Canalys Forums EMEA: analysts say vendor FDE armies help partners for now, but expect the work to move back to the channel by 2030

Forward deployed engineers were one of the main talking points at Canalys Forums EMEA earlier this month, according to a roundup published by UK channel outlet IT Channel Oxygen. The piece frames the wave of vendor FDE investment (it cites Anthropic, OpenAI, Salesforce, SAP and AWS) as both a worry and an opportunity for resellers and service partners.

Omdia chief analyst Jay McBain argued that vendors are hiring FDEs because the channel can't supply enough AI delivery capacity yet: 82% of partners Omdia surveyed said they weren't fully ready for the 32.5% annual growth it forecasts for AI services. He also said FDE salaries reach about half a million dollars in some places, with a shortage of people as the top reason AI projects fail. But he expects the spending to stop eventually, since a low-multiple services arm drags on an AI company's valuation, and he sees the work shifting back to partners by 2030. Omdia's Rachel Brindley said more than half of partners in the room expect vendor FDEs to create opportunities for them rather than replace them.

Google Cloud channel chief David Smith used the event to launch a Professional Agentic Architect certification for partners, part of the $750m partner investment Google announced in April. He described the modern FDE as increasingly use-case specific, down to a sub-vertical inside one large customer, rather than a horizontal platform specialist.

Why it matters for FDEs: if the analysts are right, today's vendor-side FDE boom may be followed by a hiring wave at consultancies and partners (the article names Accenture, PwC, 66degrees and TENEX as places to see the role up close), and deep vertical knowledge looks set to matter as much as platform skills.