Every technology contract you sign travels through a supply chain. Most buyers never see it. They see a quote, a contract, a renewal. They don’t see the infrastructure behind the number.
That infrastructure has three layers. The provider is the company that makes the technology. The channel is the network of resellers, MSPs, VARs, and agents who sell it on the provider’s behalf. And the buyer is you.
The channel exists because providers need distribution. Building a direct sales force that reaches every business in every industry is expensive, and it doesn’t scale. So providers outsource the selling to independent partners and pay them through the transaction. You pay the reseller. The reseller pays the provider. The provider pays the reseller back in margin, discounts, and incentives.
On the surface, this looks like a normal commercial arrangement. Look closer and you notice something. The reseller’s compensation is set by the provider, not by you. The discounts the reseller receives are structured by the provider, not by you. The incentives that determine which provider the reseller recommends are funded by the provider, not by you. You are the economic source of everything that happens in the transaction, and you have the least visibility into how any of it is priced.
That is the system. It was not designed to cheat you. It was designed to give providers wide, loyal, margin-protected distribution. The consequences to you are a byproduct of that design, not its purpose. But the consequences are real, and they compound every year you participate in the system without seeing it.
The rest of the articles in this section walk through how each piece works. Once you can see the machinery, the next category (the Conflicts of Interest) will show you why it produces the outcomes it does.