July VAR Call: Everything Is Wonderful...Until It‘s Not

Research evidence excerpt

July VAR Call: Everything Is Wonderful...Until It‘s Not

UpdateMlead times now ~30% above historical norms and modestly worse than 1Q. The VAR

we spoke with estimates ~10-15% of 2Q demand reflected pull-forward activity, as

customers increasingly accelerate purchases ahead of further price increases and

supply shortages. This dynamic is most pronounced in Servers, followed by PCs,

Storage, and Networking - in that order - broadly tracking the magnitude of pricing

inflation we've seen to-date. Notably, despite elevated pricing and ongoing supply

constraints, the VAR emphasized that underlying demand has proven far more

durable than expected, as customers prioritize infrastructure investments to

support business growth and AI initiatives over other areas of IT spending, similar to

the factor that drove IBM's negative pre-announcement earlier this week. That said,

the VAR acknowledged current demand is unlikely to prove indefinitely inelastic,

cautioning that while pricing has yet to materially impact demand, continued

inflation could eventually pressure traditional hardware demand, noting that

"everything is wonderful until it's not."

(+) AI spending is broadening across cloud and on-prem architectures. Large

enterprises are leaning toward hybrid reference architectures that combine on-prem

infrastructure with cloud workloads, with fault tolerance supporting both

environments. Mid-market customers remain primarily cloud-based given lower

implementation complexity and limited appetite to manage infrastructure internally.

Cloud pricing has increased, but less than on-prem hardware, preserving its relative

appeal. Boards are also freeing incremental capital for AI projects, while some

customers are reallocating spend from software upgrades toward storage and

networking.