Channel Trend No. 7: Growth of the Partner Ecosystem

On the growth of partner-to-partner relationships, Wilson said firms should ask if they really need to try to do everything for the customer.

“Or should you be focusing on what you’re very good at and working with other partners where necessary? Bringing them into the equation to help deal with that customer. We are seeing growth in terms of developing areas of specialization, either vertical or horizontal. Again, this feeds into this idea of ‘don’t try and do everything to try and be really good at what you do,'” said Wilson.

He added that a partner focused on a specific horizontal or vertical should ensure they are promoting that.

“What’s also happened is the ability to promote and surface that expertise has changed in the last few years. The visibility that you have on various marketplaces, what you do in terms of partner deployment collaboration within the vendor’s ecosystem, to surface your specialized skills, has become more important.

“We’ve seen examples of this all the time. We’ve seen partners in Croatia, by being on the Atlassian Marketplace, suddenly they’ve got a range of customers in Australia and New Zealand. If you’ve got expertise, think about, ‘How can we surface that expertise within the wider partner ecosystem?’ And let other partners that need that expertise work with [you] as well. That’s the concept behind the ecosystem business model. You’re not just thinking about the customer relationship. You’re thinking about your relationships within the ecosystem, with other ISVs with other partners with multiple vendors as well.”