25 To Watch In 2025

CRN zooms in on the biggest channel and technology trends that will reshape the IT industry this year as well as the key channel chiefs, CEOs and companies to keep an eye on.

With market-rattling megatrends reverberating throughout the channel and technology landscape, 2025 is poised to be a year of big risks and rewards for solution providers.

With that in mind, CRN has created a road map of the 25 channel trends, technology trends, channel chiefs, CEOs and companies to watch in 2025. For this deep dive on 2025, CRN editors spoke with solution providers on where they see the biggest impact given the fast-changing market dynamics.

Among the biggest channel trends are the continuing declines in product and software licensing margins. “What these margin cuts are doing is stalling growth and hurting partner loyalty,” said the CEO for a solution provider recently hit by a big product software licensing margin cut. “What it comes down to is the vendor failing to leverage the channel resources and customer connections to increase revenue and create customer lifetime value.”

In the technology trends category, agentic AI is changing the economics of the business for partners and customers. “We’re learning how to capitalize on taking that human time, going down, and leveraging agents to do as much as possible,” said 5K Technical Services CEO Corey Kirkendoll.

In the channel chiefs category, all eyes are on new Broadcom Senior Vice President of Global Commercial Sales Brian Moats, who has pledged to transition professional services from Broadcom-led engagements to partner-delivered services. “We’re ready to jump in the game when it comes to services,” said Advizex CEO C.R. Howdyshell.

In the CEO category, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman stands out for his aim to attach solution providers to nearly every AWS customer account. Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie said Garman has a vision for AWS to be customer- and partner-centric. “Not every hyperscaler thinks that way,” he said.

Finally in the companies segment, TD Synnex is expected to put more distance between itself and its competitors. “TD Synnex is enabling its partners unlike I have ever seen any distributor ever do,” said Inacomp CEO Michael Kanan.

5 Channel Trends To Watch

1. Product, Software Licensing Margins Continue To Decline

Even with finely honed partner services driving business outcomes, the list of vendors cutting product and software licensing margins continues to get longer. Solution providers said the margin squeeze is causing them to make changes to their strategic partner preferences and even add other vendors. In fact, they said, vendors are unaware of the damage they are doing to their channel ecosystem. “What these margin cuts are doing is stalling growth and hurting partner loyalty,” said the CEO of a solution provider recently hit by a big product software licensing change. “What it comes down to is the vendor failing to leverage the channel resources and customer connections to increase revenue and create customer lifetime value.” The CEO said he is making changes to his product portfolio because of a recent steep margin cut from one of his strategic vendors. “As a business you have to evaluate whether it is worth the extra overhead to learn another system or tool,” he said.—Steven Burke

2. Partner Revenue From Hyperscaler Marketplaces Rising

The pace at which cloud marketplaces become an increasingly important contributor to many solution providers’ bottom line will accelerate in 2025. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google have all been doubling down on their online cloud marketplaces over the past several years by making it more profitable for partners to sell their offerings while also giving the channel greater visibility into the services and solutions their customers are seeking. For example, Presidio said it gets about 25 percent of its net-new logos from the AWS Marketplace alone. In 2024, Presidio generated $400 million in sales via AWS Marketplace. “Think of the marketplace as this platform that we can now help [customers] cost-optimize around their consumption and the services that they’re buying because we’re driving more software licensing and even specific types of managed services or service offerings through the marketplace that help them retire quota,” said Chris Cagnazzi, chief innovation officer at Presidio.—Mark Haranas

3. GRC Requirements Create Growing Partner Opportunities

Solution providers that can truly help customers overcome the obstacles around governance, risk and compliance (GRC) will find a wealth of opportunity in 2025. Deployments of GRC tools are on track to become “much more prevalent this year,” said Max Shier, vice president and CISO at Optiv. With the added risks posed by the rapid adoption of GenAI, “you have to have a platform in place to be able to manage all of that and understand where your data is going, how the data is being used,” he said. “I think a GRC platform is going to be paramount to that—especially as regulatory compliance concerns and privacy concerns continue to increase year over year. You’re not going to be able to manage that yourself in a spreadsheet.” Without a doubt, growing complexities around GRC requirements can create an ongoing learning curve for solution providers, with key compliance frameworks presenting their own unique hurdles. But those solution providers that meet the challenge will be rewarded.—Kyle Alspach

