CV_Spring_2021

One way organizations are expected to respond to COVID-19 disruption is increases in spend- ing on devices in 2021. Devices spending by EMEA organizations will move from a decline of 15.1 percent in 2020 to an increase of 1.7 percent in 2021, said Gartner. Thin and light notebooks spend- ing is on pace to grow 10 percent. Desktop-as-a-service platforms spending, meanwhile, will achieve a steep increase of 60 percent in EMEA in 2021, said Gartner. “The pandemic has forced employers to adopt remote working, turning it into a strategic workforce policy,” said Ranjit Atwal, research vice president at Gartner. “Mobile PCs are a necessity for remote work and EMEA organizations will re-focus some spending on mobile PCs.” The speed at which remote working is occurring varies consid- erably around the world depend- ing on IT adoption, culture, and mix of industries. The United States leads in terms of remote workers, accounting for 52 percent of the U.S. workforce. Across the United Kingdom remote workers represent 48 percent of the workforce in 2021, while remote workers in Germany and France will account for 38 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Investments in delivering technologies to support remote workers is what Gartner says will fuel spending in EMEA by 5 percent this year. EMEA organizations will increase their total spending on collabo- ration and content platforms (17 percent), security software (11 percent) and cloud confer- encing unified communications (4 percent) in 2021. Announced Changes The first part of 2021 also has brought several notable channel program appointments and new hires. At Citrix, Microsoft veteran Pilkku Asama has assumed the role of EMEA vice president of partner sales. Aasma is tasked with expanding the U.S. software vendor’s ability to enable remote working for partners across its own EMEA markets. “While the channel has experienced many recent changes, the need to help organiza- tions tackle challenges associated with having a limited number of cybersecurity professionals or sprawling resources remains universal,” Brandi said. “Together with our partners, it is my primary objective to help customers make their exist - ing security teams more productive with better tools, extend their teams with managed services and move away from arbitrary security program success metrics.” Kristine Kirchner, EMEA vice president of channel at Wallix, previously was responsible for the business development of the company’s Trust- elem IDaas product offering. She will now lead the Paris-headquartered vendor ’s 15-strong EMEA channel team. “Our business partner program has the ambition to strengthen itself locally, to be as close as possible to the needs of each market, while relying on a strong global development strategy,” Kirchner said. “My role will be to ensure this coordination at the global level in order to succeed in transposing local Pilkku Asama as assumed the role of EMEA VP of partner sales for Citrix Riverbed recently promoted Brecht Seurinck to VP EMEA channel sales EMEA IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars) 2019 Spending 2019 Growth (%) 2020 Spending 2020 Growth (%) 2021 Spending 2021 Growth (%) Data center systems $54,003 -9.0% $49,836 -7.7% $51,881 4.1% Enterprise software $128,688 7.3% $123,354 -4.1% $130,823 6.1% Devices $198,369 -1.9% $168,362 -15.1% $171,158 1.7% IT services $306,031 1.0% $284,736 -7.0% $291,953 2.5% Communications svs. $431,625 -0.2% $420,017 -2.7% $429,465 2.2% Overall IT $1,118,716 0.0% $1,046,306 -6.5% $1,075,281 2.8% Source: Gartner; November 2020 22 CHANNEL V ISION | May 2021 INTERNATIONAL AGENTS