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The famous American author Mark Twain is reported to have written to the New York Journal in June 1897 after several newspapers had claimed he was gravely ill or dead, stating: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” In a strange quirk of fate, the quote that has been attributed to him is actually a misquotation of his original and slightly less witty version: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” As OpenText vice-president of business development Mike DePalma noted recently, the channel has often found itself in Twain’s position. He pointed out that analysts had forecast online marketplaces would displace the need for channel relationships, but claimed their remarks only proved they “don’t understand the channel”. DePalma argued that things were unlikely to be any different with the arrival of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and agentic technologies because technology would not overtake the importance of the relationship aspect of the IT channel. “We need that relationship,” he said. But is he ...