4. The MSP-To-MSSP Revolution

With bad actors launching more sophisticated attacks, MSPs are transforming into MSSPs at a breakneck pace. That’s the big shift in the MSP market in 2025, with remote monitoring and management taking a backseat to security-savvy MSSPs acting as a front-line defense. “If you are still an MSP and you are not doing cybersecurity services as an MSSP for all of your customers by the end of 2025, then you are dead,” said David Stinner, founder and president of MSSP US itek. The transformation is being driven by the rise in attacks, said Stinner. “The hackers are getting smarter, and their tactics are getting better,” he said. Case in point: a Russian attacker who was recently stopped by the Microsoft Windows Defender software running in US itek’s Security Operations Center, he said. The shift is just one more example that the key to staying ahead in the fast-moving technology market is knowing where the puck is going, said Stinner. “You need to change and adapt,” he said.—Steven Burke

5. Partner Enablement Takes Center Stage

Channel chiefs, particularly in the security space, are investing heavily in channel enablement efforts in 2025. This comes as partners place a higher priority on streamlined on-boarding and training and are emphasizing services. Check Point Software Technologies, for instance, has focused on developing templates that provide the majority of what a partner will need to deliver a managed service, said Francisco Criado, vice president of global partner ecosystems. The templates can get partners “80 [percent] to 90 percent of the way there,” he said. “Then they can add their IP and services on top of it and develop an offering more easily, so it helps them go to market faster.” Meanwhile, WatchGuard Technologies has invested heavily in providing ongoing support to partners beyond just presales training, said Michelle Welch, CMO and senior vice president of business strategy. When it comes to enablement, she said, many partners “want it—and need it—more than ever.”—Kyle Alspach

5 Technology Trends To Watch

1. The Arrival Of Agentic AI

The age of agentic AI is upon us. The GenAI craze that started in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT is taking a huge leap forward in 2025 with the proliferation of AI agents that can autonomously complete tasks without input from humans. Many AI -focused solution providers are already leveraging the technology themselves and exploring use cases for customers. Corey Kirkendoll, CEO of 5K Technical Services, said he hopes to use agents to create marketing material, on-board new employees and provide self-service customer support. “We’re learning how to capitalize on taking that human time, going down, and leveraging agents to do as much as possible,” he said. Vendors such as Nvidia, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Google and Salesforce are making eye-popping investments into the technology and rewarding solution providers for spreading the word. Meanwhile, solution providers of all sizes are building agentic AI into industry-focused solutions and helping customers remake entire jobs for the AI era.—Wade Tyler Millward

2. SIEM Wars Heat Up

Between the consolidation of major players and the entrance of new ones, the critical security information and event management (SIEM) market is seeing its biggest shakeup in its decades-long history. SIEM provides the logging, analytics and search capabilities that are essential for mitigating many types of cyberattacks. Cisco Systems’ acquisition of Splunk, Palo Alto Networks’ acquisition of IBM’s QRadar SaaS business and the merger of Exabeam and LogRhythm have reshaped the playing field, as has the arrival of CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Fortinet. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Google Cloud—as well as longtime players such as Securonix, Sumo Logic and Rapid7—are among other contenders, suggesting the competition is only going to intensify from here. As far as who the ultimate winners of the SIEM wars will be, it’s anyone’s guess at this point, said Alpesh Shah, vice president of security strategic alliances at solution provider Myriad360. “I’m not sure what that industry looks like a couple of years from now,” Shah said.—Kyle Alspach

