industryopinion


Ecosystem complexity slows partner growth


Mark Appleton, Group Lead, Vendor Ecosystem Development at ALSO Group, says sprawling technology portfolios across AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and infrastructure are making it harder for partners to convert innovation into customer value, urging a more streamlined route through the IT ecosystem to support sustainable growth.


T


he technology industry has spent years expanding the number of products, platforms and services available to partners. But as the IT ecosystem continues to grow, the complexity created


around that technology risks becoming a barrier to growth. Recent comments from HPE’s UK channel leadership have


highlighted the importance of making it easier for partners to do business, as vendors look to simplify programmes and improve the partner experience. The issue reflects a much wider challenge facing the technology


industry. Partners are increasingly expected to bring together technologies spanning AI, cloud, cybersecurity, infrastructure and managed services, often while navigating different vendor programmes, commercial models and processes. The IT ecosystem has become


incredibly powerful, but also incredibly complex. Partners today have access to more technology, more vendors and more ways of delivering services than ever before, but choice only creates value if it is easy to navigate. We cannot keep adding new


Instead, Appleton believes the industry needs to focus on creating environments where different technologies, services and expertise can be brought together more easily. Customers don’t think about technology in individual vendor


categories. They have a business problem and expect their technology partner to find the right combination of solutions to address it. That puts partners in the position of having to connect


“Customers


technologies and programmes to the ecosystem and assume that partners will simply absorb that complexity. Every additional layer takes time and resources away from what partners ultimately want to do: solve problems for their customers and grow their businesses. The challenge is becoming increasingly important


multiple parts of the ecosystem on the customer’s behalf. Vendors, distributors and technology providers therefore have a responsibility to remove as much friction from that process as possible, whether through simpler commercial models, better enablement, integrated platforms or stronger collaboration. For ALSO, which connects an ecosystem


don’t think about technology in


individual vendor categories.”


as emerging technologies such as AI create new dependencies across the IT landscape. Delivering an AI solution, for example, can require infrastructure, cloud services, cybersecurity, software, data capabilities and specialist expertise from multiple providers. This means the traditional idea of individual vendors operating independently is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.


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spanning hundreds of technology vendors and a large network of resellers, the evolution is changing the role technology providers play between vendors and partners. Rather than simply providing access to individual products, the emphasis is increasingly on helping partners combine technologies, expertise and services into solutions that can be


delivered efficiently to customers. The strongest IT ecosystems of the future won’t necessarily be those with the most


vendors, products or programmes. They will be the ones that make it easiest for partners to turn all of that innovation into something valuable for the customer. Complexity is not going away. AI alone will introduce entirely new


technologies and relationships across the industry. The opportunity is to ensure partners don’t have to shoulder that complexity themselves. If we can make the ecosystem easier to navigate, partners can spend less time managing technology relationships and more time creating value for their customers.


September/October 2026 | 37


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