We Need a Paradigm Shift in How We “See” Ecosystems!!

1 | Why We Need a Paradigm Shift in How We “See” Ecosystems.

For too long, organizations have viewed ecosystems through the narrow lens of channel or indirect sales. They think: “Ecosystem = another name to push our products via other companies to the market”. This mental model is rooted in 20th‑century distribution economics, where value meant more sales and margin on resale. But those glasses are dead wrong in the age of AI, microservices, and digital marketplaces.

Ecosystems today are not a back‑door to push more SKUs—they are a new business model in which a technology company engages—and is engaged by—a constellation of participants:

• Customers as co‑creators – providing real‑world problems, data sets, and feedback loops

• ISVs & SaaS builders – packaging and extending core platforms with novel apps

• VARs & Distributors – offering localized integration, financing,g and supply‑chain reach

• Chipmakers & Infrastructure partners – embedding custom silicon, edge devices, and network fabrics

• Systems Integrators & Boutique Specialists – orchestrating multi‑party deployments and vertical solutions

• Hyperscalers & Platform Hosts – supplying global scale, marketplaces, and innate co‑sell engines

• Digital Marketplaces – collapsing procurement, embedding compliance, and surfacing micro‑services on‑demand.

This mesh of actors no longer “resells” your product—it co‑innovates with you. Together, you forge new IP, architect end‑to‑end solutions never before possible, and unlock network effects that accelerate time‑to‑value:

• New Technologies & IP – patents, data models, and AI inferences you co‑develop only by collaborating.

• Faster Deployments – pre‑integrated reference architectures and marketplace 1‑click provisioning.

• Reduced Procurement Red‑Tape – unified billing, built‑in security, and legal compliance baked into the platform.

• Outcome Velocity – measured not in MQLs but in customer outcomes delivered per week.

By clinging to the OLD “channel sales” paradigm, we:

• Delay innovation (partners spin up PoCs independently)

• Multiply silos (each group builds its connectors)

• Lengthen procurement cycles (multiple RFQs, multiple purchase orders)

• Obscure true value creation (IP licensing, usage‑based revenue, data‑driven services)

Analyst Jay McBain captures it well: “Ecosystems are the entire universe of partnerships that benefit the end‑buyer… channel is just one transactional subset.” LinkedIn

2 | Reframing Collaboration for 2025

The real power of ecosystems lies in abandoning old‑school views of company‑to‑company “deals” and embracing a co‑owned platform mindset:

• Shared Roadmaps: Partners and customers jointly shape feature backlogs and go‑to‑market plans.

• Open Interfaces: Published APIs first, contracts second—developers prototype before signing NDAs.

• Aligned Incentives: Rewards flow on usage, integrations, outcomes, not merely on TCV booked.

• Governed Trust: Zero‑trust security and AI‑TRiSM guardrails that all participants agree upon.

When you rewire your culture, incentives, and systems around this new paradigm, your ecosystem becomes a self‑reinforcing flywheel—where each integration, each co‑sale, and each jointly owned outcome drives more partners, more innovation, and faster customer success. That’s not “indirect sales.” That’s the future of technology.

Beyond the Channel: Re‑framing Technology Ecosystems for 2025 and Beyond

Most technology firms still start the “ecosystem conversation” by dusting off an old channel‑sales slide: tiers, discounts, MDF, and headcount targets. That’s the wrong playbook.

As Alejandro Canonero argues in War of the Ecosystems, a true ecosystem is not a re‑branded partner program—it is a network of customers, ISVs, VARs, distributors, chip makers, integrators, boutique builders, hyperscalers, platforms and digital marketplaces that co‑create net‑new value rather than merely pass a purchase order down the line. Ecosystems are about invention, speed, and shared outcomes, not “indirect” headcounts.

3 | Channel ≠ Ecosystem

Legacy Channel (1980‑2020)	Modern Ecosystem (2020‑>)
Linear hand‑off: Vendor → Reseller → Customer	Mesh: Every actor can build, sell, service, and enhance every other actor’s offer
Value = margin on resale	Value = new IP, data, AI models, usage fees, marketplace revenue
Success is measured quarterly in bookings	Success measured in network effects: time‑to‑deploy, attach rate of integrations, shared ARR
Partner manuals & discount tables	Open APIs, co‑innovation sandboxes, joint OKRs

4 | Who Sits in the Modern Ecosystem?

