The tyranny of choice: Why enterprise tech buyers are confused

Canalys Channels Forum The tech industry has left users punch-drunk with choice with the ever-increasing complexity of the technology offering being one reason for the recent sluggish IT market.

This has exacerbated the impact of a strengthening dollar which has been behind an unprecedented rise in the price tags of tech products, Canalys boss Steve Brazier said this morning.

Brazier said “rising levels of complexity” were marking it “harder for customers to keep up with everything.” This in turn made it harder for customers to make decisions, he concluded.

This created an opportunity for account managers and channel partners of course, to help guide customers through the increasingly complex landscape. Assuming of course, that these third parties were able to get a grip themselves.

A more tangible brake on the market was the rise in the dollar, and the drop in energy prices. This had led to a shift of growth from the (former?) emerging markets, to the developed economies, he said. The European “picture was improving” he said, with the US doing better still.

But, he continued, “Prices are going up. That has clearly restricted demand.”

Speaking at the Canalys Channels Forum in Barcelona, Brazier noted that half of infrastructure sales were not into big data centres, which had a knock on effect on traditional vendors. Where they did snag this business margins were low, while phenomena like the Open Compute Project were a long-term threat.

At the client end, he said the launch of Windows 10 had had little discernable effect on the market. If Google opted to turn Android into a notebook operating system, “we can see this product making real headway.” He said there the tablet and notebook markets had declined in the first half, while the growth was coming in big smartphones.

Brazier also cited the effect of this week’s Safe Harbour ruling in the European courts. The requirement to retain personal data within Europe woiuld undoubtedly create opportunities around services and datac ntre and infrastructure.

In a similar vein, Brazier speculated on the future of Salesforce.com. Much of the IT sector ran its sales operations on the platform, he said, and might balk at the idea of this treasure trove of information being controlled by Oracle. Or indeed Microsoft. ®