3. A Power Management And Cooling Renaissance

GenAI has made power management vendors cool again. That’s because the power required to run Gen-AI LLMs and AI solutions from the edge to the data center demands a new era of power management and cooling. The electricity needed to run GenAI models and the high cost of that energy have vendors scrambling to build data centers that can effectively—and efficiently—power the AI future. Meanwhile, the chips powering the AI revolution are so hot that liquid cooling is becoming essential. Schneider Electric, Eaton, Vertiv, Legrand and CyberPower are big beneficiaries, and solution providers stand to benefit as well. PKA Technologies is stepping up with its own data center modernization and optimization service. “We’re helping customers rebuild and optimize their data centers to account for the new technologies, including liquid cooling,” said Patrick Shelley, CTO. Shelley said he sees the technology changing more in the next five years than it did in the past 30. “Customers need to think about the future now and get ahead of it,” he said.—Steven Burke

4. The Melding Of Storage And Data Security

2024 was a significant year for the storage industry as Cohesity acquired the enterprise data protection business from Veritas and rival Rubrik closed a successful IPO. Both events had in common the need to address the question of how to improve the safety of customers’ data. Cohesity and Rubrik, along with several other vendors, are pioneers in adding data security—specifically data resilience capabilities such as immutable data and ransomware protection—on top of their already sophisticated storage management technology. For 2025, that melding of storage and resilience will only become more ubiquitous as businesses look to their storage vendors to serve as the last line of defense against attacks on their data. All the largest and many of the smaller storage vendors will strengthen their ability to provide that safeguard. It is a technology marriage that businesses need, said Ned Engelke, CTO at solution provider Evotek. “It’s critical, maybe even essential,” Engelke said. “I don’t know which of those two words I would use. Foundational.”—Joseph F. Kovar

5. The Eye-Opening Impact Of Computer Vision

Savvy solution providers in 2025 are opening customers’ eyes to myriad new possibilities enabled by bringing computer vision—which utilizes AI to collect, process and analyze data from images, video and other visual inputs—into vertical markets to solve problems ranging from business concerns to physical safety and security. In addition, a single computer vision camera can not only replace a multitude of other devices and sensors, it can also ensure a faster response, said Shahid Ahmed, group executive vice president of new ventures and innovation at NTT Data, who spoke recently with CRN about a solution the company built for a manufacturing customer that watches pallets, people and doors, all at the same time. “Not only do you reduce all those sensors and IoT devices and take them out of the picture because you’ve got one single machine vision camera, but it can take immediate action to alert the right people,” he said.—Jennifer Follett and Gina Narcisi

5 Channel Chiefs To Watch

1. Ralph Haupter, Microsoft

Microsoft shook up its channel at the end of January with the appointment of Haupter as president of the brand-new Small, Medium Enterprises & Channel organization, a move that came just days after it highlighted challenges in the partner sales motion affecting Azure sales growth. Haupter is inheriting part of a channel ecosystem that has already been rocked by subscription pricing and billing changes brought on by Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience and is still navigating the impact of AI. Does Haupter’s group represent “more complexity in an already complex organization” or will it improve communications between Microsoft and partners, which would “be a win,” wondered Christopher Regan, managing partner at Microsoft solution provider B&R Business Solutions. Microsoft solution providers are also hoping Haupter can help strike a better balance between rewarding the channel for building cutting-edge AI solutions and other bread-and-butter efforts like cloud migrations and license upgrades.—Wade Tyler Millward

2. Rob Cato, Lenovo

As Lenovo moves to expand its storage portfolio, capitalize on the anticipated PC refresh cycle and grow its reach in the data center, solution providers said Cato is just the person to lead the channel charge. “2025 is going to be a very competitive year. Rob will drive straight through to take on the competition,” said Michael Goldstein, CEO of Lenovo partner LAN Infotech, via text message. Lenovo plans to take storage market share in the coming year by leaning in with partners to expand on the popularity of its entry-level storage offering and by leveraging its partnership with NetApp, said Cato, vice president of North America channel, in a recent interview with CRN. Lenovo also unveiled its intention to buy storage company Infinidat in a deal expected to close in the second half of this year. Cato said Lenovo is poised to help its partners “figure out what their AI story is and where they can help their customers, and we’re ready to take that journey with them.”—O’Ryan Johnson

