Editor's Note: Is the Traditional Channel Model in Trouble?

As I sat at Securing New Ground in October, I was pleased to see my friend Eric Yunag again on the annual SIA Megatrends panel, and I was excited to hear what he would say. When he leaned forward and told the audience of manufacturer and integrator executives that “The [traditional] channel model was really built to move products, not deliver outcomes,” I realized why I was excited. Eric always has a way of making waves among the enterprise integrator community.

Officially, the Security Industry Association’s Megatrend was: “The Value Chain Replaces the Channel Model.” To my ears, it sounded like Yunag said the channel model is declining to the point of irrelevance in the enterprise space. But is that too strong?

I have long advocated that terms like “security dealer” and “CCTV” should be relegated to a bygone era. It sounded to me like “the channel” should be the next one to go – and this is coming from the editor of a magazine once dubbed as “the voice of the channel.”

“We’re [now] in the process of this evolution from a linear channel model to more of a value chain-oriented construct,” Yunag said. It was a polite way of saying the traditional channel is breaking under the weight of modern complexity, and manufacturers and end-users are already taking a route around the integrators who cannot keep up. 

“The channel has served us all well for decades,” Yunag said. “But today’s security solutions require orchestrating cloud platforms, AI capabilities, API integrations, and compliance frameworks that most integrators simply weren’t built to handle.”

The result is “growing friction,” as Yunag put it, with “loss of accountability and loss of shared ownership” as projects move from manufacturer to integrator to end-user.

The Megatrends Report talks about this shift using the language of “value chain thinking” – moving from “sell” to “build with” and “competition” to “collaboration.” It sounds aspirational and positive, but the panel seemed to tell a different story – one of integrators getting squeezed out of conversations they aren’t equipped to have; of manufacturers taking on customer-facing roles they’d rather delegate; and of end-users frustrated by the finger-pointing when outcomes don’t materialize.

When an end-user described the reality during the panel Q&A, it was revelatory: They said that when bringing a new technology into their organization, they face architectural reviews and technical questions that their integrator can’t answer – so they are forced to go directly to the manufacturer, “usurping the integrator,” as the end-user put it.

Steve Van Till, president and CEO of Brivo, confirmed it. Just last week, he said, he visited two enterprise customers. “The things that hadn’t been represented to them through the channel were shocking,” he said. Why? Because he doesn’t think their salespeople “were comfortable talking about software.”

Let that sink in. A major manufacturer personally visits large enterprise accounts because the channel failed to communicate core product capabilities. This isn’t a hypothetical; it is happening right now. “What I’m seeing across technology providers is more willingness to staff up,” Van Till said, alluding to having direct conversations with end-users about software.

For enterprise integrators, all indications are that the ball is now in your court: Are you prepared to evolve from efficiently moving products to delivering solutions? The panel agreed that the industry has a collective responsibility to figure it out. “We all have to sort of step out of our comfort zone,” Yunag said.

Are you ready to?