When we unveiled the 2024 Tercera 30 last month, we shared our view of the 30 best software vendors around which to grow a technology services business or practice. The report features 10 large, publicly traded software companies with mature partner ecosystems (Market Anchors), 10 growing, publicly traded companies that are leading their categories (Market Movers), and 10 privately held partner-centric companies that have both market and mindshare (Market Challengers).
While our selections are based on a multi-faceted scoring methodology that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative inputs, we were careful not to make the Tercera 30 a ranking. We list the vendors in each of our three categories in alphabetical order for that very reason. Partly because we have no interest in being an analyst firm, and partly because firms choose partners for different reasons. What is a great partner for one firm, might not be relevant for another.
Still, we’ve always wondered how those who follow the Tercera 30 view our picks and if they have favorites.
This year, to celebrate the third year of the Tercera 30, we asked our followers to weigh in on a new People’s Choice Award. We asked them to select the vendor who they see going above and beyond to support partners. Those that are driving demand now as well as future opportunities for services engagements.
Perhaps not surprising in today’s current environment, the software vendors specializing in data and artificial intelligence emerged as some of the most popular.
The People’s Choice winners across the Anchor, Mover and Challenger categories are Snowflake, Atlassian and Databricks.
Without further ado (cue drumroll)…the People’s Choice winners across the Anchor, Mover and Challenger categories are Snowflake, Atlassian and Databricks.
Each of these vendors are highlighted in more detail below.
People’s Choice Market Anchor: Snowflake
In the Market Anchor category, Snowflake claimed the top spot with 24% of the vote. Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that allows businesses to store, analyze, and share data efficiently and securely. It is one of the smallest of the Market Anchors, but has become a dominant player in the modern data stack. Today more than 10,000 customers use the Snowflake data platform — more than 500 of those spend over $1 million per year.
Snowflake has a mature partner ecosystem, and depends on its partners to drive both customer satisfaction and data consumption through its platform. While growth has slowed in recent years, the company’s new CEO is pushing a rate of innovation that is sure to feed partners in the coming years. Especially as more organizations look to use their own proprietary data sets for GenAI initiatives, and build with programmable data and leverage industry AI applications.
Read more about Snowflake’s partner program here.
People’s Choice Market Mover: Atlassian
Atlassian received nearly one-quarter of the votes in the Mover category – a category that saw votes more distributed than the other two categories. Atlassian provides collaboration software for development teams, project managers and other business groups. These products are in increasing demand as work becomes more agile and distributed.
Atlassian may not be a household name in AI and data the way others in the Tercera 30 are, but it is using AI in innovative ways to drive enterprise productivity and relying on partners to show customers the way to an AI-enabled future. One of the most compelling attributes about Atlassian is that it goes to market almost exclusively through its 800+ channel partners. Atlassian’s dependence on partners translates into a high partner attach rate, strong marketing and enablement support, and a lucrative resell program.
Read more about Atlassian’s partner program here.
People’s Choice Market Challenger: Databricks
The privately held companies in our Market Challenger category produced our most definitive People’s Choice winner – Databricks. The company commanded a third (33%) of all the votes in this category. Databricks provides a unified environment for data engineering, data science and machine learning, which has given it an edge in the GenAI race. Because of this Databricks continues to see its prospects increase, underscored by a $43 billion valuation during its Series I last September.
The Databricks partner ecosystem has expanded dramatically over the last year, and now boasts 3,600 consulting partners. While large, the company’s partner ecosystem is still evolving and maturing. Our team will take a closer look at the intricacies of this partner ecosystem in an upcoming Tercera 30 profile on Databricks over the next several weeks.
And Second Place Goes To….
In the Anchor category, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce and ServiceNow all tied for second place with approximately 15% of the votes each, while AWS received 11% of votes.
In the Anchor category, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce and ServiceNow all tied for second place with approximately 15% of the votes each, while AWS received 11% of votes.
On the other end of the spectrum, some of the largest and most mature ecosystems didn’t see the same level of love. SAP received only one vote while Adobe and Oracle received none. This is somewhat surprising given how well SAP and Oracle seem to be doing over the last year and the high services attach associated with these platforms, but could have something to do with the legacy nature of these ecosystems.
In the Mover category, Nvidia had a strong showing with a surprising 18% of the vote. We say surprising given its partner motion with services firms seems to be more nascent than many other vendors in this category. Perhaps not for long!
Braze, a customer engagement and marketing automation platform that was new to the Tercera 30 this year, and enterprise finance platform OneStream tied for third place.
In the Mover category, Nvidia had a strong showing with a surprising 18% of the vote.
Unlike the Market Anchors, in the Market Mover category, no one was left out of the love, and each of the 10 Movers received some portion of the votes.
In the Challenger category, while Databricks pulled notably ahead of its peers in the voting, Anthropic, another first-time member of the Tercera 30, claimed 24% of the vote. The AI company was founded by former researchers from OpenAI, which happened to come in third place with 14% of the vote. It will be interesting to see how AI continues to influence the enterprise technology stack and partner choices moving forward.
In the Challenger category, Anthropic claimed 24% of the vote. The AI company was founded by former researchers from OpenAI, which happened to come in third place with 14% of the vote.
Learn more about the winners and stay up to date with the latest Tercera 30 news.
The People’s Choice votes provide yet another layer of perspective around the Tercera 30 – the software platforms we believe hold the greatest potential for services firms.
Be sure to check out our partner profiles library for more on members of the Tercera 30, including People’s Choice winners Snowflake and Atlassian and runners up ServiceNow and OneStream.
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