DISTRIBUTORS are evolving to address the shift towards Managed Services and Cloud-based applications which are driving much of the growth across the UK ICT sector.
According to the latest research from IT Europa and Gartner respectively, Europe's leading distributors increased their share of the supply chain, growing their revenues by an average of 5.4% while overall the ICT industry grew by just 0.3%. The UK overall experienced growth of 6% - higher than the European average of 5.4%.
IT Europa's latest database report 'Distributors in Europe', describes an industry that is changing fast. While consolidation and organic growth are making for economies of scale, and portfolios are expanding, the costs of doing business in the world of complex services and emerging technologies is increasing. The larger distributors, who have been advancing into cloud, analytics, IoT and other areas, have invested in staff and training, with numbers employed in the top 500 in Europe rising to over 103,000 from just over 100,000 in the last study.
The twenty-plus publicly quoted distributors in Europe managed to lift their sales in 2016 by just 2.58%, while smaller independents did over 10% better.
The total revenues for all companies in 2015 was $142.84bn (€132.38bn) with a total staff figure of 103,034. Overall, total revenues of all companies increased 5.42% in 2016 (based on 2016 revenues) compared to the previous year.
The 'Distributors in Europe' report provides in-depth profiles of Europe's leading distributors including: 20 parent companies, 144 subsidiaries, 314 independents, and 22 publicly-listed companies. Priced from £2,350, The report is available from IT Europa (www.iteuropa.com).