Zoom is just the “tip of the spear” in a wave of contact center software vendors drawing a line on partner services.
The cloud communications provider announced a new program in November. The program — set to go into effect in late 2026 — measures partners on points for the value they provide throughout the customer life cycle.
A points-based approach will distinguish strategic partners from those that are merely transactional, according to Zoom Head of Global Channel GTM Nick Tidd.
“They're going to be a strategic advisor versus an individual advisor who's saying, ‘I just want to throw the lead to the vendor via a dealer edge, and I want that vendor to go close it.’ I'll take that business from you all day long, but I'm not going to treat you as an equal party to the first,” Tidd told Channel Dive in October.
If partners want to move up a tier, Tidd suggested they start a professional services practice.
Vendors are reconsidering the meaning of a strategic partnership, according to Darcee Nelan, president of the board at technology advisor IQ Wired.
“Zoom’s recent comments about prioritizing partners with deeper professional services capabilities have sparked industry-wide discussion not because services lack value, but because the implications extend beyond a single supplier program,” said Nelan. “With MSP capabilities expanding and technology advisors continuing to guide customer decisions, the question isn’t just how partners will adapt; it’s whether vendors can evolve in ways that strengthen the entire ecosystem.”
Service vs. sales
Other vendors are following a similar playbook in recruiting service-oriented partners. However, not all of them are paying partners differently.
RingCentral has been running its Certified Delivery Partner program for almost a decade. It will put more funds into education and benefits for professional services partners, the cloud-based communications company’s VP Head of Channel Brandon Thomas said in an email. RingCentral did not specify if the benefits are financial in nature.
“Partners who go beyond the sale and own more of the customer relationship add value for their clients,” Thomas said. “With AI, integrations and workflow automation defining the next wave of UC and CX, only partners with certified expertise will be positioned to deliver the tailored outcomes customers expect.”
Contact center platform Ujet recently sold its professional services unit to Onix and named Onix its preferred implementation partner. Ujet is exploring additional alliances with service-enabled partners. But there are natural financial benefits for the pro services partner, according to the company’s VP of Global Channel Sales Geoff Works.
“The incentive for them is that they're able to layer in their pro services,” Works said. “I don't mind paying them the same as a TA, at least from a sales motion perspective.”
Increasing financial incentives for services poses a challenge to technology advisors and technology service distributors, who historically have relied on their supplier partners to deploy and manage technology.
“There's a tsunami coming. If you're a typical agent and you don't have professional services, the market's not going to pay you a premium, and that market's in trouble,” CTPros Co-CEO Joe Rittenhouse said.
Reshaping pro services
Zoom and many of its peers are making a tactical retreat out of professional services, spurred in part by corporate and macroeconomic drivers.
The company and other unified communications-as-a-service providers rode a wave of cloud migration over the last decade to displace on-premise vendors such as Avaya and Mitel.
Hardware vendors traditionally delivered services through partners. Phone dealers like CTPros sold support agreements to Mitel customers and helped deploy and manage the phone systems. But support agreements fell out of favor in the rush to cloud-based UCaaS.
“During the pandemic, the destination was to just get you to the cloud, and then we'd get to the cloud and be like, ‘OK, we're out. Peace out. If you need us, you can work with the vendors,’” Rittenhouse said. “But then that support really got shitty and got shittier and shittier and shittier and shittier.”
The product set has also changed.
Zoom, RingCentral, 8x8 and other UC providers have expanded into cloud contact center and CX in search of higher margins and bundling opportunities. The technology is more complex and requires customers handholding as they deploy the software into their call centers.
Instead of staffing up for professional services, OEMs are looking to offload the handholding to partners and focus their investments on research and development.
Rittenhouse said Zoom is making an ecosystem play.
“They're an 800 pound gorilla,” he said. “They're kicking ass in the market, but they don't have any implementation, and their attitude is kind of similar to where the other SaaS models have had success. If you look at Salesforce and HubSpot, there's an ecosystem behind them.”
Matchmaking
TAs are in some respects an anti-ecosystem play. Instead of putting all their chips into one or two key vendors, they curate a lengthy line card of OEMs and service providers to matchmake with customers. They argue that offering a service for a vendor doesn’t make a difference if the vendor isn’t the right fit for the customer in the first place.
For Rise Technology Advisors, there’s nothing wrong with building a strong rapport with a vendor and getting certified. But professional services require staffing, and TAs are typically small, Rise co-founder Eric Ludwig said. That creates a low margin for error for a TA betting on a vendor.
“People built huge Microsoft practices, and the licensing piece of that business is virtually zero,” Ludwig said. “If you're not a big Fortune 500 like CDW or one of the VARs, you're left holding a bag on a Microsoft practice that otherwise is not worth anything. People invested all this money in VMware, and not just in delivery, but in infrastructure. Look what's happening there.”
