North America Datacenter Infrastructure Channels 2012–2016 Forecast: Direct Versus Indirect IT Spending

This IDC study presents a five-year forecast for the North American market for the core datacenter infrastructure hardware categories of servers, disk storage systems, and networking products. The forecast covers the 2012–2016 period. The forecast shows both direct and indirect revenue for datacenter infrastructure growing throughout the forecast period. However, direct revenue grows slightly faster than indirect revenue. The forecast also indicates that single-tier growth will outpace two-tier growth in the indirect channel.

"Several macrotrends in the IT landscape including the transition to more IT being delivered as a service, continued vendor consolidation, and the acceptance of converged architecture technologies will slow the growth rate of the indirect channel and shift the locus of influence within the indirect channel more toward service provider business models and away from the hardware resale model of the traditional VAR channel," says Chris Ilg, program director for IDC's Infrastructure Channels practice.