In the traditional, transactional, perpetual world of tech vendors and their partners, the partnering models are simple and "tried and true." However, in the evolving world of "as a service," new partner models are coming to the forefront and this demands that new partner classification systems are identified in order to best solve partner management, partner incentives, and partner value measurement issues, among others.
In XaaS, partners can fall into one or multiple of the following three classifications:
- Sell to
- Sell with
- Sell through
In this paper, which is first in a series around partner classification and synergistic partner engagement in XaaS, you will read about these partner classifications as well as some of the partner types that fall into these models. As new partner models arise in the XaaS evolution, they can be slotted into this new classification model, and vendor partner teams can build their programs and incentives more cleanly following the partners' preferred behavior and relationships, versus attempting to slot them into partner segmentation buckets of the past.