Forrester analyst Jay McBain has been shuffling his tarot cards and predicts that the trusted advisor could be a thing of the past.
He thinks that marketplaces such as Amazon will accelerate the decline of resellers.
According to Forrester, 17 percent of B2B transactions will happen through marketplaces by 2020 and will threaten MSPs and channel providers who tout themselves as “one stop shop” trusted advisors.
“The partner of the future will likely not be a transacting one. It doesn’t make sense to the new generation of tech buyers who make two-thirds of all new tech decisions today. The new gig economy for tech services has already begun, and partners will need to get into the conversation.”
The rise of the partner-to-partner model has been flagged up by the likes of Microsoft in recent years, and McBain thinks more MSPs and resellers will be forced to band together as the decline of account ownership by a single partner and rise of the new tech services gig economy accelerates.
“A CMO may have five different companies installing, implementing, integrating, securing, ensuring compliance, and providing business continuity in a single solution stack. This could include a SaaS partner, a digital agency, a systems integrator, multiple ISVs, a startup, a “born in the cloud” provider, and a traditional solution provider. For every dollar they spend with a SaaS platform, they will spend four times that amount with these third parties to make the project a success.”
McBain predicted that traditional channel programmes would be replaced by ecosystems where traditional pyramid-based partner programmes evolve in favour of those that recognise partners based on their skills around buyer types, sub-industries, geographies, sectors, segments, customer size, and the technology stack, he predicted.
Partners will find new ways to make money in emerging technology, including robotic process automation, McBain added.
