Kathy Gibson is at Context Channel Connect – Up to 80% of cloud is sold direct, but its reach through distribution is growing fast – as much as 40% in the SMB sector.
The movement to public cloud is not new, says Chris Vallenduuk, regional director: APAC at Context, but the pandemic has accelerated its adoption.
Cloud-based office applications showed massive growth during the pandemic, moving from a respectable 20% year on year growth to more than 40%.
Overall, Microsoft is responsible for about 75% of the revenue, with 35% year on year growth. Off a smaller base, Cisco grew 46% and Zoom 160%.
According to IDC, cloud spend is about 6% of total IT spend.
As we move out of the pandemic, Vallenduuk believes the adoption of multi-cloud will accelerate as companies reduce their dependence on a single supplier.
But this adds complexity and security risks.
And businesses still have to think about growth while keeping costs down. For some customers, this will involve reducing office space and increasing remote working.
In the quest for resiliency, cloud data management has settled at 38% in Q122, after peaking at much higher rates in 2021.
Cloud security is still growing at 15% in Q122. As cloud grows this sector will grow with it, Vallenduuk says, especially with new threats coming out all the time.
Business intelligence and analytics are key to future business success, he says, and this is reflected in massive growth (67% in Q122).
Infrastructure and platform as a service is also growing well (55% in the latest quarter), dominated by Microsoft Azure with about 95% growth.