Techaisle’s latest global partner survey suggests the channel is increasingly splitting into two very different economies, with smaller firms facing a widening growth disadvantage that cannot be explained by market forces alone.
The survey, based on responses from 5,450 partner firms in 24 countries, shows that partners with annual revenue below $10 million expect 8.4% growth in 2026, while those above $500 million are forecasting 16.8%. Techaisle’s broader research has alr...
Continue Reading This Article
Enjoy this article as well as all of our content, including reports, news, tips and more.
By registering or signing into your SRM Today account, you agree to SRM Today's Terms of Use and consent to the processing of your personal information as described in our Privacy Policy.
eady described the channel as having bifurcated into two distinct business models, with profit shifting towards services and lifecycle motions and artificial intelligence becoming central to both sales and operations.
Some of the gap is structural. Smaller partners work with less capital, pursue smaller contracts and cannot quickly build out new capabilities at the pace larger firms can. Techaisle’s data shows that customer acquisition costs consume 31% of first-year value on deals below $25,000, compared with 9% on deals above $2 million. Since 67% of sub-$10 million partners operate mainly in the $25,000 to $100,000 range, the arithmetic of their business model is markedly less forgiving.
Practice mix also matters. Security revenue averages 18% among the largest partners, but only 10% among the smallest. In AI, the same pattern is emerging: 37% of partners above $500 million say they have an AI-security pipeline above a quarter of total business, versus 13% of those below $10 million. Techaisle says talent remains the main barrier to scaling AI, cited by 60% of channel firms, a constraint that bites hardest for smaller organisations with limited hiring capacity.
Yet the survey also points to a second layer of disadvantage created by vendors themselves. Tiering is the clearest example. Among partners above $500 million, 41% sit in the top tier of their main vendor programme, compared with just 2% of firms below $10 million. Over the past 24 months, smaller partners have moved down tiers more often than up, even as the channel overall has trended in the opposite direction.
The same pattern appears in lead quality and support. Techaisle found that 20% of the largest partners rate vendor leads as excellent, against 6% of the smallest. Concierge-style support follows the same distribution, with the firms most in need of help least likely to receive it. In some cases, this may reflect manual routing decisions; in others, AI-enabled partner portals may be reinforcing historic allocation patterns by feeding future opportunities to the same winners.
The issue is not simply one of fairness. Larger partners typically belong to many more programmes, with the biggest firms managing nearly 20 vendor relationships at once, compared with about five for the smallest. That gives them more resource to chase thresholds, qualify for incentives and attend business reviews. It also means vendor systems increasingly reward scale with more scale, creating a feedback loop in which allocation decisions justify themselves.
There is, however, a practical argument for why vendors concentrate investment at the top. Leads, partner-manager time and funding are finite, and it makes sense to direct them where conversion is likeliest. But Techaisle’s analysis suggests that logic can become self-fulfilling if the same partners are repeatedly given better inputs and then judged by the outputs. In some programmes, the data needed to test conversion by revenue band is not even available.
That matters because small partners often play roles the largest firms cannot easily replicate. They cover secondary cities, niche verticals and mid-market accounts that would never justify a large integrator’s attention. Starving that layer of the channel may not produce an immediate reaction, but over time it can weaken regional coverage and push partners towards vendors that offer more realistic pathways to value.
The remedy Techaisle points to is relatively modest. Vendors could reserve a fixed share of qualified leads for partners below $10 million and test the conversion rate over several quarters. They could also create a credible route to top-tier status based on customer outcomes, not simply transaction volume. Neither step would require a wholesale redesign of partner programmes, but both would force vendors to distinguish between scale and value.
The survey’s wider findings fit with other recent channel research. Channel Dive reported that partner-driven deals are expected to top $4 trillion globally in 2026, even as the channel’s share of the addressable IT market edges down because hyperscalers are pouring more money into AI infrastructure. In the UK, ITPro said a Westcon-Comstor survey found 47% of firms planning to invest in data-led offerings next year, above the global average of 40%, underlining how strongly the channel is leaning into analytics and data-driven consulting.
For partners, the message is bleak but clear. The average channel firm may be forecast to grow 11.1% in 2026, but that figure hides two populations moving at very different speeds. Part of that difference is built into the market. Part of it is created by programme design. And the latter, unlike the former, can be changed.
Source: Noah Wire Services
