#partnerecosystem

Partnerships are evolving fast—and in 2025, it’s all about ecosystems that are smart, purpose-driven, and built to scale.

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It has been six months since I published a blog on channel disruption in 2016. Now data from industry analysts is confirming the disruptive changes taking place this year.

The gap between the traditional vendor and their channel partner is growing because the former is still pushing programs that favor legacy on-premise resale while the latter is moving faster towards driving business outcomes through the new cloud model. That is why 86% of solution providers, according to The Channel Company, are planning to add a new vendor or a new technology practice in 2016 i.e. their current vendors are not providing them with what the customers need.

Distributors like Ingram are launching new enablement programs to help partners evolve to the cloud model. New cloud vendors like Dropbox are planning, in turn, to leverage Ingram to gain access to the channel community and displace traditional vendors that are moving far too slowly. There is a complete mismatch between the annuity revenues of the cloud model and the project revenues favored by legacy vendors.

IDC predicts that spending on public cloud services will grow at 19.4% over the next four years and double from $70B in 2015 to over $141B in 2019. This growth is six times faster than overall IT growth which means that the remaining IT spending (excluding public cloud services) will be flat in the near future. And within this flat segment, on-premise resale continues to decline while other areas like professional services are growing.

Solution providers driving cloud-based services are already capturing higher revenues today and have double the cloud and managed services sales of their rivals who have not adopted a cloud model, another insight from the recent survey done by The Channel Company. Steven Burke wrote in his recent CRN editorial that “time is running out” for legacy vendors as they are still ignoring the partner journey – I completely agree with this sentiment!