The channel has spent years talking about the decline of legacy revenue. But according to Will Morey, Managing Director of Gamma Business Channel, that is not necessarily the central problem.
“Legacy revenue can be great,” he says. “It gives you an established relationship with a customer, with a proven technology and solution that is already adding value in a business.”
The greater danger, he argues, is legacy thinking.
For partners with an established customer base, the opportunity is not simply to replace old technology with new.
It is to recognise when the customer’s needs are changing and use the relationship already in place to have a broader conversation about what comes next.
That question sits behind Gammaverse 2026, Gamma’s annual partner event. Its agenda is framed around a market in transition: changing SME customer expectations, new technology opportunities, and the practical action partners can take to adapt.
But the shift is not just being driven by the growing number of products available to sell. It is being driven by a different kind of customer conversation.
Customers Are Increasingly Buying Outcomes
Businesses have long bought communications, connectivity and security as separate technology decisions. That approach is becoming less useful as AI becomes embedded across the tools employees and customers use every day.
Morey says SME and mid-market buyers are increasingly exposed to new technology in the consumer market and through the wider technology industry. As a result, they are often arriving with a clearer sense of the outcomes they want to achieve, rather than a shopping list of individual products.
“They are rapidly understanding that they want to buy outcomes,” Morey says. “They are saying, ‘I need you to help me achieve this in my business,’ not, ‘I want to buy that product, or that product, please.’”
That changes the role of the partner. Rather than responding solely to a request for a specific solution, they need to understand the business problem behind it – whether that is improving customer experience, reducing operational friction, supporting a more distributed workforce or finding efficiency gains.
For many partners, that means changes to sales motions, go-to-market activity and the way they package their expertise. It also means being able to join together technologies that might previously have been sold as standalone products.
“The integration of these products, the way in which they interact and operate, is becoming increasingly important.”
Build on the Installed Base
That does not mean partners should abandon the revenue and relationships they already have. In fact, Morey sees the installed base as one of the strongest foundations from which to evolve.
The key is recognising the right moment to speak to customers about the next stage of their technology journey. A customer may be content with an existing solution, but that does not mean there is no case for discussing greater efficiency, improved customer experience or new ways of working.
“It’s about timing,” Morey says. “When it’s right to have that conversation with a customer to say: you’re on technology A, you’re working perfectly happily, but we think there’s this next-generation technology that will deliver greater efficiency.”
That may include cost savings, productivity improvements or the ability to create a better customer experience. The important point is that partners should treat the conversation as a progression, not a replacement exercise.
An existing relationship gives partners an understanding of how a customer operates. Used well, that insight can help them identify where new technology may solve a real problem – and avoid forcing a product-led conversation before the need is there.
Practicality Matters More Than Hype
AI is one of the clearest examples of where the market opportunity is substantial, but the route to value is not always obvious.
There is no shortage of ambitious use cases, and businesses are regularly presented with new AI tools, platforms and propositions. For many SME customers, however, the starting point is more practical. They may have established systems, teams accustomed to particular ways of working, and limited capacity to overhaul everything at once.
