2004 Technologies In Demand

VARBusiness' State of Technology research reveals that the No. 1 profit producer for 2003 will be consulting services (53 percent), up 19 percentage points from 2002. In addition, twenty-three percent of a VAR's 2003 profits, on average, is expected to be derived from custom and/or third party software. Twelve percent will stem from systems, including peripherals and accessories, and the remaining 12 percent will come from networking hardware and storage.

Increasingly a business necessity, it's not surprising that security is ranked as the top technology deployment for 2003. In fact, a vast majority of the solution providers polled our State of Technology research (79 percent) report they have taken part in security deployments over the past 12 months. Following security, Web services also came into its own in 2003, with 74 percent of the VARs we polled currently deploying these solutions.

Our State of Technology research indicates more good news for the year ahead. Many technologies are expected to progress in 2004, including wireless and mobile devices (77 percent), networking printer servers (77 percent), antivirus and firewalls (76 percent, respectively), and LCDs (73 percent). Moreover, a considerable majority of VARs (more than 60 percent) expect to sell VPNs, ERP, IP telephony, e-mail access and RAID as part of their 2004 solutions. In addition, fully half of the surveyed solution providers in our State of the Market research expect their Microsoft business to increase in 2004.

"We are seeing the greatest year-over-year growth in the demand for Microsoft software, life-cycle management and security," says Rick Allen, national practice director of life-cycle management at Sarcom (VB# 94). "Expansion of our security practice has developed as customers became more concerned about the security of their infrastructures."

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