2023 Tech Advisor Roundtable: 'Telco Guys' No Longer

Technology advisors (agents) have evolved drastically over the last 20 years in what they sell to businesses, as well as the strategic role they play with IT buyers.

A roundtable of tech advisor partner leaders at the recent Channel Futures Leadership Summit served as a retrospective on how the agent channel has grown. The agent model, in which a channel partner sources a vendor-managed and vendor-billed service to a business customer, has increasingly found its way into more and more parts of the tech stack.

While agents previously may have paled in stature to PBX dealers and hardware VARs in the eyes of customers, their flexible business model has enabled them to adopt cloud-based services with less friction. Tech advisors are now selling CX solutions, cybersecurity, and even ESG solutions.

Go through the five images above to see highlights from the roundtable.