Gartner Identifies Six Forces That Will Impact Tech Providers Through 2025

Gartner, the Stamford, Connecticut-based technology market research firm, has outlined six major trends that will impact technology and service providers (TSPs) through 2025.

“Forces outside of a TSP’s control demand a response – adapt to thrive or struggle to survive,” said Rajesh Kandaswamy, research vice president at Gartner. “Impacts from six forces are already being felt by providers today, but over the next five years Gartner expects these forces to accelerate trends and pose problems that will demand providers create new models, products and relationships to survive and ultimately succeed.”

Those forces include disruption from geopolitics and world events amid increasing global trade tensions global markets. As providers seek to serve global customers and drive geographic expansion, both global trade tensions and the erosion of U.S.-China relations become significant influences in terms of product strategies, customer acquisition, business performance management, and corporate development. TSPs expecting to approach global markets in 2025 as they do in 2020 will be displaced by competition that incorporates these new realities into their business and operating models, according to Gartner. The firm also believes that although COVID-19 has made remote work become the standard across many organizations, loneliness, collaboration and communication obstacles will be the top workplace struggle for 50% of remote workers.

The second force identified by Gartner focuses on shifts in customer expectations driven by transformed organizations and technology buyers within them. Business-driven and line of business (LOB)-resident technology buyers will drive more purchases, hastening moves to cloud products and platforms, investing more in automation and online interactions in order to optimize business processes and compete more effectively.

Disruption from emerging technologies and trends was identified as the third force. Emerging technologies enable TSPs to enter new markets, strengthen their products and services, ward off competition, and become more efficient, but the right levels of investments in the right emerging technologies at the right time are crucial for creating and capturing the most value from them.

Changing Industry Dynamics was named as the fourth force.  Over the next five years, changing industry dynamics are expected to force technology providers to adjust their strategies, routes to market, and their willingness to simultaneously collaborate and compete with other providers.

The fifth force of change in the list involves changing industry dynamics and rapid development cycles thatbmake the dedicated pursuit of competitive intelligence an absolute must for technology providers. TSPs must be particularly mindful of challenges from new entrants to the market. In some cases, providers in adjacent markets may move into new markets as a way of growing revenue and mind share.

Finally, technological advancements, availability of capital and shorter development cycles are expected to provide opportunities for innovative vendors leveraging disruptive business models. Gartner predicts that by 2025, the fastest growing major tech providers will generate 50% of revenue from generative or platform business models leveraging cloud computing.

More information can be found in “Tech Providers 2025: Prepare to Survive and Thrive with the External Forces That Will Impact Your Business.”

Channel Impact^®
Partners will need to continually revisit purchasing models, ease of doing business, customer experience, generational demands and offerings, and similar factors in order to remain competitive.