Launching 2023 Channel Ecosystem Landscape (Tech Stack)

Canalys is excited to launch the 2023 Channel Ecosystem Landscape; Bringing focus to the underlying technology that will drive competitive advantage for channel and partnership leaders in the decade of the ecosystem. The 233 companies represented in the landscape are providing automation and advanced digital capabilities to help companies design, develop, execute, and manage a broad channel partner and alliance ecosystem.

Some interesting facts about the 2023 landscape:?

• There were 37 changes from last year’s landscape – this includes new companies, M&A, companies shutting down or pivoting away, and re-brandings.
• We are watching 38 additional startup companies in the channel/ecosystem tech space vying for a spot on next year’s landscape. We look for a minimum of 5 full time employees and a fully shipping product with delighted/recurring customers.
• From a revenue perspective, 14 of these companies are driving over $100 million in channel software revenue, and roughly half the list is north of $10 million.?
• There is not an 80/20 revenue split that you find in most lists. The Fortune-sized companies such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, and Adobe (combined) drive only 13% of the total revenue.
• There are 25 companies on the landscape founded in the past 5 years. On the other side of the maturity scale, there are 23 companies over 30 years old. Four of them are over 100 years old! (ACB, Ansira, IBM, and Maritz)
• Consistent with other SaaS categories, there was a sizable drop in private equity funding. In 2021, the funding totaled over $3.1 billion, while in 2022 it dropped 75% to $763.4 million. Current year (2023) funding is at $441.8 million by August so is tracking to be similar to 2022.
• Given recent HR trends around the great resignation, return to work, and half a million tech layoffs over the past 10 months, the Glassdoor ratings remain unchanged (compared to 18 months ago) with a weighted average 3.866 for these 233 companies. The global average on Glassdoor is 3.3 (according the company itself) so working in the channel tech industry is a better experience overall for these 30,306 workers (Canalys estimate).
• Almost two thirds of companies are headquartered in the US. The UK is next with 20 companies, then Canada with 14, then France and Germany with eight each.?
• Top headquarters cities are San Francisco with 21 companies, London with nine, New York with seven, Boston with six, and Chicago and Paris each have five.

Click here to get the full report, including a listing of each company, a description and zoom in on each of the 11 islands of innovation, and further analysis on how channel, partnership, alliances, and ecosystem leaders should be thinking about the underlying technology that will fuel the future of partner programs, processes and workflows, coverage models, capacity, and capabilities.

Check out 6 year history of the tech stack:

Read more about channels, partnerships, and ecosystems:

• How to successfully build channel ecosystems to drive subscription and consumption models
• Have the industry’s channel chiefs really moved to an ecosystem model?
• Canalys outlook: 2023 predictions for the technology industry