Vendors failing to develop a solid channel relationship in danger of losing ground

An increasing number of vendors appear to be putting channel relationships higher up the agenda with greater numbers managing to stand out for positive delivery.

According to channel watchers Canalys more vendors have managed to get into its 'champions' category with Dell EMC, HP, HPE, AWS, Lenovo, NetApp and Fujitsu some of the larger players that have earnt that status.

Others also getting recognition for a solid channel approach include ESET, Palo Alto, Sophos, Veeam and Fortinet.

Some of those that have improved their efforts around their support for the channel also got a nod with Acer, Adobe, APC, Apple, Citrix, Juniper Networks, IBM, Veritas and VMware all having taken steps in the right direction over the past year.
 
On the flip side the analyst identified the 'stragglers', which included a fair few security vendors, Symantec, Check Point, McAfee along with Microsoft, Huawei and Extreme.

What helped vendors get the best ranking was a combination of operational improvements, simpler processes and more attractive financial incentives for those that chose to join their partner programmes.

 “These results reflect the increased importance that technology vendors are placing on their partner relationships in the era of digital and hybrid IT,” said Alastair Edwards, Chief Analyst at Canalys.

“At the same time, vendors are becoming more selective in these relationships, while partners are pursuing more diverse, differentiated business models. This makes the vendor’s job of managing a channel even more complex and fraught with risk. In this environment, Champion status in the leadership matrix becomes an even greater achievement,” he said.

With competition to work with the best partners increasing the analyst house warned that those vendors that did not deliver would struggle to gain partners and get the market coverage they needed.

Canalys shared thoughts from resellers about the performance of some of the leading vendors at its Channels Forum event earlier this month, which spurred Lenovo to pledge it would improve its processes to make life easier for resellers.