Partners without engineering depth risk becoming ‘box pushers’ in AI era, says USEReady CEO Uday Hegde

As model providers move into services and enterprise spending shifts toward execution, partners are being forced to build architecture and engineering capabilities or risk irrelevance.

AI is pushing the channel ecosystem away from licence resale and toward engineering-led, outcome-driven delivery, as enterprise value increasingly shifts from tools to execution.

Speaking to CRN India, Uday Hegde, co-founder and CEO of USEReady, said partners that continue operating purely as resellers risk being reduced to “box pushers” unless they build capabilities in architecture, engineering, and AI delivery.

He described the change as a structural reset in the way technology value is created, delivered, and monetised across enterprise environments.

For decades, the partner ecosystem was built around a predictable structure where vendors supplied software or infrastructure, while partners captured services revenue through implementation, configuration, and support.

Hegde pointed to software ecosystems such as Tally as examples of how traditional reseller-led models created sustainable partner businesses through product distribution and implementation. He argued that AI is changing those economics by bringing software, services and execution closer together.

“That model worked because the product did what it was supposed to do, and partners could install it, get customers up and running, and generate consistent revenue,” he said.

Read more at CRN Asia