News in the Channel - issue #14

2024 PREVIEW

Emma Dennard , VP of Northern Europe, OVHcloud In 2024, data sovereignty will change how we think about the online world. Most of the data economy today doesn’t have the individual at its heart, but this is changing fast. The combined momentum of UK-GDPR

We’ve made progress, but the urgency of the matter is reaching crisis point, and rampant greenwashing, accusations of greenwashing and over-simplification of complex discussions often leads to a slowdown in taking on the issues. Every little helps and the scope of the challenge is often misunderstood. For example, it takes 39,000 gallons of water to produce a single car. An average DC uses 390,000 gallons of water, and there are more than 750,000 cars produced every year in the UK, so it’d take 86,000 conventional DCs to come close to that. Appreciating the scope and complexity of the problem helps us to properly understand the issue, and then take steps, even small ones, to tackle the issues in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the industry is making datacentres as efficient as they can be, but this is just a small part of the equation. The industry needs power-efficient software, more renewable energy sources, to recycle more and think of smart ways to use waste heat and conserve water. In 2023, great strides were made towards understanding the complexity of the situation and in 2024, this hard work will start to pay off.

and the sentiment of legislation like the Data Act means that organisations now understand that their customer and business relationships are not built around trust – and this needs to change. Data sovereignty means showing respect for user data. It means having control over it and knowing where data is, who has access to it, and having the freedom to move it, edit it or delete it. Data sovereignty is about ultimately about respect for individual human rights. In 2024, our definition of data sovereignty will become broader and include further considerations of data portability, contract periods, use of open-source software, integration and even choice of hardware. This is a worthy goal: it’s only when we have full control and transparency over information that the data economy will become a fairer, more human-centric place. Also, the complexity of our global sustainability issues will become clearer.

Emma Dennard

ovhcloud.com

Rachel Rothwell , Senior regional director, UK and Ireland, Zyxel Networks

The prospects for 2024 are fairly bright for the channel. In terms of trends, we’d expect to see continued movement towards managed services and even more import and emphasis being placed in protecting the network. It will be a year of wired and wireless infrastructure upgrades and we see good opportunities in the hospitality sector, where bars, restaurants, coffee houses and hotels all need fast, dependable WiFi and secure connectivity. Retail, education and healthcare are also markets where we expect to see a lot of upgrade activity. The state of the economy is crucial, and we’ll only see a real change in the market as business confidence returns. When that happens, we can expect to see a really positive change in attitudes. In many sectors, funds have been held back for too long now

and new investment is desperately needed to ensure that businesses can adapt to new ways of working and be competitive. The term ‘disruptive’ is perhaps overused today, but AI certainly has the potential to deliver significant improvements for MSPs on problem detection and resolution, and to enhance the intelligence of cybersecurity solutions. In networking. The arrival of more WiFi 7 products will spark a great deal of interest and activity. Partners should be prepared to take advantage of that and ready to explain the different options that are available with respect to upgrades here – we expect as many customers to step up to WiFi 6/6E as WiFi 7. Smaller switches with multi-gigabit options and high-powered PoE are also going to shake up the market.

Rachel Rothwell

zyxel.com

CONTINUED