Canalys Channels Forum 2015 will be in Barcelona

Canalys announced that a record number of sponsors have already been confirmed for the world’s largest independent series of channels events – the Canalys Channels Forum 2015. Committed sponsors now include HP, Lenovo, Dell, EMC, Microsoft and Cisco at keynote level, with Acer, Eaton, Vision Solutions, CHG - Meridian, Autotask, IBM, Lookout, MAXfocus from LogicNow and Awingu also participating. Many other vendors are set to join in the coming weeks.

The Canalys Channels Forum celebrates the pivotal role that distributors play in the industry. Distributors are the secret glue that joins the vendors to thousands of channel partners around the world, with ever more vendors recognizing that they represent the most effective route to market. All the major distributors are participating in the Canalys Channels Forum 2015, including Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Arrow, Avnet, Westcon Group, Also, Westcoast, Synnex, Arena, ECS, Tarsus, JOS, IXIX, Cadensworth, Redington, Intcomex and Prianto.

Néstor Cano, President, Tech Data Europe, said, ‘CCF provides a great opportunity to personally connect with our reseller partners, enabling us to reinforce relationships and make plans to grow our businesses together. In the course of just a few days at CCF, we come together to engage in high-quality, high-impact interactions with all our most-valued partners, which is something that would be very difficult to achieve in the normal routine of daily business throughout the rest of the year.’

Dickson Lui, COO from Synnex added, ‘We are encouraging even more partners to participate this year as they really value our invitation to this event.’

From today, partners can register to participate, with the waiting lists for the three events already at record levels. ‘Connecting Insights’ will be the event theme for 2015, as Canalys predicts the Internet of Things (IoT) will drive the next wave of channel growth. Canalys events are underpinned by the most advanced apps possible and it plans to further extend its digital lead this year by bringing location into the mix. Delegates will be connected and share even more insights.

Steve Brazier (picture), President and CEO, Canalys, said, ‘We believe the explosion of insights from wearables and ubiquitous sensors can be the biggest boost to channel partners’ addressable market over the next three years. Now is the time to start evaluating where in the IoT space to play.’

‘While the opportunity to market wearables and sensors will be attractive to some, we think the bigger opportunity lies in extending what has already been a proven business for channel players - providing decision support information for their customers. The biggest value of IoT will undoubtedly come from the analysis and insights generated by assets coming online. Hence our careful selection of “Connecting Insights” as our theme; while IoT as an industry movement is interesting, sustainable growth in profitability for partners will come from the value they can quickly deliver to their business customers,’ continued Steve Brazier.

This year’s EMEA forum will return to the Hotel Arts in Barcelona in October, while the APAC event will venture to Bali, Indonesia for the world’s largest APAC channels conference in November. The LATAM edition will run from 17 to 19 November and has the magical city of Cartagena in Colombia as its destination. All three events are each expected to attract in excess of 1,000 delegates.