Technology ecosystem business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region including Japan are embracing increased collaboration with 94% viewing increased IT ecosystem engagement as an important growth strategy, according to a report from Tech Data.
The TD Synnex company’s inaugural 2022 Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) Technology Ecosystem Benchmark Report shows that by 2025, over 75% of surveyed businesses are expected to sell more professional and managed services.
The report is based on a survey of APJ technology ecosystem partners with 1,000 seats and less, with fieldwork was conducted between July and October 2022 in partnership with technology market analyst firm Canalys.
Results show that APJ businesses also have plans to enhance their cloud capabilities as 53% of APJ end-customers want as-a-service (AAS) consumption options.
Despite aggregate analyst and financial research forecasting a US$800 billion global metaverse market, in the next 24 months, only 12% of APJ businesses plan to offer augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) solutions.
Jaideep Malhotra, Tech Data president in APJ, said that as a result of businesses increasingly being connected to the global technology ecosystem, there is now a state of rapid and steadfast digital transformation.
The report identified the following key themes for the technology partner ecosystem in responses with a 24- to 36-month outlook — professional and managed IT services expansion; high-growth technology investments; as-a-service consumption model adoption; augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) opportunity gap.
Other key findings include security, servers and storage continuing to be profit drivers for APJ IT businesses, with 44% of partners saying so.
APJ partners are investing in talent, technologies, and partnerships to capture opportunities in the demand for services
Expansion of cloud offerings portfolio in the next two years focusses on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML); mobility and edge; and device as a service and digital transformation.
While hardware resell continues to be core to business, APJ IT businesses are placing their bets on professional services and managed IT services. Partners continue to be optimistic about hardware resell, with only 28% believing the category will decrease in the next three years.
In line with the expansion of professional and managed IT services, and the shift to consumption-based OpEx models, partners have plans to enhance or develop cloud capabilities.
More than half, (53%) of APJ partners want AAS consumption options, 47% currently offer AAS consumption options, and 45% will offer as consumption options within 24 months.
Further, There is still a long way for APJ IT businesses to leverage early metaverse opportunities, as 12% of APJ partners plan to offer AR/VR/metaverse solutions within the next 24 months, and 3% currently offer these.
