DISTRIBUTION
Distribution: Timing
is Everything
The adage coined by Roy Amara, the US
With ICT technology continuing its constant cycles of development and producing more and more new
applications for business, what new applications should be considered by distributors seeking continued
relevance in the market?
researcher, scientist and futurist, about
forecasting the eects of technology
has become known as Amara’s law and
states: ‘We tend to overestimate the eect of a
technology in the short run and underestimate
the eect in the long run’.
And Amara is right. Fuelled I might
add by the media, potential technology
breakthroughs hit the headlines faster than
ever with stories of how our lives will be
transformed by new wonder products and
inventions.
e truth is more prosaic – a small few
might but most won’t even see the real light of
day and remain hype up until embarrassment
forces them to disappear.
Such is the background to one of the
most observed and quoted mechanisms for
assessing the likely commercial success of
new technology – e Garner Hype Cycle.
We have reproduced the latest Gartner
Curve for 2018 which is a great start point
for considering what we might be exciting
technology resellers over the course of the next
few years.
For distributors, getting on board with new
products and applications at the right time
is a key requisite for relevance and ongoing
success.
New Technologies:
e latest Gartner Hype Cycle throws up
some interesting topics for the channel to
consider but when you consider the fact
that distributors and resellers are only really
interested in approaching their customers
with ready to go o the shelf productised
solutions then much of what is on show is at
the margins of their current thinking. at,
leaving aside of course the fact that for some
resellers, and their customers, the more blood
on the leading edge the better. To those we
say, ‘Experience is something you get instead
of money’.
e most talked about (hyped?) technology
and set of applications today surrounds
Articial Intelligence and Machine Learning
and many channel players continue to tell us
their predictions and ambitions for providing
such to their customer in 2019. We aim
to cover this as a specic topic elsewhere
however and here we will take a quick look at
developments that are more likely to be ‘Prêtà
Porter’ this year.
The Fads, The Fears & The Future
One of the more interesting set of predictions
for 2019 has come from public relations rm
FleishmanHillard who has published it’s2019
Tech Trends Reportproduced following
analysis of more thanone billion conversations
on twitterover the last year.
So, is it an innovative and real-life example
of big data gathering and analytics or just
PR spin from a master of the art? Let’s be
charitable, especially as it’s a good read and say
it looks pretty good and insightful.
Here are the top three takeaways from
their research:
• 5G - A continued hype and interest in
5G networks; FleishmanHillard’s analysis
shows the 5G conversation increased in
volume share from 42% in 2017 to 58% in
2018.
• Blockchain - FleishmanHillard’s listening
shows that discussion volume share for
Blockchain has increased dramatically
year-on-year – 24% in 2017 vs 76% in 2018
– and the opportunity for deeper, more
forward-looking conversation is growing
apace. Debate is already starting to move
beyond mining and investment, towards
Blockchain’s potential impact on issues like
smart cities and digital transformation.
• Articial Intelligence – FleishmanHillard’s
social listening reveals people now demand
in-depth information on specic areas such
as smart robotics and machine learning.
Conversational AI (computers that people
can interact with simply by having a
conversation), for example, increased 54%
in Twitter topic volume from 2017 to 2018.
We’ll comment here on just one of these,
5G, but would add that all three will be under
our editorial spotlights throughout 2019.
5G is almost upon us as an available
technology. With UK trials by O2 and
Vodafone under way we’ll soon see bigger
hints at wider roll out plans hitting the news
pages at a rate of knots.
But there is much that the channel and
users will want to know that we know
nothing about and mostly surrounding actual
capabilities, costs and data consumption
models. Before those there will also be a lot
of talk taking place on the subject of mast
numbers and locations. We’ll also soon see
the rst availability of 5G handsets hitting
the market at CES in the US and MWC in
Barcelona.
BICS, the global voice carrier and
provider of mobile data services worldwide,
observes that 5G connectivity will also be
embedded into an ever-expanding ecosystem
of products, devices and sensors, which will
be manufactured, assembled, shipped and
tracked across the world in 2019.
‘It’ll be boom time for rms with technical
telecoms knowledge, industry relationships,
and required infrastructure. But to be a
success, the IoT must also be accessible to
those organisations without a traditional
telecoms background’.
Interestingly, BICS says that provisioning
and managing SIMs for millions of devices
means many organisations, including
channels, implementing an IoT solution must
at the same time act as MVNOs.
But overall, 5G is getting closer and the
talking, hype if you prefer, will soon be
matched by some commercial walking.
Looking at the role of IT in general –
and this will impact how channel and their
distributors approach the market, we also felt
36 | Channel Profiles 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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