The first half of 2025 provided the channel with plenty to discuss. From back-and-forth tariff concerns to broader geopolitical uncertainties and numerous technological innovations, vendors are taking the lessons learned from the first half of the year into consideration as they enable partners for the remainder of 2025.
Partner strategy shifts: Vendors retool enablement and target ideal partners
The leaders interviewed for this piece shared a few common threads, one of which was a simple yet profound truth: the way partners interact with their vendors is changing rapidly.
Mitel recently unified its disparate partner programs under one umbrella to better enable its commitment to “stay nimble and adaptable to change,” according to VP of Channel Steve Loebrich.
“This was really about bringing all of the pieces together and modernizing our program to meet what partners need today,” Loebrich said.
Partners also continue to reassess their role in the broader IT market amid increasing demands on end-user organizations to leverage emerging technologies and maintain operational efficiency with existing resources.
Tony Beller, channel chief at Tanium, says he and his team are seeing a concerted effort at its leading GSI partners to embrace opportunities within managed services offerings. For the endpoint security vendor, this has led to a shift in how it presents products to those partners.
“We’ve never offered services really at all, we just sell the Tanium solution,” said Beller. “But we are seeing a lot of partners asking us for help in building solutions for clients that leverage Tanium and then require wraparound services to drive adoption. We need our partners to do that, but we are adding additional enablement resources to provide partners with the tools they need to be successful.”
The ongoing shift towards managed services is no longer confined to just resellers looking to become MSPs. As vendors consider how best to address the needs of partners through their traditional programs, they may need to reassess what resourcing looks like over time.
“Partners succeed when we treat enablement as an ongoing commitment, not a checklist. That includes delivery frameworks, co-sell collaboration, and sales assets tailored to how partners engage customers,” said Parsec’s Global Head of Channel and Alliances, Susana Cabrera.
Cabrera also notes that vendors should consider not just how they support partners, but who their ideal partners are in the first place.
“The right partners are not the ones who just say yes—they’re the ones who elevate your brand and extend your reach. To attract them, vendors must stop treating partners as transactions and start treating them as growth collaborators,” said Cabrera. “That starts with understanding their business model, tiering partners based on impact and potential, and investing in a differentiated Partner Experience. The partner journey begins long before the contract is signed—and when done right, it becomes a magnet for the partners who truly move the needle.”
For some leaders, this approach can align the vendor’s product growth goals with the best possible outcomes that partners can deliver. That’s the inspiration behind Twillio’s recently-launched certification program.
“At Twilio, we’ve always targeted the builders as the primary customers. For many years, that meant the developers, the builders at the end customers themselves,” said Wagner. “We’re focused on expanding that target audience to also include the partners like the system integrators that are building on top of Twilio on behalf of customers.”
AI, security top mid-year priorities for partners
What would a trends story be without a section on AI? While it’s not news at this point that customers are bringing varied AI-related demands to their providers, that demand continues to evolve as executives become more concerned with measuring the ROI of deployments.
For Loebrich, AI demand has provided the company with an opportunity to help partners determine specific use cases for their customers, resulting in successful implementations.
“We always say don’t implement AI for the sake of AI, and then we follow that with demos and conversations around how you can apply AI to a specific business problem to address a need,” Loebrich said.
Global distribution platform provider Ingram Micro has launched an AI enablement program for its partners, enabling them to deliver the best solutions to their clients based on individual needs.
“I always say that AI is about the lifetime value, not just selling one solution,” Ingram Micro’s Director of AI & Innovation Partnerships Joyce Hoffman told Channel Insider. “This is a long-term opportunity to add services and ongoing support on top of the technology and train your customer base for the future.”
Why successful partnership still focuses on customer outcomes
Beller notes that at this point last year, Tanium was working through programmatic changes to margins and other revenue agreements with partners.
With those changes settled and Tanium’s group of partners sold on the vendor’s ability to provide them with the technology they need to service clients, Beller is bullish on bringing deals to market for the rest of this year and into the future.
“We’re in a much better position now that we have our ecosystem behind us, and the excitement they have to work with us shows we have a huge opportunity ahead of us,” said Beller.
At Mitel, with a bankruptcy agreement in the rearview mirror, the second half of 2025 marks a new beginning for how the company works with partners and customers in its latest form.
“Mitel still has robust technology that people want,” Loebrich said. “We have a greater intimacy with our partners now, and we understand how their businesses work, so we can sit with them and offer side-by-side selling that addresses the needs of our customers.”
For Cabrera, organizations considering how to adjust their strategies should focus on a few key priorities at a time.
“In the second half of the year, the most strategic adjustments are the ones rooted in execution. Focus on the trifecta: enablement, execution, and value creation. Identify which partner relationships are lagging, which assets are outdated, and which efforts need to be dialed up or scaled back,” Cabrera said. “Don’t try to fix everything at once—go for high-impact shifts and sustainable progress.”
PSA tools and unified platforms are helping providers keep up with AI-related demands. Read the latest research to learn more about the new market trend and why partners should know about it.