According to research conducted by Brocade, which surveyed over 230 distributors and resellers from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), Virtualization, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)/ Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have emerged as the top customer trends and network complexity and bandwidth provisioning are the top two customer pain points. The report provides insights on where market opportunities lie for the channel and where they need to focus in the coming year.
“It is not surprising that virtualization takes top position on account of its significant benefits especially as organizations across the region embrace cloud computing. With data centre build-outs gaining pace in the Middle East, organizations will be looking to virtualize more and more aspects of their infrastructure. BYOD is also an up and coming trend. The Middle East is seeing a convergence of the wired and wireless worlds where customers expect a seamless and secure experience irrespective of what device they are using or from where they connect to the enterprise network. CIOs and IT managers across the region are slowly beginning to understand that Software-defined networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) can create highly automated and more efficiently architected networks that deliver next-generation apps and services with ease and speed, enabling businesses to stop worrying about how to deliver their products and services and get back to innovating new ones,” says Abdul Rehman Tariq, Regional Channel Manager, MENA at Brocade.
“Middle East channel organizations need to recognize these technology trends and develop their capabilities in these areas if they are to take advantage of the market opportunities.”
In terms of customer pain points, EMEA respondents reported that network complexity and bandwidth (both 46 percent) were the biggest challenges related to networking requirements, followed by CapEx investment in IT (33 percent).
“Ethernet Fabric technology is the foundation of next generation data centre networks since it provides higher levels of performance, efficiency, availability, and operational simplicity to meet the business needs of virtualized data centres. The channel would be well advised to invest in developing their technical capabilities in order to propose this solution to customers who are concerned with network complexity as they begin to increasingly embrace trends like virtualization, BYOD, cloud and SDN.”
Other Key findings include:
- SDN and NFV are already significant industry trends. 18 percent of companies surveyed are now deploying SDN, 33 percent are currently evaluating plans to adopt SDN, and 29 percent plan to do so in the next 12 months. Only 18 percent have no future plans to consider SDN or NFV.
- Virtualisation and BYOD will be top customer priorities. Virtualisation (72 percent) and BYOD (43 percent) were identified as the top customer trends in EMEA, with SDN/NFV following in third (30 percent). Fifty-three percent of EMEA partners think that more than 75 percent of customer data centres will be virtualised within two years.
- EMEA partners are focused on innovation and vendor strategy. While technology differentiation were cited as the most important factor in choosing a vendor (67 percent), vision and strategy came in second, with 42 percent listing it as a top factor, along with customer demand (39 percent).
- The EMEA channel will prioritise growth in 2015. Sixty-four percent of companies surveyed said that their current growth strategy was a top priority, followed by upgrading and expanding tech competencies (38 percent) and expanding into new verticals (32 percent).
Methodology
The research, conducted by Brocade via an anonymous online SurveyGizmo survey, was cast among a wide range of individuals at partner organisations. The majority of respondents were from technical (63 percent) and sales (27 percent) job functions, with the remaining respondents in executive level (2 percent) and marketing (8 percent) functions.
