Survey: Partners Foresee Business Growth Surge For 2016

What’s the 35,000-foot view for channel partners?

What we found, from a growth perspective … the industry was expecting something in the neighborhood of 4.7-percent growth. We do this as a range, and we look at the factors that could bump that up to the upside of the forecast (such as reaching new customer segments and picking up more business from existing customers). That came in at 7 percent, and then we also looked at the factors that potentially inhibit growth (such as a slowdown in the economy), and that came in at the lower end at 2.4 percent.

These figures are generally in line with the forecasts that we saw last year, and we really saw the jump in optimism at the tail end of 2014. (The numbers in 2012, 2013 and 2014) were far more modest than what we’re seeing right now.