Canalys recognises vendor leadership through pandemic

Canalys has shared its latest Channel Leadership Matrix, with some vendors shining as champions and others discovering they need to do more work to satisfy partners.

The annual matrix covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has four segments – champions, contenders, scalers and stragglers.

Champions in the latest EMEA matrix included APC by Schneider Electric, Citrix, Check Point, Lenovo, HP, Cisco, NetApp, HPE, Juniper Networks, Trend Micro and Kaspersky.

At the other end of the scale, Symantec and Veritas were described as stragglers. Fortinet, Palo Alto, Fujitsu, Nutanix, Veeam and Amazon Web Services fell into the contenders category and are all close to pushing into the champion segment if they continue in the same vein next year.

Dell, Apple, IBM, VMware, Microsoft and Oracle were scalers, a category previously named ‘growers’, showing positive momentum in the channel but still needing to improve slightly on their ratings.

Canalys stated that the pandemic had really given some vendors a chance to shine and those that had gained champion status had demonstrated the highest levels of excellence in channel management, had driven growth and responded to partner needs during the pandemic.

A handful of vendors retained champion status from 2019, including APC by Schneider Electric, as a result of delivering year-on-year improvements.

“It’s a great honour for our company to have been named a champion in the Canalys Channel Leadership Matrix for the second consecutive year,” said Rob McKernan, senior vice-president of Schneider Electric Europe.

“This is a proud moment for our award-winning channel team in what has been an exceptionally challenging and unusual year for the sector, truly showing the importance of innovation, collaboration and a partner-first approach,” he added.

Some of the other vendors that performed well have a background in the hardware world, including Lenovo and HP, and Canalys updated its expectations around the PC market yesterday. The firm is expecting 35% growth globally in the PC market in the fourth quarter and then 1.4% overall next year.

“While the global pandemic has provided a huge short-term demand boost, the PC industry has plenty more to look forward to in the years ahead. At Canalys, we identified four key trends that will drive PC market growth in 2021 and beyond: remote working, digital learning, device as a service and emerging use cases,” said Rushabh Doshi, research director at Canalys.

“As vaccines start to roll out and we enter a post-Covid world, behavioural changes among both businesses and consumers will place greater emphasis on PC use, leading to a host of new opportunities not just in hardware, but also in software and services,” he added.

Canalys is also expecting security and connectivity to drive growth, with remote working set to remain a feature in a post-pandemic world. 

“PCs with stronger security standards will be integral to future solutions and will be expected from vendors and channel partners, especially in industries such as financial services and the public sector. The pandemic has also revealed just how important secure and reliable connectivity is in the face of disruption,” added Doshi.