**Australia and New Zealand**: Leading tech vendors and analysts highlight the need for agility, skill development, risk management, and enhanced market presence as critical priorities amid fast-evolving technological and geopolitical landscapes in the ANZ channel ecosystem.
Executives from several leading technology vendors and industry analysts have highlighted key challenges and priorities influencing the channel landscape in Australia and New Zealand, emphasising the need for balance, agility, and increased market presence amidst dynamic market conditions.
Mark Simpson, director of DXC Technology’s Oracle practice for Australia and New Zealand, identified focusing on clear business outcomes and raising the company’s profile as his primary concerns. Simpson underlined that while the delivery teams excel in their work, the challenge lies in ensuring broader recognition of their capabilities. Speaking to ARN, he said, “It’s more about the opportunities rather than challenges. I know it’s easy for me to say, but our teams, from a delivery perspective, are second to none. We are unbelievably good at what we do. What probably keeps me awake at night is making sure more people know how great we are and what we do.”
Simpson also highlighted DXC’s strategic immersion in global sponsorships such as Ferrari and Manchester United as a means to bolster brand awareness. “When we are delivering and where we are providing that platform, from a services point of view, for these organisations to do what they do, it’s incredible,” he added.
From a broader perspective on external influences impacting the channel, Gartner vice president analyst Luke Ellery pointed to growing geopolitical uncertainties prompting organisations to place heightened emphasis on third-party risk management. He noted, “We’re seeing in Australia quite a lot of signals [indicating] uncertainty, so I think that is keeping organisations up at night… A lot more focus around, ‘Who are the organisations that we’re working with and what geography and what country are they from?’” Ellery also acknowledged that these risk considerations have been emerging over the past few years but are becoming increasingly prominent.
Vendor representatives from Elastic, Oracle, and Zoom reinforced the theme of speed and adaptability as critical factors amid rapid technological evolution and market shifts. Andrew Habgood, Elastic’s international vice president of partner ecosystems and former APJ partner ecosystems VP, stressed the importance of keeping pace with partner demands. “The world is moving so fast that if we don’t capture the attention of the partners and really keep them up to date, we could miss,” he told ARN. “We need to continually educate, inform and activate our partners in those areas.”
Oracle’s group vice president and head of alliances and channels for Asia Pacific, Lalit Malik, focused on the strategic imperative of rapidly equipping partners with new skills in line with accelerating technology changes. “Our dependence on that partner base is real and it’s significant,” Malik said. “To ensure that the partners that we have are skilled on the newer technologies … it’s something that needs to be an integral part of strategy and we need to be nimble enough to make that capability enhancement and change as we move along.”
At the local level, Oracle A/NZ general manager of alliances and channels Robert Gosling observed the transformative shift in business models from on-premises licensed software to cloud services, which demands a fundamentally different approach to market engagement. “Just because we’re providing more services, this doesn’t add any value to the customer until there’s an implementation on top of that,” he said. Gosling emphasised the importance of partnering with service providers to genuinely add value and reduce what customers perceive as the “price of risk” associated with cloud adoption.
Zoom A/NZ head of channel Mike Johnson succinctly summarised the pressure for speed in responding to market opportunities around unifying communications (UC) and customer experience (CX) solutions, particularly with AI integration. Johnson said, “Any technology company with a differentiator needs to go and get that into the market. So, I’m constantly looking at ways that I can go faster.”
Together, these insights from senior executives and analysts convey a picture of a technology channel environment where balancing strategic focus, skill development, partner engagement, and market visibility are all critical as vendors and service providers navigate evolving customer expectations and external risks. The conversations articulate a shared acknowledgment that pace and agility, combined with clear value delivery, underpin future success in the region’s technology ecosystem.
Source: Noah Wire Services
Subscribe to Industry Updates
