This Is the State of Partners, Vendors in 2019

PartnerPath’s 2019 State of Partnering Study contains a treasure trove of valuable information for channel partners as cloud growth in the market and in their businesses takes shape. This version of the annual State of Partnering report focuses on driving cloud adoption.

This isn’t the first time that PartnerPath has conducted research on the cloud. Back in 2015, after eight years of industry chatter about IT moving to a cloud consumption model, the company conducted its first research on how vendors and solution providers were coping with the transition.

The 2019 State of Partnering report evaluates the progress of the transition to cloud, and, more importantly, the adoption of cloud business models in the channel ecosystem. The good news: Four years after conducting its initial research on the cloud, there has been an acceptance of cloud business models — and it’s growing.

Research from both Gartner and IDC not only reinforces the fact that public and private cloud solution spending are growing, but the two research firms expect aggressive growth by 2021. In fact, IDC predicts that spending on cloud infrastructure will surpass spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure by 2022.

While there’s a positive trajectory for cloud spending, the cloud consumption model has taken a top-to-bottom hit on how both vendors and partners do business. The transition to cloud is in full swing, and here we provide a glimpse into the 2019 State of Partner Study and some of its findings. The study included more than 100 vendor respondents and responses from 200 solution providers. Note that PartnerPath bundles multiple partner types into a single entity more generally called “solution provider.”