Channel Leaders
JS Group has hired Paul Constantine, a former executive at ScanSource subsidiary Intelisys, as Chief Engagement Officer, where he will be responsible for developing a go-to-market roadmap and joining the company's executive leadership team.
Channel incentive programs often fall into a complexity trap due to copy-paste thinking when expanding across regions, partner tiers, markets, or solution categories. This article analyzes five common scaling mistakes and provides five key elements for scalable design, helping enterprises drive effective growth while maintaining flexibility.
DXC Technology revealed during Thursday's earnings call that its multi-year alliance with Anthropic has certified 86 engineers, marking the first batch toward its committed goal of "tens of thousands" of Claude-certified engineers. Meanwhile, its agent orchestration platform Oasis has grown from 10 to 57 customer environments since its April launch, with the company targeting 85 by mid-fiscal year. On the leadership front, Paul Taylor was appointed President, and platform builders such as Dan Gray and Holly Grant were promoted to key commercial positions.
Otter.ai announced on Thursday the appointment of Mike Barnes as Head of Partners and Alliances, launching the company's first formal partner program. Barnes' team will first recruit partners and establish early lighthouse collaborations, followed by channel enablement and go-to-market initiatives. Previously, the company appointed Kenny Scannell as Chief Revenue Officer in March, but Scannell departed in July. Otter.ai is transitioning from the individual user market to the enterprise market, with the current usage ratio between individual and enterprise users at approximately 50:50.
In mid-July, Fortinet unveiled a global distribution framework, naming Exclusive Networks and TD Synnex as its two distributors to simplify cross-border transactions. The framework offers partners a single operational point of contact while accommodating local billing, compliance, and support needs in each market. The two distributors have each deployed centralized support models: TD Synnex coordinates cross-regional transactions and expands its business in Europe and Asia, while Exclusive Networks provides localized services through a global transaction desk covering more than 90 countries. Fortinet stated that this initiative aims to reduce administrative and cross-border complexities, accelerate deal closure, and boost partners' confidence in international operations.
At Omdia's London channel transformation event, it was pointed out that most channel partners fail to fully utilize market development funds (MDF) and cannot measure their return on investment. Research shows that over 40% of partners are unclear about which MDF-supported activities have the greatest impact, while nearly 90% believe marketing activation is crucial to strategic supplier relationships, but over half feel supplier support is insufficient. Marketing capability is becoming a new competitive advantage in the channel.
Silent Push has appointed Kirk Appelman as Chief Revenue Officer, who brings 25 years of technology sales experience and will prioritize optimizing the company's newly launched partner program to drive sales growth.
Technology service distributors (TSDs) are piloting collaborations with cybersecurity software vendors to meet partners' and customers' demand for a broader vendor list and service models. This trend marks the transformation of the TSD market from traditional telecommunications distribution to technology distribution, but faces challenges such as commission models, channel management, and service continuity.
Omdia's latest analysis shows that the proportion of global IT spending through channel partners is declining year by year, from 69% last year to 65% this year, and is expected to be 63% next year. Despite the reduced share, partners' influence is still growing, with the talent shortage in the AI field becoming a major challenge.
TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit says rising AI token costs are driving enterprises back to on-premises deployment, and hardware is expected to become a channel growth driver again. The company's fiscal 2025 revenue exceeded $62.5 billion, and it has stockpiled inventory in advance to address chip shortages.