2023's Top 10 Tech Advisor Stories: There's Always More M&A

M&A in the tech advisor channel hit pandemonium levels in 2023, with new players popping up everywhere to grab market share.

2022 was a gigantic year for M&A and private equity in the agent channel. It impacted both the technology advisor (TA) and tech services distributor (TSD) sides of the channel, with a handful of consolidation plays solidifying behemoth national players. 2023 saw an encore of holding companies emerge as founders targeted market niches they felt they could corner.

Channel Futures gives an extended recap of new M&A plays in slide four of its year-end highlights. The slideshow above focuses on the 10 biggest trends and stories of the past year.

Some of these stories are what partners love to talk about at the lobby bar: executive departures, acquisitions and layoffs. But the 2023 recap also features the research that TSDs and TAs are sharing with the community. Although some tech advisors say that they don't want to participate in M&A, they and their acquisitive peers both report a similarly bullish outlook for the channel.

The advisory channel is growing, and other parties in the larger IT channel and IT world are taking notice.

Channel Futures uses the terms "agent" and "technology advisor" synonymously, referring to a channel partner model that sources managed services from a vendor. Vendors bill and support the end user and provide a monthly evergreen commission to the agent.

Go through the 10 images above to see 10 stories and trends that impacted the tech advisor community the most.