COMMENT
New year, new opportunities While there remain problems in the economy that affect businesses in the channel, there are still plenty of opportunities for new business and increasing existing revenues in 2023.
in the infrastructure around the UK, providers are looking to recoup that investment through take up of broadband services among the public and businesses and are increasingly looking to the channel for partners to do that – which in turn can bring margin back to connectivity. More on page 16. Elsewhere in the channel there are plenty of other opportunities for businesses to take advantage of this year. For example, the convergence of the AV and comms sectors continues apace and shows no sign of slowing post-pandemic. This means that providers of AV and comms are increasingly getting involved in providing complete unified communications solutions for customers – something being increasingly demanded. Those that are sticking in their traditional sphere are starting to feel the pinch – so now is the time to embrace unified comms and take the opportunities for sales on offer. Of course, there are opportunities in all parts of the channel – they just must be sought out and delivered to customers. While it may take investment – money and time to learn new products – there is plenty of help from manufacturers, and it could help a business to thrive in otherwise testing economic times that are predicted for 2023. I hope you enjoy the issue. As always, if there are any topics you would like to see covered in the coming issues, or you wanted to get involved in
With everyone back into the swing of work again after the Christmas and New Year period, many people are looking ahead to what 2023 may bring. Experience of recent years tells us that anything could – and does – happen and things that weren’t even a dot on the horizon at the turn of the year can cause global havoc by March. However, assuming that there isn’t a global event in 2023 – and we’re due a quiet year, surely? – then we can look ahead and, while the issues of 2022 haven’t gone away, there is some cause for optimism as there are opportunities for businesses in the channel to grab. In our 2023 preview feature, a range of leaders in the channel give their opinions on what the year may hold for them and the wider channel, including their predictions for some of the major trends we can expect in the sector, in terms of customer needs and business performance. See page 20 for more. In addition, our resident data analyst Wickus Bester looks at what the year could have in store for data science, including the rise of technology such as ChatGPT, which is a language model that can produce detailed answers to questions and generate content through artificial intelligence. It garnered more than one million users in less than a week after its launch, which demonstrates the interest in it already around the world and is set to increase in 2023. Find out more on page 56. One of the more interesting sectors to watch this year will be altnets. After years of investment
Dan Parton
Every quarter we plan to make an award for the best campaign run in the magazine. This quarter Exclusive Networks has been chosen as the winner. They have produced some informative content for our readers, including a cyber security guide in our first issue, and presented it in a fun and easy to understand way. Thanks for the support.
winner Q4 · 2022
best campaign
editorial, please contact me at dan@newsinthechannel.com
www.newsinthechannel.co.uk
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