Here’s What 20 Channel Chiefs See As The Biggest Challenges Facing Partners In 2025
Channel executives on the CRN 2025 Channel Chiefs list were asked what they see as the biggest challenges channel partners face this year. Here’s what 20 channel chiefs had to say.
Channel Challenges Ahead
The wave of AI products and services now flowing through the IT industry presents the channel with many opportunities.
But as many leading channel chiefs note, AI is also creating many business and technical challenges for solution providers, systems integrators and MSPs as they gear up to help customers cut through the hype (what one channel executive called “an incredible amount of noise”) and implement AI systems that provide real value.
AI aside, the channel also faces challenges in 2025 around economic uncertainty (did someone say “tariffs”?) and socio/political change. Toss in the ongoing shifts to hybrid/multi-cloud architectures, an increasing number of cybersecurity threats, shortages of IT workers with critical skills, and customers who are demanding more ROI for their IT spending, and it’s clear the channel has its work cut out for it this year.
As part of the CRN 2025 Channel Chiefs project, we asked the more than 550 channel executives that made the list to tell us what they see as the biggest challenges facing their channel partners in 2025. Here’s what 20 had to say.
Broadcom
Tara Fine
VP, Americas Partner Organization
The more complete a partner’s business models are, the more successful and profitable their businesses will be and vice versa. Heading into 2025, continued uncertainty around the current macroeconomic environment will continue to put partners under greater pressure to articulate the ROI and TCO of any solution they are trying to sell into customers. Partners are also faced with demonstrating better time-to-value metrics.
Cato Networks
Karl Soderlund
Global Channel Chief
Managing vendor sprawl and understanding which manufacturers to make bets on and invest [in], working with their customers to produce the greatest value and deliver outcomes in a constantly changing IT environment, [and] reducing complexity within their own IT environment while remaining secure.
Dell Technologies
Denise Millard
Chief Partner Officer
With the continued growth of data and customers adopting AI, we will see challenges in how partners monetize AI solutions that meet the outcome-based needs of customers. This includes skilling to uplevel partner and customer acumen. As customers race to understand and implement AI in their workloads, partners must drive profitability through innovation.
F5
Lisa Citron
VP, Global Partner Ecosystem
Helping customers balance the desire to “AI wash” everything while keeping their customers secure. Speaking to our partners around the world the No. 1 conversation is AI. Partners will need to build a strong practice in AI capabilities, but also in securing AI capabilities. F5 will play a strong role in helping to deliver, secure and optimize AI workloads, but our partner community will need to build foundational architectures and skills to help their customers navigate the complexity, cost and risks associated with the exploding AI opportunity.
Google Cloud
Kevin Ichhpurani
President, Global Partner Organization
Continue to invest in solution expertise, now including Gen AI and industry capabilities. Customer buying patterns have moved beyond seeking cost savings from lifting and shifting workloads to the cloud, to digital innovation agendas that require a rethinking of business processes or reinventing business models altogether. Talent transformation: The ongoing emergence of Gen AI is driving the need for talent transformation within enterprises. Continuous investment in developing both technical and industry-specific expertise needs to be a key priority for organizations navigating this evolving landscape.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Simon Ewington
SVP, Worldwide Channel, Partner Ecosystem Sales
AI is the next big technology wave to hit the market. As we expand our product and solutions portfolio to address this shift, it will be important that our partners continue to invest in their knowledge and skills so they are prepared to deliver the innovative technology customers demand for hybrid cloud/AI, compute, storage and networking.
HP Inc.
Kobi Elbaz
SVP, GM, Global Revenue Operations
Customers look to HP Amplify partners as trusted advisors. Digital advancements require continuous upskilling to stay competitive. Partners need to deliver more personalized and seamless experiences to meet increasingly complex customer expectations while managing global economic pressures, making operational efficiency and collaboration essential. HP is well-positioned to support partners in this new era of work, regardless of market conditions. By embracing HP's Future Ready strategy, partners can better prepare for market shifts, benefit from customizable tools and training to enhance capabilities, and drive growth with offerings like Growth Plays and More for More to maintain a competitive edge.
Intel
Dave Guzzi
VP, Global Partner Scale
Partners need to ensure they can adapt to the rapid change in technology advancements and the new paths to market for delivering this technology. The key will be to hire and retain talent with the right skill sets, in a competitive workforce environment, to take advantage of this change. Additional challenges will come with growing privacy concerns and cybersecurity threats that are inherent in these new technologies.
