REVIEW OF 2023
Continuing change As 2023 draws to a close, it is a traditional time to look back over the previous 12 months. For the print sector, it has been a year of continuing change, with ever-increasing emphasis on sustainability and cost-effectiveness.
And so another year is over. While this year may have lacked the global events of some of the recent past – thankfully – it has nevertheless not been plain sailing for businesses in the print sector. While the UK economy avoided recession – just – for many businesses it was about doing more with less, and resellers often came in with cost-effective print solutions, be they managed print services or devices. Likewise, there were opportunities for resellers to capitalise on the greater demand for sustainable solutions for their print fleet.
Print OEMs have been working for years to develop products that contain more recycled materials, use less electricity and resources and have longer lifespans and resellers can go with confidence to customers with these. That, along with continuing technical advances, means that it has been a year of progress for the print channel. Below, a range of experts and thought leaders from the print channel give their opinions on how the year was for them, some of the trends they saw over the past 12 months and their take on what 2024 may hold. This year, it was exciting to see that the transition to cloud continued to pick up pace. We’ve seen how yesterday’s ‘cloud first’ organisations are becoming ‘cloud only’ organisations, and we’re seeing customers who weren’t embracing cloud now become ‘cloud first’. As we look ahead, we’re especially interested to see if, as end users move to cloud, they will kick-start a transition to subscription models in 2024. That’s certainly a development to watch. More broadly in 2023, we continued to see a strong focus on security, not least in the adoption of modern authentication and MFA to get access to documents and systems, as well as how documents are transmitted and where and how they are stored; for sure, the ‘where’ was especially important for government organisations. The now-normal hybrid working model requires robust security solutions, products and policies in order to mitigate risk as much as possible, and I think security will be even more sharply focused on this as 2023 spills into 2024. Another big influence this year has been that, as you would expect during an economic crisis, customers are more interested than ever in value, scalability, flexibility and security, especially in the context of helping to accommodate hybrid working. Perhaps unsurprisingly, sustainability – both PaperCut’s
Steve Holmes , head of global sales and Channel, Papercut Like many in the print and IT sector, PaperCut entered 2023 with quiet optimism.
The first quarter was as challenging as expected, with the slowdown across Silicon Valley and the tech sector creating shockwaves everywhere. There was some evidence of the ‘green shoots of recovery’ though, as reflected in a broader market turnaround in the second half of 2023. In fact, in the year that PaperCut celebrated its 25th anniversary, we enjoyed strong growth. Our customers renewed and extended their MPS contracts, and we maintained our loyal partner base, which we’re very grateful for. PaperCut was named IDC Market Share leader for the third year running, which put a further spring in our step this year. In comparison to 2022, we’re most encouraged to see that the chip crisis is almost over, and that the production of printers and MFPs is now meeting market demand; what’s good for hardware demand often fuels demand for print software solutions. Additionally, the move to cloud-based print continued in 2023, as organisations of all sizes work to simplify their internal IT, services and applications; this was positive for ISVs offering cloud-based print solutions and services and it bodes well for PaperCut in 2024.
Steve Holmes
papercut.com
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