Unleashing the $158 Billion Generative AI Opportunity in Managed Services

“For managed services, there is a $15 billion wrap-around service opportunity that’s growing at a 59% compound growth rate over the next five years. Equating to a $158 billion opportunity.” Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys 

However, not every Partner of every Partner type within the world will get to participate at the same time though. We know over 200,000 ISVs are quickly building features and functions into their products. Consulting firms and system integrators are deeply engaged in conversations across their business about this. Companies like Snowflake and Datadog are coming together with companies like Microsoft to offer some early-stage services.  

How can Artificial Intelligence make our services better? 

Nicole Dezen, CVP of Global Partner Solutions shared insight from Microsoft who introduced generative AI 18 months ago with GitHub Copilot. The data has been incredible, Developers can code 55% faster and they feel 75% more fulfilled with their work, so generating developer love is a huge win for all of us. It really is rocket fuel for productivity, and you talked about the Partner Ecosystem opportunity. Partners need to understand the value prop and what the benefit is to their business. 

AI is infused in Microsoft's product portfolio, it’s wired throughout the Partner Program and what is helping them the most is getting them started on their AI journey, whatever their maturity may be. 

Want to hear the full insight? You can watch our State of Partnerships 24 webinar on-demand here. 

What’s the opportunity for Partners? 

Sherpa has been talking to a lot of vendors about the opportunity of AI. There is great technology coming over the hill, however there is a natural gap being created as the technology gets assimilated into businesses.  

Vendors can’t do everything and so there is a huge opportunity for Partners to build solutions, practices and skill-up around AI to access this new market.  

Jay shared that “78% of digital agencies around the world are now tech services companies. It seems like everyone from every industry, every professional services firm, is becoming a Partner and we know from McKinsey that the average customer has seven Partners they trust”. 

Want to learn more? You can download a copy of the insights here.  

How can we action this? 

We need to analyze and identify Partners that have a strong focus on AI. Once we are aligned, we can then enable those focus Partners with campaigns that support growth. If we don’t have Partners that fit our focus, we need to proactively recruit. 

Sherpa has built EdisonAI to help you identify these Partners, want to see first-hand how it can help your business? Book a demo here.