Nine vendors have been crowned Champions in the 2022 Canalys EMEA Channel Leadership Matrix: Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, HPE, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, NetApp, Nutanix, Schneider Electric and Trend Micro.

A vendor’s position in the Canalys Leadership Matrix is based on channel partner feedback to the Canalys Vendor Benchmark, combined with an assessment of their recent channel activities and future prospects by Canalys analysts. Champions have shown the highest levels of success in channel management over the last 12 months compared with their industry peers, while also achieving the difficult task of improving their performance on last year.

Canalys assessed over 30 technology vendors across hardware, software, cloud and cybersecurity with significant channel businesses in EMEA. Other vendors are classified as Contenders (with higher channel ratings than peers, but declining on last year), Scalers (improvements in partner sentiment but yet to achieve the highest levels of excellence in channel management) or Foundation (vendors with the lowest ratings compared to peers and have also suffered a deterioration in partner sentiment over the last 12 months).

2022 has thrown up some formidable challenges for vendors and their partners. Supply volatility, price inflation, rising energy costs, talent shortages (and wage inflation), along with the impact of the war in Ukraine, have tested vendors' channel management skills in EMEA to the limit. IT demand trends have shifted significantly during the year, putting greater financial pressure on the channel. At the same time, IT industry dynamics are changing, driven both by macroeconomic pressures and longer-term customer adoption of digital technologies to drive business transformation. The need for a resilient, highly-skilled and diverse channel ecosystem is greater than ever, as customers demand help with IT complexity, rising cybersecurity threats and skills constraints, while IT budgets are tightening. Moves to subscriptions, ITaaS and cloud require a change in vendors’ channel models. Sustainability is also becoming a critical consideration for customers, and across the entire IT supply chain. These are all increasing the pressure on vendors to innovate go-to-market strategies and programs, to broaden partner relationships and routes to market (and enable collaboration), and to balance multiple, often competing, channels.

This has set the bar even higher for Champions. Congratulations go to eight of the nine EMEA Champions, who managed to retain their Champion status from last year: Fujitsu, HPE, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, NetApp, Nutanix, Schneider Electric and Trend Micro. Dell Technologies becomes a champion for the first time. For all these companies, the biggest challenge now is retaining this leadership position in the next 12 months.

The Vendor Benchmark is an online tool exclusively available to clients of Canalys’ Channels Analysis and Partner Program Analysis services. It assesses channel partners’ views of technology vendors, rating them across 12 areas of channel management. Scores are collected on an ongoing basis from channel partners via our Candefero community of 18,000+ members.

For more information, please contact:

Alla Roiuk: alla_roiuk@canalys.com +447881934784