Actor	What they bring	Recent proof‑point
Hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP)	Global infra, marketplaces, co‑sell engines	AWS Marketplace now lists 42 k+ products and services Statista
ISVs / SaaS builders	Domain IP, packaged innovation	CrowdStrike surpassed $1 B in AWS Marketplace revenue in 2024 CrowdStrike
Hardware/Silicon  (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD)	Specialized acceleration & reference designs	NVIDIA’s 2025 plan to assemble $500 B of AI servers with a U.S. partner web Reuters
Global, Regional & Local, & Boutique SIs	Complex integration, compliance, change‑management	Deloitte + AWS joint industry clouds
Distributors / VARs	Industry reach, credit, last‑mile services	TD‑Synnex launching multi‑cloud orchestration hubs
Marketplaces	Friction‑free procurement, consolidated billing	Azure attributes 8 % of cloud growth to marketplace transactions invisory.co
Customers	Real‑world problems, data, co‑funding of innovation	Capital One’s cloud‑native data mesh built with AWS & Snowflake

5 | Where the Value Comes From

1. New IP & composites – joint solutions (e.g., an NVIDIA‑powered fintech model running on Azure OpenAI APIs).

2. Speed – self‑service procurement and pre‑integrated reference architectures cut deployment cycles from months to days.

3. Reduced red‑tape – cloud marketplaces bake in legal & security controls, collapsing vendor onboarding.

4. Outcome acceleration – partners align on customer OKRs (risk eliminated, sales uplift, carbon saved), not only on SKU quotas.

5. Silo busting – shared data fabrics and open APIs make every integration a reusable asset, not a one‑off project.

In My Book: War of the Ecosystems, I warn firms stuck in the “sell‑through” mindset miss these compounding effects and burn cash chasing the next quarter’s quota instead of designing for network value.

6 | Operating Principles for a 2025‑Ready Ecosystem

Principle	What it looks like in practice
Co‑invent, don’t just co‑sell	Joint backlog, shared patents, and integrated product road‑map reviews every quarter.
API‑first, contract‑second	Publish partner SDKs before launching a resale agreement; let developers prototype first.
Marketplace as first mile, not last mile	List day one, build private offer motions and multi‑party transacting; treat marketplace data as the single source of consumption truth.
Incentive on usage & integrations	Pay partners (and AEs) on active endpoints, workloads migrated, AI inferences served—not only TCV.
Govern for trust	Embed AI‑TRiSM and zero‑trust baselines; publish transparency reports on shared data flows Gartner.
Enable multihoming	Accept that your best partners will also list on competing clouds; design program rules to reward net‑new IP, not exclusivity.

7 | Metrics the Board Actually Cares About

• Partner‑Co Sell & Sourced pipeline % (vs. traditional channel resell).

• Average integrations per customer – proxy for lock‑in via value, not contracts.

• Time‑to‑deploy from PO to production workloads.

• Marketplace GMV & attach rate of private offers.

• Ecosystem NPS – satisfaction of partners themselves; high scores correlate with faster co‑innovation velocity.

8 | A Playbook to Start Today

1. Map the universe – identify all  15‑20 partnership archetypes around your core offer, not just resellers.

2. Pick two lighthouse co‑innovation bets (e.g., an AI vertical, a regional sovereign‑cloud bundle).

3. Stand up a two‑pizza “ecosystem PMO” owning program design, data quality, and shared OKRs.

4. Instrument everything – route every deal, renewal, and telemetry event through your marketplace or PRM so value‑creation is visible.

5. Communicate the flywheel – from C‑suite to BDRs, reinforce that the ecosystem is the product.

Closing

Soon, the winners will not be the firms that shipped the most SKUs but the ones that orchestrated the richest networks: customers who co‑design, integrators who embed, ISVs who extend, and hyperscalers who amplify.

Channels move boxes; Ecosystems move industries. The sooner a technology company rewires its culture, incentives, and interfaces around that truth, the faster it will innovate, deploy, and win.