Deal-making continues but hasn’t yet altered the channel landscape.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among channel companies — solution providers, resellers, IT consultants, telecom agents, and more — continue at a brisk pace in 2023 after a significant level of deal-making in 2022. The robust activity raises the specter that super-size, super-funded channel partners could grow large enough to alter the channel landscape that exists today.
Some vendors have told Channelnomics they’re concerned that amalgamated partners will become so strong that they could demand new levels of compensation, better compete with them for enterprise customers, and otherwise make vendors, including manufacturers, software publishers, and telecom carriers, more dependent on certain channel providers.