Big UK resellers confident despite world's gloom

‘Everyone’s a winner, Rodney’

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Channel, 20th August 2008 07:50 GMT

Customer demand for virtualisation, security and unified communication technologies has helped large UK resellers outgrow the European IT market over the past year.

Consolidation has also helped drive growth, with the top 250 resellers’ revenues climbing 24.6 per cent to $43.7bn, well above the industry average growth rate for Europe of 4.3 per cent, according to a new report.

The results of IT Europa's UK ICT Premier 250 database study will probably help some of the bigger UK channel players to sleep well at night, or perhaps not. Afterall, the research was carried out in June and July this year.

Since then politicians, business heavyweights and analysts have all put the boot in saying that Blighty is on the brink of a recession. The pound has also helped underline those lingering concerns – it’s been sliding against a rallying US dollar for the past fortnight or so.

Despite those sobering facts that put the UK economy in a precarious position the IT sector is keeping its end up very well, claims the report, which was developed based on detailed interviews with Blighty's top 250 IT resellers.

"There are a number of trends currently driving the quite astonishing growth we are seeing in this sector. The growing importance of the indirect sales model and the increasing importance of solutions and services are both important contributing factors,” IT Europa's managing director Alan Norman cheerily noted.

“Much of the merger and acquisition activity we are seeing in this space is being driven by customer demand for broader, more integrated, solutions and to expand support coverage."

He acknowledged the “credit crunch” was starting to concern a number of organisations but added that most felt the IT market would weather the storm and forecast growth for the year ahead. ®

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