According to Alan Tong, in 2009, channels with specific vertical domain knowledge will be preferred by vendors due to the skill sets that they can bring to the partnership. Customers will also prefer to work with a provider who understands their business as they can act as an advisor to help them in developing best practices or improve efficiency.
A major trend within the Asian channel landscape, says Tong, will be the fact that infrastructure providers will continue to work with two very different IT camps - ISVs and resellers to increase their network and geographical coverage.
In addition, vendors, such as those in software, will engage in broader collaboration with channels across the channel category. Software vendors will explore the opportunity to leverage on hardware vendors channel ecosystem be it distributors, dealers or resellers to reach out to the enterprises. This will potentially speed up the presence and infrastructure support such as in a SaaS offering.
