W.European VARs expect 4-8% growth for 2011-- slightly higher than Longboy Research's expectations and January 2011 predictions, following its latest survey.
UK resellers report relative strength from SMBs and large businesses/corporations, as opposed to the public sector's declining IT spending. They also highlight gains by HP on switching (due to price competitive 3Com lines) at Cisco's expense. Leading the way are storage upgrades (NetApp in particular) and virtualisation projects.
Predictions for UK resellers' Q2-- relatively flat, seen as normal for the season.
German Resellers see a quiet March quarter, even if storage and server activity (from large business/corporations) remains healthy, particularly from the industrial, automotive and service-oriented sectors. The SMB vertical is also active, while there are some public sector projects out for bid.
The French are also seeing relative strength with larger corporations and SMBs, following the European trend for storage, virtualisations and (to lesser extent) new servers.
