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Bridging partners in pursuit of agentic AI — Part 2: How leaders can position themselves for the future

From ecosystem foundations to future advantage

By
Sunnie Weber
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In Part 1: Why partnerships matter for enterprise intelligence, we explored how enterprises are moving from experimentation to scalable impact with agentic AI and how ecosystems make that possible. But naturally, the next question is: Where do we go from here?

For leaders, partners, and enterprises, the answer lies in setting a clear vision: focusing on specialties, aligning deeply to accelerate current deals, and anticipating the trends that will shape the next decade of AI adoption.

Specialties: Depth creates differentiation

In the next wave of AI, partners can’t afford to stay broad. To deliver relevant, scalable solutions, every partner must define their specialty — the solution space where they can go deeper than anyone else and become the trusted expert.

Elastic is the Search AI Company, powering experiences from consumer apps like Uber and Wikipedia to enterprise platforms like ecommerce and financial services. But the value comes from how partners apply it:

  • In healthcare, retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can unlock new medical insights and research breakthroughs.

  • In finance, Elastic’s foundation enables solutions that meet strict requirements for auditability and compliance.

  • In the public sector, trust, transparency, and scale define success.

Once you’ve established leadership in your specialty, you can expand into the next most aligned domain. Whichever your focus, choosing the partners that can support and enable your specialty is paramount. What you need is a partner who understands your differentiated value and offers specialized messaging to support your industry focus.

A lesson from a hospital

A few years ago, I had an experience that underscored the value of perspective by specialization.I was fortunate enough to attend a healthcare system integration training facilitated by TD Synnex and held at HonorHealth hospitals. Over the course of four days, we were privileged to hear from the COO, CTO, CMO, chief of security, head nurse from the trauma center, and more. 

It opened my eyes to the many specialized needs in a hospital environment — from the floors that keep patients physically safe to the operating resources every nurse must learn and use correctly; these tools help maximize value and patient experiences while maintaining HIPAA compliance. Becoming an industry expert in healthcare takes more than knowing one lane; true expertise requires understanding every point of impact — in other words, the domino effect.

Deal acceleration: The co-sell equation

Partnerships are strengthened by the common bonds of driving success. The methodology for that success is a dually aligned sales strategy that leads to deal acceleration.

True acceleration requires more than leads; it requires shared focus across three layers:

  1. Technical alignment: Define your joint value statement and why you’re stronger together.

  2. Sales goals alignment: Agree on priority industries and co-marketing investment.

  3. Account mapping: Target the same profiles, align services, and plan growth.

Once alignment is set, growth comes from co-investment:

  • Co-market with shared messaging and campaigns.

  • Co-enable through training, readiness, and solution packaging.

  • Co-sell with joint pipeline reviews and coordinated account strategies.

Executed consistently, this creates a growth flywheel: weekly account reviews → expanded opportunities → stronger outcomes → reinvestment. Being mutually intentional with your vision is the key to measurable growth and accelerated, scalable success.

How do you take the recursive learning effect of AI and turn it into an opportunity for shaping the next trend? Beginning with the basics, several trends pushing ecosystem evolution include:

  • Verticalization of AI: Industry-focused solutions will overtake one-size-fits-all tools. Expertise in context, compliance, and workflows will define winners.

  • Ecosystems as differentiators: Enterprises won’t just buy platforms; they’ll buy into ecosystems that prove faster time-to-value.

  • From co-sell to co-build: Partnerships will move beyond resale to co-created solutions, where integration and domain expertise are packaged as repeatable IP.

  • Outcome-first mindset: Customers will measure success by business results, not adoption metrics. Savings, new revenue, and competitive differentiation will be the scorecard.

A defining question is: How do you lead instead of being left behind? Find your lighthouse customer and opportunity within your industry of expertise and then align the development of meaningful solutions that have the potential for scale by taking 80% of that solution and making sure you can personalize the last 20% to keep in touch with the differentiated needs of your future customers. Focus on outside-in, customer-first investment with like-minded, technology-leading partners to stay at the leading edge.

Positioning for long-term advantage

Leaders who are ready to harness agentic AI for the long term can start now:

  • Define your specialty and go deep where you can create unmatched value.

  • Align the co-sell equation before chasing deal acceleration.

  • Invest in partnerships that multiply value, not just integrate technology.

  • Keep outcomes at the center because customers are already moving past experimentation toward measurable impact.

The future of agentic AI won’t belong to those who chase trends. It will belong to those who set a clear vision, align deeply, and execute with discipline.

If you’re seeking to elevate customer experiences with GenAI-powered applications, Elasticsearch provides the open and comprehensive set of capabilities developers need to build enterprise-grade, production-ready solutions faster.

Explore our extensive integrations, Elastic AI Ecosystem, and partner directory to see how we integrate and innovate together.

The release and timing of any features or functionality described in this post remain at Elastic's sole discretion. Any features or functionality not currently available may not be delivered on time or at all.

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