Given the rise of connected ecosystems, insights like these aren’t just interesting stats but hold practical and increasingly strategic value in today’s tech landscape. Think about the potential of accessing the list of common partners across vendors in the map — and getting detailed information in seconds.
Links across technology portfolios and partner networks fuel opportunities for vendors and bring enhanced value to customers. The IT industry has seen a sustained rise of the “platform paradigm” that enables connectedness and modularity across infrastructure, applications, data, and more. This requires architectures that allow technologies to integrate with and layer on top of one another. This trend is fueling growth in alliances and ecosystem engagement.
Customers benefit by being able to run integrated tech stacks that match their needs and requirements. For example, an organization may choose to run SAP on Microsoft Cloud, or may leverage Red Hat OpenShift to manage hybrid environments. Approved partner solutions from SAP Store extend the functionality of the core application, while Microsoft Azure provides native integrations with data warehouse solutions like Snowflake and Databricks.
The value of an integrated technology stack based on customer choice will increase significantly with the growing adoption of AI, which depends on contextually relevant, high-quality data collected across different systems and workloads.
Vendors are supporting these increasingly connected, platform-based strategies through new technology alliances, by building out their own ecosystems, and by connecting to others. A key component in bringing these alliances and connected ecosystems to life is the integration of IT/technology partners such as systems integrators, managed service providers, and value-added resellers.
Understanding partner capabilities and relationships is key to managing the entire partner life cycle. IDC offers complementary support for partner engagement strategies, including:
• The IDC CPE Database consolidates information on more than 600,000 partners worldwide on their capabilities, business models, relationships with vendors, and more. The data-driven partner intelligence we provide enables companies to compress the time and effort needed to recruit new partners, evaluate their current ecosystem, and benchmark against competitors’ ecosystems.
• The syndicated and custom research of IDC’s Partnering Practice specializes in understanding the ecosystem of technology partners and their engagement with vendors and customers. Our team of dedicated analysts offers thought leadership and advice through quantitative and qualitative insights on the global and regional levels.