3. Dave Guzzi, Intel

As Intel recovers from major changes ranging from job cuts to the sudden departure of its CEO, its new global channel chief, Guzzi, is laser-focused on doing what the semiconductor giant has done best: winning deals with partners and helping them grow with a war chest of funding. Unlike most Intel channel leaders who came before him, Guzzi—who started as vice president of the Global Partner Scale organization last October—is bringing an outside perspective to his role, having only worked at Intel for more than three years after spending 30 years in the channel, including in CEO and executive roles at solution providers. While Intel is moving more partner coverage to distributors, Guzzi is increasing funding for partner incentive and investment programs, whether it’s for nonrecurring engineering funds, MDF or money intended to help Intel tip the scales in competitive bids. Guzzi’s group is also doubling down with investments in ISVs focused on building AI applications on top of Intel’s chips—a move that was applauded by partners.—Dylan Martin

4. Tom Evans, Cloudflare

Cloudflare has grown far beyond its roots in web content delivery, thanks to its expansion into cybersecurity with a focus on SASE. The shift has not gone unnoticed by partners, but many have been waiting for bigger moves from Cloudflare aimed at enabling the channel. Enter Evans, who joined Cloudflare as chief partner officer in April 2024 and said efforts to embrace a partner-focused sales strategy have ramped up since his arrival. And this year, the activity is set to move into an even higher gear: A top goal for 2025 is to take the next steps needed to “turn on the partner ecosystem,” Evans told CRN recently. Cloudflare plans to begin debuting improvements for partners—likely on a monthly cadence over the next year—including around rebates and incentives, training and the partner portal. At this point, there’s no question that Cloudflare is on a path to ultimately drive the vast majority of its business through partners, and “we’ve just got to get the foundation built that allows us to do it,” Evans said. “But I’m very confident we will get there quickly.”—Kyle Alspach

5. Brian Moats, Broadcom

In the latest big change to hit the Broadcom and VMware channel community, Broadcom named Moats as its new senior vice president of global commercial sales and partners in January. Moats has hit the ground running with plans that include transitioning professional services from Broadcom-led engagements to partner-delivered services, as well as prioritizing solution providers who are investing heavily in its software and value-add services opportunities. Moats’ experience includes 18 years at CA Technologies, which was acquired by Broadcom in 2018. C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Broadcom partner Advizex, said he’s in favor of the changes Moats is making, especially around moving most professional services opportunities to the channel.“We’re ready to jump in the game when it comes to services,” he said. “His background is going to be a big plus. Going through what CA went through, he probably understands the undertaking that is going to be required with being part of Broadcom.”—Mark Haranas

5 CEOs To Watch

1. Jensen Huang, Nvidia

Firmly established as a leader of the AI revolution, Nvidia founder and CEO Huang continues to press his teams to push the boundaries of what is possible at the intersection of chips, systems and software to fuel groundbreaking applications. With Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPU systems now becoming available through OEMs and cloud service providers, Huang finds his company far ahead in the AI computing race when it comes to performance, revenue and mind share. Now he hopes to take Nvidia to new heights by ensuring its hardware is even more integral to the future of software by making AI development more accessible and easier with Nvidia Inference Microservices and Nvidia Blueprints that come with essential building blocks. Huang also wants to use Nvidia’s AI prowess to shape the future of robotics and automation with a growing portfolio of chips, software and AI models that work in concert to bridge the physical and digital worlds and bring about the next industrial revolution.—Dylan Martin

