From discovery to orchestration - how AI is reshaping the channel marketplace

AI is already changing how customers discover, evaluate, and buy technology. The next shift will go further, where AI agents will increasingly participate in the buying process themselves.

We’re still in the early stages of agent-to-agent (A2A) commerce, particularly for complex B2B solutions, but the direction is becoming clearer. Buying journeys are becoming more machine-mediated, with agents increasingly able to represent customers and act within the wider channel ecosystem.

Microsoft and others are already exploring agentic commerce models in which AI moves beyond recommendation and begins taking action on behalf of buyers and sellers.

That shift changes what a marketplace is there to do.

From discovery to decisioning

Most marketplaces today focus on discovery. Customers search a catalog and choose what they want, often with a channel partner helping them make sense of the options and put the solution into practice.

AI changes that model.

A customer agent can increasingly represent what the buyer is trying to achieve. The marketplace can interpret that intent against what its ecosystem is able to deliver, while partner agents make relevant expertise and customer context available.

This means customers no longer need to navigate hundreds of possible combinations themselves. Instead, AI can work across the ecosystem to answer a more valuable question - what is this business trying to achieve, and what proposition is most likely to meet that need?

The marketplace therefore begins moving from discovery to decisioning. Its value comes from using context to shape a commercially relevant proposition around the customer’s needs.

For marketplace owners, this creates the potential for a more productive channel and greater commercial precision. Opportunities can be matched with the expertise best placed to turn them into something customers can buy.

For that to work, AI first needs to understand what each partner actually brings to the ecosystem.

Making channel value visible to AI

In an agent-led buying journey, simply being listed in a marketplace won’t be enough. Customer and marketplace agents need to understand what a partner can bring to a particular opportunity.

That extends well beyond the products they resell. Agents will need to understand a partner’s customer relationships, market expertise, service capabilities, technology experience, and ability to support customers over time.

In other words, channel value needs to become discoverable and understandable by humans, systems and AI agents.

This creates an opportunity for marketplace owners to make the expertise and customer reach within their channel much more accessible. A regional Managed Service Provider (MSP), specialist Value Added Reseller (VAR) or trusted customer partner that might previously have been difficult to surface digitally can become part of a recommended proposition because AI understands where and how it adds value.

That can strengthen the role of the channel. AI may simplify discovery, comparison, and parts of the transaction, but customers will still need expertise to understand their environment, integrate technology, manage change, and deliver ongoing outcomes.

And as AI changes how partners participate in the buying journey, it’s also creating an entirely new set of opportunities for them to take to market.

AI also creates new things for partners to sell

There’s another side to this transition.

AI is reshaping how the marketplace operates while also creating an entirely new category of products and services to sell through it.

Channel partners will increasingly bring AI to customers as part of a broader solution, helping turn new capabilities into something businesses can actually deploy and operate. This creates particular opportunities in complex enterprise and public-sector environments.

It also changes how those solutions are commercialized. AI pricing is likely to become more closely tied to how services are used or to the outcomes they deliver. At the same time, a single proposition may involve several providers, making revenue sharing more complex behind the scenes.

The customer shouldn’t have to absorb that complexity. The marketplace operating model has to manage it for them.

The operating model has to catch up

Adding an AI assistant to the front of a marketplace doesn’t make the marketplace agentic.

If a customer agent can express an intent and a marketplace agent can recommend a sophisticated multi-party solution, the underlying platform still needs to turn that recommendation into something commercially executable.

Products and services need to be brought together into a coherent offer, with the right partners engaged and the commercial model defined from the outset. From there, the marketplace has to manage fulfillment, track usage, and ensure that permissions, compensation, and revenue settlement work across the ecosystem.

As agents begin interacting with other agents, trust, governance and control also become fundamental parts of the architecture. Marketplace owners need to know which agents are authorized to act, what actions they can take, and under which commercial rules.

This points to a broader evolution of the marketplace itself - from a transactional platform into an intelligent commercial orchestration layer capable of turning AI-driven recommendations into executable, governable, and monetizable propositions. It’s also beginning to inform how marketplace platforms, including our own, are evolving.

Once marketplaces can connect decisioning with execution in this way, the channel starts to look less like a collection of separate participants and more like an intelligent, coordinated ecosystem.

From channel ecosystem to intelligent ecosystem

A2A commerce will develop gradually. Enterprise buying will continue to depend on trust, expertise, and human judgment, even as AI agents take on a greater role.

For marketplace owners, the opportunity is to make the whole ecosystem more intelligent and productive - connecting customer intent with the right expertise and making complex propositions easier to create, buy, and monetize.

Success will increasingly depend on how effectively a marketplace can turn ecosystem intelligence into commercial outcomes. For channel partners, that means ensuring their value can be understood and activated by customers, marketplace owners and, increasingly, the AI agents working alongside them.