The CP List: 20 Tech Channel Thought Leaders You Should Know

Mark J. Barrenechea

Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText’s vice chairman, CEO and CTO, said industrial AI, the combination of IoT and AI, will have a big impact on the channel over the next year.

OpenText’s Mark Barrenechea

“Ten billion smart machines will connect to the internet, more machines than humans,” he said. “Industrial companies (will be) using AI to understand supply chain behavior, transportation, inventories, demand and production. The machine will understand your next behavior before you do, and will have already moved inventory and supply chain to deliver to you instantly. We will no longer choose our friends on Facebook. We will no longer choose our movies on Netflix, we will no longer choose our consumer goods on Amazon. The machine will. But will the machine choose the partner as well!”

Jon Arnold

Arnold, principal analyst at J Arnold & Associates, always provides both a history lesson and a look ahead when asked asked about various technology and channel trends.

Jon Arnold

“At this point, it’s a given that cloud is pushing channels to adopt SaaS business models,” he said. “This may not be impacting the channel in a big way yet, but will eventually replace business models based on hardware-based capex investments. Innovations around AI will also have a major impact on the channel, but that’s still emerging. For the next year or so, the more market-ready innovations will come from CPaaS offerings, where developer-friendly channel partners can white label vertical applications or platforms that are customized for specific market segments. CPaaS provides great flexibility to embed communications capabilities into other applications or processes, and channels that are comfortable with APIs can offer new forms of value to businesses that need innovation now, but have too many constraints to produce that internally.”

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