Hyperscaler Programs and Marketplace Economics

• AWS Advanced now requires a technical review, not just tenure
• Partners far from Advanced are weighing distributors instead
• Microsoft Marketplace offer type locks incentive access at launch
• Frontier Accelerate payments can reach $175,000 in Market A
• A real Microsoft strategy means owning specific outcomes, not badges
• Hyperscaler now syncs AWS Marketplace data with co-sell pipelines
• Cloud commitments crossed $531 billion last year
• Marketplace transactions are projected to hit $163 billion by 2030
• AWS Marketplace's AI Insights explains listing pricing in plain language
• The feature launched with MongoDB, Confluent, Elastic, and Pinecone
• Time to $1 billion in marketplace sales fell from a decade to two years
• Salesforce reached $2 billion in marketplace sales in 18 months
• Marketplace fees fell from 15 to 20 percent down to 1.5 to 3 percent
• Microsoft's Alexandra Zagury says partner telemetry is underused
• She frames the next era as partner-led, not vendor-led, growth
• Hyperscaler backlogs are nearing $2 trillion in committed capital
• Microsoft puts its AI addressable market at $6.5 trillion

‍

Measuring What Partnerships Actually Produce

• Effort metrics dominate reporting while CROs ask for revenue
• That gap is framed as co-sell activity versus co-close outcomes
• WorkSpan's data spans 92 ecosystems and 5,709 named sellers
• Internal seller activation, not partner activation, stalls co-sell
• Speaking in ARR, CAC, and NRR earns partnerships a seat at the table
• Many partner pipelines still run on a spreadsheet with no attribution
• A four-agent workbook now guides reps through every co-sell stage
• Those agents are only as good as the data model underneath them
• Shifting spend from AWS badges to demand generation grew attach 37 percent

‍

Ecosystem Strategy and Partner Enablement

• Signed deals with no enablement plan produced zero pipeline in six months
• Economics drive partner behavior more than good intentions do
• TAPEM proposes a partner-side equivalent to TAM, SAM, and SOM
• One TAPEM exercise narrowed 1,300 candidate MSPs to 200
• The channel account manager role covers close to 1 million people
• That role is shifting from resale tracking toward strategic co-selling
• Real ecosystem scale needs executive alignment and measured outcomes
• Standard partner models fail internationally without local adaptation
• Microsoft's $281.7 billion in revenue lets it absorb inactive partners
• Smaller firms lose a route to market if a few key partners underperform
• Cisco 360 signals a shift toward multi-partner account teams
• A three-month build took one partner portal past 800 monthly users

‍

AI Moves Into the Partner Stack

• Gemini Enterprise for Financial Services was built with Deutsche Bank
• CME Group also helped shape the same launch
• It connects to FactSet, LSEG, Moody's, MSCI, and S&P Global via MCP
• Its Financial Research Agent ships with 50-plus foundational skills
• Gemini Enterprise for Industries adds Financial Services and Legal
• Accenture, Deloitte, and KPMG are building on it at launch
• It connects to iManage, NetDocuments, and Thomson Reuters HighQ
• Databricks partners have built 60-plus solutions on Lakebase
• One Lakebase use case cuts turbine maintenance downtime 35 to 50 percent
• Partner Assistant ranks deal partners using first, second, and third-party data
• Crossbeam relationship data feeds directly into that ranking
• AI is shifting partner value from implementation to ongoing adoption work
• RXOS plans four new AI roles for partner teams in October
• IBM now frames Integration as a Digital Business Platform, not middleware

‍

Partner Program Launches and Vendor Moves

• NVIDIA is mobilizing over $500 billion in AI infrastructure financing
• Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR are backing it
• CrowdStrike's Project QuiltWorks partners hold near $400 million in pipeline
• Its marketplace deal value topped $600 million, up 30-plus percent
• CrowdStrike's GSI-driven business grew close to 50 percent year over year
• Nightfall launched Nexus with a single Velocity partner tier
• Consortium signed on as Nexus's first launch partner
• Pigment partners now lead close to 90 percent of its implementations
• Pigment's ecosystem grew about 30 percent over the past year
• ICF achieved Workday Partner status
• Dirac began co-selling with Microsoft into enterprise accounts
• 1Password aligned company-wide teams around its partner strategy
• Intuit Mailchimp enters FY27 focused on enhanced co-selling
• Nutanix closed FY26 ahead of its guided metrics
• KPMG and Microsoft are linking Copilot and Agent 365 to co-sell motions
• Microsoft's latest skilling update targets FY27 partner planning

‍

Community, Talent, and Industry Infrastructure

• Catalyst drew more than 1,000 partnership professionals
• The event even appeared on the Nasdaq screen this year
• SAP sales and presales demand is rising as SAP goes partner-led
• The ECC end-of-maintenance deadline is accelerating that demand
• CCFlex compensation is also pulling licenses through partners
• One proposal calls for a single combined partnerships industry hub
• AWS Partner Equip talk is shifting from migration to outcomes
• Best-practice guidance ties alliance revenue to portfolio tiering
• A GTM framework maps five channels into one shared pipeline
• One SaaS company grew booked revenue over 300 percent via multi-channel
• Africa's channel landscape is expanding across AI and cybersecurity
• A new fractional partner marketing consultancy launched this period
• A new referral network is matching partners on confirmed overlap data
• MSP cybersecurity partners need real technical support, not a brochure

‍

Catalyst 26: Partnerships Enters Its AI Operating Model Era

• The opening keynote called partnerships mainstream but commoditized, citing data that 94% of top firms have partner teams
• A harder benchmark followed: two thirds of tech spend flows through partnerships, but only 41% call it core strategy
• Jay McBain's closing keynote called this the biggest shift in the channel's 50 year history, driven by AI
• Anthropic's Phil Samenuk said its partner program launch expected 2,000 applicants but received 40,000, favoring partners with specific use cases
• Multiple speakers agreed on one maturity gap: leaders using AI as an operating model are pulling ahead of everyone else
• Several vendors previewed new partner-facing capabilities on stage and the floor, signaling AI is now a live build topic
• Program design talks kept returning to one gap: pipeline data is visible, but partner profitability is not, prompting partner-first design
• A growing Path to CPO track focused on the executive presence needed to move from individual contributor to partnership leadership

‍

Thanks to Harry Blakemore, Yousaf Ali, Reis Barrie, Chuck Kiessling, Greg Portnoy, Manesh Raveendran, Roman Kirsanov, Vince Menzione, Danielle Simon, Rob Moyer, Kyle E., Vaughn Mordecai, Peter Fogelsanger, Delya Jansen, Shawn Namdar, Stacey Floyd, Erika Sestok, Rick Buie, Dina Moskowitz, Heather K. Margolis, Will Schnabel, Lela Koopal-Patel, Ryan Morris,  Vic Reynolds, Katie Ecklund, Phil Bonin, Kevin Bearden, Filip Aronshtein, Larissa Crandall, Kevin Crow, Rajiv Ramaswami, Cherie Gartner, Nina Harding, Asher Mathew, Victoria King, Jennifer Richey, Corey Soule, Theresa Caragol, Ahsan Quadri, Marisa Sanfilippo, Carmen Aston, Sarah Vincent and Pierce Brehm for the insights that shaped this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn:

‍