Ecosystem Intelligence: Key Strategic Changes for 2025

2025 Predictions is a series of special reports examining market trends and business changes TBR expects in the coming year for AI PCs, cloud market share, digital transformation, GenAI, ecosystems and alliances, and 6G.

Top Predictions for Ecosystems & Alliances in 2025

1. 1. Cloud providers will have their hands full juggling ecosystem investments amid a changing technology landscape
   2. The most successful IT services companies and consultancies will be the ones that partner best
   3. Infrastructure vendors will gain relevance in AI partner ecosystems

 

Are your alliance partners helping you stand out?

The strategic shift to ecosystem intelligence in 2025

In the last few years, ecosystem intelligence has gained ground on competitive intelligence as the use case clients most frequently employ to leverage TBR’s IT services, professional services and digital transformation data and analysis, often in an effort to answer the following questions:

• Can your alliance partners tell your clients what makes you special?
• Do your alliance partners’ sales teams know what value you bring to the ecosystem?
• Are you sure you placed your strategic ecosystem bets on alliance partners that are well positioned for the next growth wave?
• Are your competitors gaining ground with your common alliance partners through sales programs, go-to-market motions and training that you are not doing?

This shift to ecosystem intelligence reflects three broader trends:

1. Enterprise buyers want to deal with fewer technology vendors, increase transparency around their IT spend and realize faster returns on technology investments.
2. Portfolio and capability expansion — PwC has expanded into managed services, HCLTech into software, Amazon Web Services into professional services and Lenovo into consulting — has created a more fluid ecosystem, where partnering with competitors and competing against alliance partners have become the norm.
3. Perhaps running as a crosscurrent to the other two trends, the top-performing companies have chosen to play primarily to their strengths, staying in their lane and partnering better, rather than building out capabilities and scale.

In 2025 IT services companies and consultancies will refine their alliances, winnowing lists of 100-plus technology partners to the handful that drive more than 90% of their business, articulate a clear joint value proposition, and align at both the leadership and sales force levels. A technology- and partner-agnostic approach was always a bit of a fiction and in the coming years will become a relic of the past. To make all that happen, IT services companies, cloud and on-premises infrastructure vendors, and consultancies will invest in ecosystem intelligence and elevate alliance management within their organizations.
 

To read the entire 2025 Ecosystems & Alliances Predictions special report, request your free copy today!