“Limitless landscape”: The digital transformation journey has only just begun

At this year’s Canalys Channels Forums, we’ll consider how today’s digital landscape is being changed and shaped by major technology and business trends. We’ll talk about the proliferation of devices and sensors – both consumer-driven, such as VR and connected cars, and enterprise-driven, such as security solutions, HVAC systems and crop sensors. These are behind the evolution of the Internet of Things and have led to an explosion in the volume of data being generated. This fast-growing stream of data has led to an exponential increase in demand for processing and storage, and the network infrastructure needed to support it. And with increasing cyber-attacks, securing it all has never been more important.

It’s vital for Canalys Channels Forum delegates and channel partners to protect the businesses they have already built in this area. This issue underpins our forum agenda, so we can assure delegates by presenting the mechanisms and evolution in vendor strategy, technology and programs to support their businesses today.

But we also need to look forward. What are the opportunities for navigating this ever-changing landscape? We’ll discover and explore what’s new, for example, the emergence of distributed high-performance and edge computing that will ensure there are no limits to the latency and bandwidth needed to sustain the Internet of Things. But we need to understand how such developments change what we think we know. So, we’ll be exploring such issues as:

What’s next for cloud?
What technologies are evolving to suit different customers’ businesses and industries?
How does this change customers’ security risks, priorities and needs?
What requirements are accelerating multi-cloud, hybrid solutions?
How is AI being used to manage workloads in distributed edge environments?
Where is machine learning coming in to transform analytics at a hyper-scale level and below?
What does the future hold for the technology industry regarding the advent of AI?
Are we truly on the edge of a robot revolution?

We will still come back to the most important issues for channel partners: what is real today and what should they plan for? The Canalys Channels Forums have always been about cutting through the hype and bluff to identify ultimate outcomes and stimulate business planning. How must partners skill-up to address the complexities across a customer’s business? Where might the channel need to invest regarding technology, sales and engineering to manage and bill in a new era of digital technologies and services?

At the Canalys Channels Forums, we’ll reflect on how the landscape has changed regarding customer needs, consumption and business models to help give partners a clearer view. By addressing today’s market trends, vendors will show the direction partners can take with them right now to journey through the Limitless Landscape.