2. Matt Garman, Amazon Web Services

AWS CEO Garman hasn’t been in his leadership role for a full year but is already having a major impact on the $110 billion cloud and AI behemoth. With a partner-centric strategy that aims to attach solution providers to nearly every AWS customer account, Garman has spearheaded efforts to improve alignment of internal sales teams with partners as well as channel enablement around driving AI adoption. Garman has worked at AWS for 18 years in various top roles in sales, services and marketing before taking the helm in June. This experience has given him unique insight into AWS operations, what customers are seeking and how partners play a key role. “We see the approach he’s taken already with some of the program rollouts, the big bet that AWS is making around GenAI, and the fact that he sees a vision for AWS to not only be customer-centric but he sees it equally in value that AWS needs to be partner-centric,” said Justin Copie, CEO of AWS partner Innovative Solutions. “And not every hyperscaler thinks that way.”—Mark Haranas

3. Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks

For the past year, Palo Alto Networks Chairman and CEO Arora has been in the unusual position of running the largest stand-alone player in his industry while also, arguably, being the CEO with the most to prove. The reason can be summed up in one word: “platformization.” He has popularized this buzzword—shorthand for “platform consolidation”—since saying in February 2024 that he would overhaul the company’s growth strategy around the idea. The gambit has been to accelerate tool consolidation on its broad security platform, and Arora acknowledged it would likely lead to a disruption in its short-term growth as a result of providing increased incentives to customers up front. However, the payoff from larger partner and customer utilization would be worthwhile down the road, he argued. The company has since reported a jump in average annual recurring revenue related to platformization in the quarters following the move. “All I want to say is I wish we had started down that path sooner,” Arora said on an earnings call in August.—Kyle Alspach

4. Bill McDermott, ServiceNow

McDermott has positioned ServiceNow as a leader in making AI available across a business’ IT infrastructure, and in 2025 he is expected to keep up the pressure on the IT industry to find ways to ensure AI becomes ubiquitous. Under Chairman and CEO McDermott’s guidance, ServiceNow has moved to make AI available across the Now platform for digitizing and automating processes and services and leading the charge for using AI to cause what he last year told CRN was “exponential change.” For 2025, that means a new focus on agentic AI, which can autonomously make decisions without continual human interaction, as a way to automate processes across applications. It is exciting to see where ServiceNow is taking AI and agentic AI, said Rick Wright, CEO of solution provider CoreX. “I think there are lots of companies building AI agents to do a whole lot of things, and the ServiceNow differentiator is the ability to connect all of those in a construct, in a workflow, with approvals and checkpoints that already span an enterprise,” Wright said. —Joseph F. Kovar

5. Scott Chasin, Pax8

Don’t call Pax8 a distributor. Chasin’s vision since becoming CEO in May focuses on transforming the way cloud solutions are delivered and consumed. To that end, he has banned the use of the “D word” because it misrepresents what the company is at its core, say several of his lieutenants. Under Chasin’s leadership, Pax8 has invested in the technology underpinnings of its cloud marketplace to harness the power of data and AI and to act as a customer acquisition engine for partners. His innovative approach also includes automating many of the manual processes involved in cloud services provisioning, helping MSPs scale their businesses efficiently. “Scott leads successfully because he sees past boundaries of traditional models. He is focused on building for the future of MSPs,” said Peter Melby, CEO of New Charter Technologies. “His drive in making Pax8 a leading value-builder for MSPs makes our world better. It’s great to have such a strong force behind us.”—CJ Fairfield

5 Companies To Watch

1. Qualcomm

After setting its sights on the AI PC market, Qualcomm is now making a big channel push in 2025 to fuel adoption of its chips. The company got its big break in the PC market last year when Microsoft chose its Arm-based Snapdragon X series as the first processors to power Copilot+ PCs. The move meant that Qualcomm had beat its chip rivals to power advanced AI features on what Microsoft was calling “the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built.” But the company was soon also getting attention for the powerful performance and superior battery life enabled by its Snapdragon X chips. With buy-in from major OEMs, Qualcomm says there are more than 80 PC designs, including business-focused models, with Snapdragon X chips that are available in the market or in development, and that number is expected to reach 100 next year. Qualcomm has now spun up a global commercial channel organization that is quadrupling in size and doubling channel funding this year.—Dylan Martin

