Taxonomy
Technology vendor
Use this page to tell a software purchase from a real partnership. Both get announced the same way. The difference is whether what was bought ever reaches a customer, and this is the type where it does not.
Why it is separated out
A company that buys software and a company that distributes through partners look identical in a partnership count. They are different businesses with different economics, and separating them is the main thing this dataset does that a press release roundup does not.
The test is where the thing bought ends up. If it stays inside the company that bought it, it is a purchase. If it leaves and reaches that company's customers, it is distribution, and which distribution type depends on who the parties are.
What does not decide it
Money direction. