Supply Chain Shortages Will Persist Into Q4 2023: Ingram Micro Executive Director

‘It’s not getting better,’ says Ingram Micro Executive Director John Tonthat. ‘In fact, part of our forecasting for 2023 with our biggest vendors- Cisco, HP, Dell, IBM- all show products that push back well into the back half of 2023.’

Ingram Micro Executive Director John Tonthat

Supply chain shortages in networking, compute and storage will persist into the fourth quarter next year, said Ingram Micro Executive Director John Tonthat.

“It’s not getting better,” said Tonthat in a keynote address Tuesday before several hundred CIOs at cloud superstar GreenPages’ Cloudscape 2022 conference. “In fact, part of our forecasting for 2023 with our biggest vendors- Cisco, HP, Dell, IBM- all show products that push back well into the back half of 2023.”

Tonthat said the IT product distribution behemoth does not see supply chain shortages easing up until the fourth quarter 2023. He urged CIOs to work with managed service providers like GreenPages to address those supply chain challenges.

In an interview with CRN, Tonthat said the supply chain shortages are easing up on client devices but not in the data center with compute, storage and especially with networking products.

“Across the three tiers of compute, network and storage- network is particularly hampered by supply chain through Q4 of next year,” he said.

CIOs and end users need to “work with their partners to think through” the supply chain challenges and get ahead of them, said Tonthat.

With digital transformation remaining an imperative, customers may be forced to consider a cloud offering from a managed service provider like GreenPages, said Tonthat.

“If you think about SD WAN as a service or cloud as a whole as a service that is where folks like GreenPages can really make an impact because you can solve for the same IT mandate temporarily without physical equipment,” he said. “But you have got to think about it well ahead of time.”

A CRN analysis of the supply chain shortage crisis shows that it has led many partners to shift their business more aggressively to cloud services.

Complicating the supply chain challenge is the prospect of an economic downturn with a “prolonged period of stagflation,” said Tonthat.

That stagflation is going to result in businesses looking for cost savings around cloud, said Tonthat. “The way you fund that innovation is you have to look into your couch cushions and take costs out of your existing spend,” he said.

Tonthat referenced research from Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) that shows CIOs are tapping the brakes on projects in the second half of 2022 with a steady deceleration of new projects and an uptick in projects on hold.

GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler said he has long expected that supply chain challenges will persist into the fourth quarter next year. His message to customers: plan ahead.

“Solution providers and customers planning projects can’t assume it is the good old days when you ordered product and could have it there in 60 to 90 days,” he said. “You have to think ahead. You have to plan ahead. That is what we do with our clients is make sure they are aware of that. You have to start with the end date in mind when you want to have a project completed and deployed. You need to make sure you are planning enough ahead to deal with supply chain constraints.”