Technology services distributors say they started 2026 strong, shrugging off economic concerns haunting other firms in the channel.
The broader B2B technology sales and services channel faces a multitude of challenges, as OEMs pressure partners to evolve and scale, resellers navigate a memory chip shortage and salaries slump. Nestled within a thriving as-a-service business model, TSDs aren’t sweating a downturn. In fact, the TSD market is expected to grow by at least 10% year-over-year in 2026, according to Omdia, a Channel Dive sister company.
“Yes, there's concern about oil prices and interest rates and on and on, and that does impact buying decisions, but I think we're somewhat insulated from that, because customers are increasingly choosing to procure through this route,” Telarus CEO Adam Edwards said in a TSD panel hosted by AireSpring Wednesday.
Moderator Jay McBain, chief analyst at Omdia, prompted Edwards with a question about declining confidence in the broader channel. A March 26 Omdia Candefero survey showed that 76% of corporate resellers and 48% of managed service providers expect their Q1 profits to decline from 2025. The survey did not list responses from TSDs or the technology advisors that work with TSDs.
“I think that the number would be much lower … simply for that difference of model,” Edwards said.
Market shifts in the IT world have favored TSDs. Although many MSPs are struggling, managed services are not. The TSD model is geared toward managed services, a segment growing faster than SaaS, Omdia found. TSDs provide ongoing support to the end customer, rather than the partner that sold the deal.
The largest MSPs are signing up as suppliers with the TSDs and leaning on TAs to acquire new customers. VMware’s partner cuts have forced smaller MSPs and cloud service providers to be gobbled up by the likes of 11:11, an established firm in the TSD linecard. MSP losses have been TA gains.
But it’s not just service providers that TSDs are recruiting. Avant on Tuesday announced it had signed cybersecurity provider Arctic Wolf, signaling a larger push by the TSDs to partner directly with blue-chip cybersecurity and software providers perceived as major growth areas.
“That's a big role of a TSD, not just to evaluate who's incoming, but to educate some of these MSSPs of why they should take advantage of TAs that are thirsty to go sell through you,” Avant SVP of Sales Strategy Rick Reed said during the panel.
In the meantime, big checks are coming technologies where TSDs have been long entrenched, such as contact center and data center colocation, according to Bridgepointe Co-founder and CRO Brian Miller.
“We've closed more seven-figure-a-month-plus deals in the last 12 months than in the previous 23 years combined,” he said, adding that Bridgepointe enjoyed its best ever quarter in Q4 2025 and is on track to top that in Q1 2026.
TSDs largely position themselves as an enablement partner for the much smaller TAs, which interface directly with end customers. The TSDs hold the contracts with the suppliers and collect TAs’ prized commission checks, but they’re also called upon for marketing support, technical training and digital tools.
“We know that time kills deals, so you still have to get on the on-ramp very quickly,” said Ryan Yakos, SVP, Central, Mountain, and PNW regions for Sandler Partners. “Over the next three years, you're going to see these partners and these trusted advisors coming to us saying, ‘We need more resources. We need more technical expertise. We need to learn more about the complexity of the technology stack.’”
One of the industry’s biggest problems is its lack of visibility in the broader channel. The nuances of the agency model are often lost on vendors evaluating routes to market.
“It's not the easiest model to explain to someone at a barbecue,” Intelisys President Ken Mills said. “But once they really understand the power of the advisors to understand the customer needs, be an advocate for that customer, help them find the right solution — working with our teams to do that — and then taking the solution from idea all the way through deployment and implementation and life cycle, they see a tremendous value.”
For AppDirect CRO Emanuel Bertolin, it was clear that the company’s marketplace was not enough on its own. It needed human advisors who would guide enterprises through complex technology decisions and ensuing product life cycles.
“Are you going to have a digital-first business that just sells into enterprise? That's not gonna happen,” Bertolin said. “Otherwise, Amazon would already have done it, and we'd all be doing something else and not sitting here.”
