Canalys unveils first North American Titans Channel Leadership Matrix in 2024

Eight vendors have achieved Champion status in the inaugural 2024 Canalys North American (NA) Titans Channel Leadership Matrix: AWS, Cisco, Dell, HP, HPE, Lenovo, Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro.

Canalys has published its first NA Titans Channel Leadership Matrix 2024, adding to its series of Leadership Matrix reports. This matrix’s objective is to assess which vendors are playing an integral role in driving the success of the North American partner ecosystem across their respective channel and technology areas.

The pressure for vendors to differentiate in the channel will be greater in 2024

2023 presented a complex landscape for the North American IT channel, with growth rates varying significantly across different technology sectors. As in 2022, most hardware vendors and partners struggled to achieve growth, mainly due to the difficulties of access to capital, primarily stemming from high interest and inflation rates – which led to most customers opting to shrink their IT budgets and prolong the usable life of their PCs, servers and storage devices. The one exception was networking, where easing in supply chains and a return to offices led to a return to growth for the category, and partners were able to capitalize on this. Furthermore, cybersecurity and cloud have thrived as cyber-attacks continued to escalate and public cloud adoption became increasingly necessary for business. More partners continued to see their cloud practices maturing; many made acquisitions to bolster their capabilities in both cloud and cybersecurity.

Vendors rated as Champions showed the highest levels of excellence in channel management compared with their industry peers throughout 2023. These thought and innovation leaders in the channel also demonstrated some consistent characteristics, including positive partner sentiment, a commitment to improving ease of doing business, a willingness to boost growth opportunities and increase profitability for partners, and a commitment to growing the share of revenue generated through and with the channel. The various successful channel initiatives that Champions rolled out included:

• Adopting partner-first programs, including account mapping and increasing compensation pay rates for sales representatives that sell through the channel rather than directly.
• Introducing new competencies and frameworks to prepare partners better to capitalize on growing market trends.
• Launching multiple route-to-market partner programs to accelerate the expansion of partners’ business models.
• Encouraging the development of new services capabilities to get partners to provide lifecycle services.
• Streamlining the process for partners to transact in cloud marketplaces.
• Investing in developing tools, resources and processes to further drive partner-to-partner collaboration.
• Consolidating numerous disparate programs under one program framework to improve the ease of doing business for partners.
• Increasing financial incentives to enhance partner profitability and growth.
• Automating tedious processes to boost partner competitiveness through agility.
• Driving strong growth through and with partners, addressing key customer demands for secure, hybrid work environments.

Looking ahead to 2024, many of the recent challenges affecting the IT channel are expected to subside as supply volatility, inflation and rising interest rates continue to ease. As market conditions become increasingly stable, competition will intensify. Therefore, the need for differentiation beyond price will become more pertinent. For technology vendors, it is critical to identify the opportunities that will provide growth opportunities for their partner ecosystems and continue to invest in enablement and programs to help capture those opportunities. For example, vendors should invest more in training programs for partners in AI and hybrid cloud as more customers look to adopt the capabilities into their processes.

Defining vendor inclusion in the Canalys NA Titans Channel Leadership Matrix

The NA Titans Channel Leadership Matrix considers the channel performance of vendors that operate in North America with at least US$12 billion in global sales (over 25% delivered through partners) or between US$2 billion and US$12 billion in global sales (over 50% delivered through partners). Among a pool of 135 vendors in North America, 26 met the minimum qualifications for placement.

A vendor’s position in the NA Titans Channel Leadership Matrix is based on three primary inputs: partner ecosystem feedback, performance metrics and Canalys analysts’ assessments.

Besides the eight Champions highlighted, other vendors were classified as Contenders (high leadership ratings in the areas assessed but either yet to capitalize fully on channel opportunities or have been outpaced by competitors or peers), Scalers (improvements in channel management and performance but yet to achieve the highest levels of consistency in channel excellence) or Foundation vendors, which have the lowest ratings and have also suffered a deterioration in partner sentiment over the last 12 months.

Congratulations to AWS, Cisco, Dell, HP, HPE, Lenovo, Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro for achieving Champion status in the inaugural North American Titans Channel Leadership Matrix.