Amazon Consulting Unveils Results of 4th Annual State of Partnering Study

Mountain View, CA (Vocus) May 4, 2010

Amazon Consulting, a leading channel services firm dedicated to helping companies elevate the impact of partnering, today unveiled a summary of its comprehensive annual State of Partnering Study. This research reveals detailed trends in vendor partnering challenges, priorities, and spending plans. The global study incorporates data from 55 hardware, software and services vendors, targeting executive-level individuals responsible for channel and alliance partner management. The survey included queries on training and enablement plans, partner segmentation and growth expectations, services delivery engagement models, and a deep-dive on channel spending plans and ROI.

Now in its fourth year of being published, the 2010 State of Partnering Study has become a barometer for helping IT vendors understand their peers plans, priorities and challenges around effectively managing multi-channel strategies, said Diane Krakora, Amazon Consulting CEO. With this research, we provide a pulse on the top priorities and investment areas for the vendor community. It helps our clients benchmark their plans, sanity check their investments and understand what theyre up against in winning and maintaining channel partners mindshare. Based on this years findings, we see vendors focusing on sales skill certification programs, refining their services business value proposition and crafting compelling pay-for-performance channel incentive programs.

Key takeaways from the State of Partnering 2010 include:

Vendors are bullish on sales growth Traditional resellers still rank high as the leading strategic partner segment, however expect strong growth from emerging MSPs and infrastructure or hosting partners.
Business planning activities will be a big focus this year to help understand evolving business models 62% will do selective recruitment in 2010 to fill vertical or geographic gaps. Cloud providers, SaaS developers have emerged.
Vendors seek pre-sales skills and industry knowledge such as technical certifications as top partner competencies.
Continued focus on services enablement programs & engagement models

Amazon Consulting Unveils Results of 4th Annual State of Partnering Study