technology
reseller.co.uk
BULLETIN
5
CompTIA Member
of the Year
CompTIA, the world’s leading
IT association, has named
Tracy Pound as its Member
of the Year in recognition of
her tireless work championing
industry diversity and as a
mentor and confidante for
scores of colleagues.
Tracy is founder and managing director
of technology consultancy MaximITy, based
in Tamworth. She has been an active
member of CompTIA since 2012 and was
elected a member of the CompTIA Board of
Directors in 2016.
Pound has more than three decades
of experience in the technology industry.
She started out as a programmer before
moving into consultancy, training and
project management roles. In 2016 she was
named IT Woman of the Year by PCR.
member-of-the-year-award
Teaching the teachers
Against a backdrop of growing demand for
workers with IT skills, UKFast, Cisco and the
Open University have joined forces to help
schools and colleges deliver digital skills
training. Manchester cloud firm UKFast is
bringing Cisco Net Academy, already used
by 9,500 schools worldwide, to schools in
the north of England. So far, 73 have signed
up for face-to-face training with technical
experts from UKFast, Cisco and the Open
University. Courses
on networking,
security, operating
systems and digital
foundations are
designed to give
teachers the skills
and resources they
need to teach an
innovative digital
curriculum.
IT job postings up 10%
Job postings for technology positions
in the UK increased by 10% last year.
Analysis by CompTIA shows that in 2016
there were more than 1.3 million IT job
postings, equating to more than one in
10 of all UK jobs advertised. The size of
the UK technology workforce has grown
by more than 100,000 since 2012.
Graham Hunter, VP Certifications,
Europe and Middle East at CompTIA, said:
“Businesses in the UK continue to become
ever more reliant on technology and these
results highlight that firms are looking for
staff to help them meet IT demands in the
21st century. Most organisations now need
tech savvy employees across the workplace
and not simply in the IT department.”
Kristian Wright, Managing Director
of Network Operations Centre Inbay and
Executive Council Member at CompTIA,
added: “The flip side is that given the wealth
of job opportunities out there, SMBs in
particular are finding it more difficult to retain
skilled staff and attract the new people they
need to deliver today’s in-demand services
– business continuity and security, for
example. This makes it even more important
for SMBs to develop current staff.”
Almost half of channel leaders expect
the channel to grow between now and
2020, according to a OnePoll survey
commissioned by Agilitas, the European
supplier of customer driven inventory-as-
a-service.
Despite continued market disruption and
uncertainty, 47% expect the channel to grow,
27% expect it to be a similar size and 26%
expect it to shrink between now and 2020.
Most of the 100 channel leaders
surveyed agree that IT-based revenue
streams will be even more OPEX-based by
2020. IT services are expected to see the
biggest contract shift from CAPEX to OPEX
(30%), followed by hardware sales (19%).
Software and hardware support
services are expected to provide some of
the strongest revenue streams in 2020.
Agilitas CEO Shaun Lynn said: “The
results of our research suggest that the
channel will see significant movement
to OPEX-based support services in the
next few years. A rise in support services
and contracts moving to an OPEX model
provide significant new revenue streams for
resellers, managed service providers and
independent IT providers.”
Services drive revenue growth
CFOs are retooling their businesses to
generate more revenue from services,
including professional services,
subscription-based services, software/
apps delivered as a service, managed
services and usage-based contracts.
More than a third of163 CFOs
questioned by Cloud ERP vendor
FinancialForce say that subscription-based
services have become significantly more
important for their companies over the
past five years. Roughly the same number
(26.9%) see those types of services as an
important part of their company’s growth
plan over the next two years.
Currently, 71% of CFOs report that
more than half of their revenue comes from
services, and almost a third report that all
their companies’ revenues are service-
related. More than half (55%) say that
services generate a higher percentage of
revenues today than they did five years ago.
Only 17% of respondents are confident
that their operational and IT infrastructure
is equipped to handle the increase in
service-related revenues.
-
Research
Channel leaders
positive about
future growth
Tracy Pound
