The number of services offered by European IT distributors continues to climb and the future role of 'specialisation' as a service within the distribution sector has been underscored by new research from Comms Dealer sister publication IT Europa.
According to the study - which was conducted on behalf of industry consortium the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) - distributors are plugging a skills gap across the full range of channels, from traditional resellers to cloud providers, enabling them to focus on their core capabilities.
The GTDC confirmed that distributors have become the 'logical place' to turn for support and as such the industry body has witnessed a surge in take-up of services across the board.
"It has been the case for a number of years that distribution has supplied services, some bespoke, some from a prepared list of offerings," noted GTDC CEO Tim Curran. "But it has become clear that the levels of service provision have accelerated, with the GTDC listing 70-plus examples of hands-on help ranging from technical configuration to licence management, from marketing services to finance."
IT Europa Editor John Garratt commented: "There is a growing demand from end users for specialisation among resellers, solution providers and integrators. This means they have to rely more on third party support and the distributor is the go-to provider of such services.
"We expect services portfolios to continue their expansion, with financing, cloud, security and marketing support becoming more widely adopted."
The GTDC drives more than $150bn in annual worldwide sales of products, services and solutions, and cited a number of distributors that have invested heavily in services, including Arrow ECS, Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Westcon and eastern Europe's AB.