Cisco accepted some lower-margin hyperscaler business — and still delivered its highest operating margin in 30 years. The alliance economics help explain why. It is the P&L argument many alliance teams lose internally. “We had missed the first wave of this with the cloud.” - Chuck Robbins, Cisco CEO, two weeks ago. Six years and $9.3B in hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders later, here’s how Cisco rebuilt its cloud alliances.

AI traffic to Shopify tripled YoY. AI-driven orders tripled too. And orders from new buyers through AI channels ran at ~2x the rate of other channels. This data is a preview of what's coming to cloud marketplaces, as agentic AI search and buying becoming a norm.

Commvault's CFO just gave alliance leaders a rare P&L proof point. Hyperscaler agreements were among the drivers behind SaaS margins hitting 70.6%. Commvault, a cyber-resilience company, grew SaaS ARR 38% to $424M in Q1 FY27. That margin sits inside a broader cloud-alliance model: Microsoft is becoming a deeper product and distribution partner, and AWS helped deliver a multi-cloud win.

Kyndryl’s hyperscaler revenue grew 48% to $2B in the last 12 months. The alliance-linked stream is growing >3X the rate of Kyndryl Consult. That gap shows where the growth momentum is.

ServiceNow says its hyperscaler partnerships are ramping up faster than planned — and it now shows up in the margins. It crossed $1B in AWS Marketplace transactions and listed its AI agents on the Microsoft marketplace — same quarter.

Rubrik’s cloud ARR grew an impressive 43% last quarter to $1.39B. 68% of it flows through 3 distributors with channel amplifying Cloud and direct GTM. Two GTM engines running at once. Here is how they fit together.

OpenAI reportedly spent $5.73B on sales and marketing last year - 44% of revenue. Why OpenAI is spending Salesforce-like money to sell AI and still invest $150M in partners?

Palo Alto Networks posted a record quarter last week: $3B revenue (+31% YoY), RPO $18.4B (+36%). It’s striking how closely they now work with AI labs that many expected would disrupt them just months ago.

39% of LucidLink’s revenue now runs through channel partners. That’s a number you would expect from an infrastructure or security vendor, not a media collaboration company. For LucidLink, that is exactly the point.