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If you took a representative from each of Microsoft’s more than 400,000 global partners and brought them together in one place, you’d have a population bigger than Cardiff, Belfast, Nottingham or Bradford. And if the vendor meets the prediction made by channel chief Rodney Clark of half a million partners by the end of 2021, a city populated by a single representative from each Microsoft partner would have bypassed the population of Edinburgh, Leeds and Leicester – and be closing in on Manchester and Sheffield. In terms of partner numbers, Microsoft is something of an outlier. There are few, if any, vendors that have, or need, such a large number of channel partners. But how do vendors know when they have the right number for them? And just as importantly, how can they keep a wide variety of partners happy while getting the best from them and for them? Claudio Soland, senior vice-president of global alliances, partner programme and business operations at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, acknowledges there is a “huge scope to take into...