At a Glance

  • The share of global IT spending flowing through channel partners is expected to decline this year as AI infrastructure investment continues to rise, according to forecasts from Omdia, the sister company of Channel Dive. The analyst firm estimates that less than two-thirds of global technology spending will go through the channel this year.
  • "Overall, we are seeing a year-on-year decline in the proportion of global IT spending going through the channel, from 69% last year to 65% this year," said Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Omdia. "We are not saying the channel is becoming less important—in fact, partner influence is growing, not diminishing."
  • Omdia expects that next year, the channel will account for only 63% of global technology spending as hyperscale cloud providers' AI buildouts continue to drive the market. Edwards noted that this shift reflects significant capital flowing into direct sales of servers and processors to a "very small number of hyperscale data center customers."

Deep Dive

Partners are sharing a smaller slice of a growing pie. Gartner projects that global IT spending will grow by $13.5 billion year-over-year in 2026, exceeding $6.3 trillion in total, as the AI buildout boom continues.

Raw spending does not tell the full story, Edwards said at an Omdia event in London last week. The nearly two-thirds of spending flowing through the channel does not include purchases where customers sign directly with vendors after receiving partner advice, consulting, or implementation support.

Omdia estimates that more than 90% of technology purchases are assisted by partners in some way.

"Looking at transactions alone fails to capture the advisory and consulting influence partners bring to customers across the entire lifecycle," Edwards said.

Some cloud and software vendors are converting a larger share of their largest customer deals to direct sales while also expanding their use of distribution and indirect channels to reach mid-market and small business customers.

Large vendors are moving more AI business to direct sales because the channel has not yet fully developed the skills needed to support enterprise-grade deployments, Edwards said.

This trend should not be interpreted as AI vendors or hyperscale cloud providers intentionally excluding partners from customer engagements.

The growth of forward-deployed engineer (FDE) teams—embedding vendor experts at customer sites—is a more sensitive topic. Edwards said there is a risk of increased competition between vendor service teams and partners. However, the more immediate challenge is the shortage of talent capable of delivering complex enterprise AI projects.

"Given the scarcity of these resources in the market and the growing competition for these skills, the biggest competition will be among vendors vying for the strongest partner ecosystems, rather than between vendors and partners," Edwards said.

Edwards added that directly deployed engineers could ultimately create more opportunities for partners to help customers kickstart AI projects that have stalled due to a lack of necessary skills.

AI companies and hyperscale cloud providers are sending FDEs to partners. This is a pragmatic strategy.

"Clearly, vendors that understand the force multiplier effect of working with partners rather than against them are most likely to win," Edwards said.

OpenAI and Anthropic have recently launched partner programs, while Google has committed $750 million to expand its agentic AI partner network. FDE and AI enablement programs are becoming common practices among large vendors.

Partners that build specialized AI capabilities will hold strategic value. Those that fail to develop these AI skills will face the greatest threat.

"Partners that do not embrace this trend or are slow to act face the greatest risk going forward," he said.