European VARS are outgrowing the market, riding a wave of demand for software and solutions along with managed services.
The overall EMEA market is forecast by Gartner to grow at just 1.9% this year, following growth of just 0.2% in 2016.
But new research by IT Europa in its report Solution VARs in Europe - The Top 1000, shows that Europe's leading solution VARs have achieved an average growth in sales of 9.44% over the last two years, with more than 85% of them now offering some form of managed service solution (a big jump from the 77% figure just six months ago).
Overall, 94% of the VARs supply software, some 44% of them working with their own packages, so claiming a role as software houses in their own right.
Looking at the vertical markets served by VARs, the public sector was top at 63% followed by financial services market, supplied by just over half (55%) of the top VARs.
Manufacturing was also supplied by a majority at 52%, Education at 46% was also perhaps surprisingly strong, just slightly ahead of healthcare at 44%.
It was slightly better to be an independent than a publicly-listed VAR last year as the latest analysis of the European VAR markets reveals.
The independents lifted their sales by 10.5%, the listed firms by 9.65%, according to the report.
The publicly listed firms, generally larger in size, had a higher overall sales result - the average sales figure for this group of 39 was $440m. The independents, though more numerous at nearly 800, had average sales of just over $30m.
The figures also show that some 315,000 people work in these top 1,000 VARs.