Canalys Leadership Matrix APAC Q1 2018

APC by Schneider Electric, AWS, Cisco, Citrix, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP, Kaspersky, Palo Alto Networks, Veeam and VMware are the “Champions” of the APAC channel

Canalys collected over 1,800 channel partner responses from across APAC between February 2017 and February 2018, comparing vendors against their peers in channel management. “Champions” in the Canalys Leadership Matrix have achieved the highest scores from their partners in 10 areas of channel management, while also showing the greatest year-on-year improvement in these scores.

Among the “Champions”, Palo Alto Networks and APC by Schneider Electric have emerged as standout performers. Palo Alto was applauded for its increased partner focus in the region. APC is enjoying the fruits of its improved partner relationships as well as driving increased demand for its edge computing solutions. One partner commented on APC’s “strong branding initiative and end-user engagement.”

Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP – long seen as leaders in channel management – continue to enjoy high partner rankings. Dell EMC has addressed operational challenges after launching its new partner program, pushing it into the Champions quadrant. AWS, Citrix, Veeam, VMWare and Kaspersky round out the rest of the Champions. Citrix has enhanced its program, showing it is listening to partners. AWS has improved dramatically in APAC, as it continues to build its indirect strategy and help partners build managed services practices around its cloud offerings.

Veeam deserves special recognition for being the only vendor in the Canalys Leadership Matrix to achieve Champion status in APAC, EMEA and LATAM. One partner said, “Veeam is growing fast and developing lots of new products regularly. It helps partners to enable on newer technologies to stay ahead of competition.”

At the same time, four vendors – Apple, Extreme Networks, Huawei and McAfee – have emerged as “Stragglers”. These have the lowest Vendor Benchmark scores compared with their peers, while also seeing year-on-year falls in their ratings. They are either lagging across all metrics or have shown significant weakness in areas of channel management.

About the Canalys Leadership Matrix

Canalys’ Leadership Matrix assesses vendor performance in the channel, based exclusively on channel feedback into the Vendor Benchmark. The Vendor Benchmark tracks leading technology vendors (above a minimum revenue size) around the world, collating channel partners’ experiences when working with different vendors. Channel partners are asked to rate their vendors on 10 areas of channel management. The Canalys Leadership Matrix provides a graphical representation to assess the performance of each vendor over time, and positions them in one of four categories:

• Champions: Vendors with high Vendor Benchmark scores that have shown continued improvement in channel sentiment over the last 12 months. 
• Contenders: Vendors with high Vendor Benchmark scores, despite a decline in sentiment.
• Growers: Vendors with low Vendor Benchmark scores that have seen channel sentiment improving.
• Stragglers: Vendors with low Vendor Benchmark scores that have seen their scores decline over the last 12 months as channel sentiment deteriorates.