For Craig Schlagbaum, senior vice president of indirect channels at Comcast Business, M&A in the channel presents a much-needed rationalization opportunity and at the same time a challenge for the expansion of the industry.

The channel has seen perpetual M&A among its vendors over the years, but private equity and other institutional investors have moved downstream in recent years to aggressively target technology service distributors (TSDs) and technology advisors (agents). This consolidation is leading to larger, and in many cases, more sophisticated organizations.

Comcast’s Craig Schlagbaum

But Schlagbaum and other vendor leaders hope to see a new generation of partners and customers enter the channel. That means TSDs will need to make the investments necessary to attract nontraditional partners; furthermore, agents will need to continue expanding their customer bases.

“The challenge for service providers is that we all have obligations to do net-new bookings of new customers,” Schlagbaum told Channel Futures. “We can’t just manage a base.”

Schlagbaum oversees arguably the largest vendor channel program operating in the TSD channel. Moreover, he has longevity — a dozen years in the position. As a result, he represents one of the most respected sources on the state of the channel.

Schlagbaum fielded a variety of questions from Channel Futures about consolidation, superagencies, MDF and the challenges vendors face. Scroll through the gallery above to see what he had to say.