Kaseya
Dan Tomaszewski
EVP, Channel
Profitability: Customers are demanding more services and MSPs need to be able to deliver while staying profitable.
Lenovo
Rob Cato
VP, North America, Channel, ISO
Not only is AI one of our partners' biggest opportunities, it’s also one of their biggest challenges. Partners need to be equipped to deliver business outcomes for their customers. It will be critical for partners to develop their services and solutions capabilities to be able to deliver AI at the edge. Lenovo is committed to powering a hybrid AI world and working with our partners to deliver on that mission.
Microsoft
Nina Harding
Corporate VP, Global Partner Solutions, Americas
Keeping up with the pace of AI is a challenge, but it also represents the largest opportunity for our partners. AI innovation can supercharge problem solving for businesses of all sizes, across all industries. Partners must be focused on advancing their skills and specializations and creating unique, responsible, industry-focused AI offerings for customers to capitalize on the incredible promise AI brings.
Nvidia
Craig Weinstein
VP, America’s Partner Organization
Rapid market changes: The fast-paced evolution of AI technology requires partners to constantly adapt and invest in new capabilities while being current on new and emerging developer tools from LLM and SLM providers. Supply chain risks: Partners must navigate potential disruptions due to geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions and product availability across our ecosystem of partners. Keeping pace with AI advancements: Partners need to continuously invest in AI expertise and infrastructure to meet growing customer demands and leverage NVIDIA's expanding portfolio.
Qlik
David Zember
SVP, Worldwide Channels, Alliances
Partners will face two key challenges in 2025: competition from non-channel industry leaders who bypass traditional ecosystems, and the noise around AI and generative AI, which could distract from delivering outcome-based results. Additionally, while AI and generative AI are transformative, partners must remain focused on solving real-world business challenges with practical, data-driven solutions, ensuring they deliver measurable results that align with customer outcomes rather than getting lost in the hype of emerging technologies.
SAP
Karl Fahrbach
Chief Partner Officer
Customer expectations around AI will continue to grow in 2025. It is therefore essential that partners have the required skills to fulfill customers' needs. SAP has a partner-centric approach when it comes to AI. Having the right technology partnerships is key to making this growing technology a measurable value-add for businesses. It is essential that partners understand SAP's vision around business AI and invest to boost their competencies and stay competitive in this fast-moving environment. No matter what your business model is, SAP business AI offers a unique opportunity to grow and take the lead in this space.
Snowflake
Tyler Prince
SVP, Worldwide Alliances
One of the biggest challenges for partners – and the industry as a whole – is the pace of innovation in AI. We have a responsibility to bring our partners and customers along in this innovation journey and help demystify the evolution of the technology innovations that are going on in the market. That's part of the reason I'm confident in our approach to the market. We're making it simple and providing options to customers, as well as building awareness and investing in training and certifications for our partners.
Splunk
Gretchen O’Hara
Channel Chief, VP, Worldwide Channels, Alliances
The biggest challenge that partners will face in 2025 is the transition to a hybrid, multi-cloud-based business model and delivering value across the customer lifecycle. Partners will be increasingly challenged to recommend on-prem solutions to their customers, which will require gaining specific cloud-related expertise for those that are not already prepared. Additionally, we expect IT decision criteria to continue to shift with even more emphasis placed on achieving AI capabilities and implementing cost mitigation strategies while delivering solutions that drive growth.
Tenable
Chris Blando
VP, North America Channel Sales
Being able to differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering value-added professional and managed services. Also, working with customers to help enable their move to the cloud.
Vertiv
Peter Klanian
SVP, North America Sales
Emerging technologies are posing new challenges to physical infrastructure, with business-critical applications facing evolving threats daily. The current surge in AI presents a unique opportunity for partners to highlight the critical importance of ensuring proper power and cooling for their customers' workloads as the demand for reliable infrastructure continues to grow exponentially.
WatchGuard Technologies
Michelle Welch
CMO, SVP, Business Strategy
Resetting financial metrics: The demand for consumption-based business models is soaring and the economy has fueled that fire. For many partners, that means rethinking how they package services, how systems are set up, and – most notably – cashflow. Deciding when and how to navigate that shift will continue to be a challenge for the entire channel ecosystem, but I believe a necessary one to thrive in 2025 and beyond.
Wiz
Tom Henderson
VP, Worldwide Channels, Alliances
There is an incredible amount of noise coming at partners, especially those with traditional OEM relationships that are trying to evolve their service catalog. I see a further challenge in balancing this existing run rate with new category makers while delivering the right outcome for the customer.