2. Wiz

For most of its existence, Wiz has stood out as something of a cybersecurity phenom. Practically since the get-go after its founding in 2020, the cloud and AI security vendor has been growing at a “blinding pace,” in the words of recently hired CFO Fazal Merchant. The Wiz approach, in a nutshell, has been to rapidly and dramatically improve cloud visibility, enabling partners and customers to fix misconfigurations and other security gaps in the cloud. Notably, it’s an approach Wiz is bringing to the AI security space. With the highest valuation of any venture-backed cybersecurity vendor at $12 billion and an expectation to cross $1 billion in annual recurring revenue this year, Wiz has its sights on an IPO as its next major milestone. Crucially, it has doubled down on its work with solution providers, with Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport telling CRN last year that partners will undoubtedly be pivotal to the company’s next phases of growth. When it comes to the channel, “I think there is so much more we can do,” Rappaport said at the time.—Kyle Alspach

3. Snowflake

Snowflake stands out as one of the leaders driving an AI channel revolution in 2025. Since Tyler Prince joined Snowflake to lead the channel charge in June 2023, the company has added more than 2,300 partners who have built more than 600 applications on Snowflake. Not only that, Snowflake’s new AI Data Cloud Product Partner Program has led to 39 percent growth of partner ecosystem-led consumption. In November, Snowflake teamed with Anthropic to develop and scale AI solutions for global enterprises. Also that month, Snowflake signed a definitive agreement to acquire Datavolo, an unstructured AI data ingestion provider. The company also continues to push the AI innovation envelope, recently launching its new AI platform, Snowflake Intelligence. Baris Gultekin, the head of AI for Snowflake, calls Snowflake Intelligence the “next step” in Snowflake’s AI journey. That next step is one more reason partners are counting on Snowflake to help them capture big competitive advantages from AI in 2025 .—Mark Haranas

4. TD Synnex

TD Synnex is set to put more distance between itself and its competitors in 2025. That’s the assessment from Michael Kanan, chairman and CEO of Inacomp and president of CommunitySolv, TD Synnex’s partner community. New TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit and his leadership team, including new North America President Reyna Thompson, are ready to take the distribution behemoth to new heights, said Kanan. “Patrick is bringing it all together—the tools and the people—to create something really dynamic,” Kanan said. “Unlike other CEOs, Patrick puts himself out there. He knows and understands that he is in the people business.” As for Thompson, Kanan said he sees her leveraging big data analytics to drive significant competitive advantages for TD Synnex. Most importantly for partners, TD Synnex is “maniacally focused” on technologies like AI and cybersecurity that are set to drive higher margins for TD Synnex and its partners, said Kanan. “TD Synnex is enabling its partners unlike I have ever seen any distributor ever do,” he said.—Steven Burke

5. Kaseya

Kaseya is navigating a period of significant change and innovation, particularly amid its recent leadership shakeup when CEO Fred Voccola stepped aside in January. The transition comes as Kaseya is pushing boundaries with new offerings to enhance its product suite and provide better value to its customers while fending off rivals such as ConnectWise and N-able. One of its flagship innovations, Kaseya 365, is a tool designed specifically for MSPs and IT teams. By providing a centralized offering, it aims to reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency and enable businesses to better respond to security challenges and regulatory demands. Kevin Damghani, founder and CEO of ITPartners, said in an email to CRN that he believes Kaseya is in a transformational period. “With the evolution of K365, they’re positioned to redefine how MSPs and IT teams operate. The platform is a game-changer, offering unparalleled efficiency and integration that will set a new industry standard.”—CJ Fairfield