By Paul Conradie, managing director of IT distributor, Comztek
Contrary to the trends in the consumer and retail markets which have experienced almost record growth in the last 12 months or so, the IT sector is still waiting for the boom times to hit.
Without it, the IT sector will continue to show mediocre growth well into 2006.
What the industry needs is good government IT-spend, giving us the kick start that we really need as this would lead to growth in the private sector. While the threat of interest rate increases, which could cause a weakening of the currency remains a major challenge.
That said, the technology to watch for in 2006, and probably our industry`s biggest opportunity for growth, will be mobility; not just wireless, but also everything that goes along with building a wireless infrastructure including networking hardware and software, security and more.
In fact, mobility and security will be the biggest trends in IT.
Compared to their first world counterparts, South African businesses, particularly in the SMB sector, still have to be convinced of the value of security and the need for compliance will only aggravate an already sensitive situation. We need to work with our resellers in driving home just what the threats are how critical it is to have the strategies and technologies to defend against them.
The reseller channel is a vastly different to what was five years ago and it is continuing to change. Resellers, in an effort to clinch that deal, demand far more value-add from distributors and less window dressing.
They want the technology, they want the solutions and they want the training that will help them to generate more business from their customers.
Distributors need to remain cognisant of this if they expect to meet the needs of their resellers.
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