Channel Trend No. 3: Cloud Leads to an Uneasy Vendor-Partner Relationship

IDC says that by 2025, total worldwide spend on cloud and cloud-related services will exceed $1.3 trillion. As such, partners must consider how their business models are aligning to that trend in terms of customer spending.

“If you’re not following the customer in how they’re changing, you’re almost shrinking the total addressable market you can target as a business,” said Wilson.

However, in this environment, vendors want their partner bases to evolve, too.

“They’re looking at their existing partner bases to see which partners are actually mapping onto these trends. We see a lot of legacy vendors that have a traditional existing partner base. And there are some partners that are not transformed. [They] don’t necessarily have the appetite or the capability to transform their business. Yet they’re still responsible for significant revenue for that vendor. And that’s a difficult relationship. Because the vendor knows that partner needs to move on.”

While the partner may know they need to evolve, they don’t want to or they can’t, said Wilson.

“They can’t justify the investment. They’re scared to do it. [Or] ‘I don’t want to risk what I’ve built by investing to move on to the next business model,'” he said.

This creates huge challenges, said Wilson.