Intensifying market competition will spur channel firms to secure and bolster greater differentiation next year, according to Tollring CEO Tony Martino.
"With the growth of virtual MSPs, where customers can buy wholesale services from almost anywhere, it is no longer good enough to have telecoms-only services in a product portfolio," he warned.
"Added to this, Microsoft Teams is now a service provider in its own right, so channel players must remain relevant to how people want to use services and Teams integration will be vital."
Martino also cited analytics as a major market defining factor in 2023.
"With everything in the cloud, analytics is becoming critical to leveraging the intelligence within an organisation and delivering actionable insights," he added.
"Service providers and telcos that have established analytics strategies will be well positioned to capitalise on the large addressable markets of customer experience, CCaaS and collaboration analytics, all segments that are benefitting from the shift to hybrid work and work from anywhere.
"The channel will need to ensure it can deliver the right level of capabilities and value across a customer’s whole organisation."
Against this backdrop, customer attitudes and expectations have also evolved and opened up business transformation opportunities for channel, observed Martino. "Many are looking for ways to transform and improve the efficiency and productivity of their organisations," he added.
"They are looking to leverage cloud-based technology to break down the silos between departments and increase their overall efficiency and improve customer experience.
"The fact that these technologies and their components are now far easier to access will drive many of the transformation initiatives in 2023."