VARs' Strong European Q4 2010

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NetworkingLongbow Research says European VARs should be happy with the last quarter-- with December 2010 hardware sales exceeding budgets for 46% of its conacts. 

The entire quarter was particularly strong, with 58% of Longbow's contacts exceeding their budgets (the rest met their sales budgets). The sales average sequential increase for Q4 2010 is at 20-25%.

The drivers for this quarter are strength with SMB, enterprise and manufacturing verticals, strength in storage products (thanks to virtualisation) and IBM product line strength (many customers "waited" for IBM's year-end deals). 

Longbow notes this market strength as widespread throughout Europe-- UK, German and French VARs all exceed budgets.

As for Q1 2011, the analyst predicts sales growth of up to 5-15% Y-o-Y-- even in the UK (where 2011 tend to be tepid). 

Meanwhile it appears Longbow's contacts are unaware of Sun/Oracle's new hardware is offered by by distributors ARW or AVT in Europe. Longbow describes the channel's tone on Sun as remaining "acrimonious". 

Go Longbow Research