In a paper created by CompTIA, they determined that cloud computing poses new financial and technology challenges to IT distributors.  These are the guys who bring hardware and software resources to the enterprise, better known as, “the middlemen.”

This is stating the obvious, if you ask me.  Cloud computing is all about going directly to the source for IT services, without having to own the hardware and software.  Of course that’s going to hurt the IT distribution businesses.  I suspect they are feeling the impact about now, and those who were in denial about the affect of cloud computing on their customer base are in denial no longer.

While there are other areas for distributors to move to, there is no need for “middlemen” in the world of cloud computing.  Thus, there are no easy choices for these guys.

However, while the IT distributors’ market may be shrinking, it’s not likely to go away anytime soon.  There is indeed a shift to public cloud-based services, but the shift will occur over many years.  So, yes, this is bad news for distributors, but they have plenty of time to change their business models.