time consuming and complex.
In 2023, organizations will be looking to offload this responsibility to channel partners to help simplify the process and have one person to turn to for all things multi-cloud. Partners are poised to play a critical role as trusted advisors, helping their customers successfully evolve and adapt on their multi-cloud journeys by enabling them to modernize workloads while minimizing costs. With partners providing strategic guidance and expertise, organizations can successfully reap the benefits associated with multi-cloud and gain control of their data while eliminating some of the burden.
‘Sourcing’ to become an increasingly important role of the channel
As geo-political factors put pressure on global supply chains, businesses will find it increasingly hard to specify – and acquire – the equipment for their own custom IT architectures as they look to balance between their cloud and on premises workloads. Global vendors bundling software and hardware, and Cloud Service Providers, are better prepared to weather this storm due to their enhanced purchasing power. As a result, the role of sourcing available equipment and solutions will become much more important for resellers in 2023. In order to be successful, they will need to be able to offer practical, affordable and, most importantly, available alternatives to their customers while helping them thoughtfully navigate their on-prem and multi-cloud environments. This will mean getting to grips with the appliances and cloud-based offerings from their vendors and ensuring constant communications with them about their stock levels.
Value-added services will need to evolve further as “SaaSification” continues to embed
Value-added services have historically been the key to profit making for most resellers, but the relentless march towards “SaaSification” takes a bigger bite out the market each year. As traditional businesses continue to decline – 28 companies dropped out of the Fortune Global 2000 this year – they are being replaced by younger companies born in the cloud and who are more inclined to SaaS adoption. As this trend continues in 2023, resellers will need to provide more strategic services beyond just ongoing management as the march towards SaaS continues.
MSPs, autonomous solutions to fill growing cyber skills gap
Due to increasing levels of cyber threats over the last several years, many cybersecurity professionals are feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and are even leaving the industry altogether – creating a cybersecurity skills gap and leaving businesses vulnerable. On top of a 2.72 million person gap today, new research shows that one-third of cybersecurity professionals are considering leaving their roles over the next two years due to stress and burnout, furthering the talent gap.
With a significant increase in demand for cyber skills combined with a shortage of qualified workers, organizations will be looking for alternative solutions to help fill the gap – including MSPs. With increased demand to provide organizations with managed data protection, MSPs will look to increase efficiency by deploying autonomous solutions that leverage AI/ML to deliver data management that is self-healing and self-optimizing while eliminating some of the manual day-to-day tasks. In 2023, look for MSPs to help fill the cybersecurity talent shortage by implementing autonomous data management solutions to ensure their customers’ data is always available and resilient from ransomware and other cyber threats.
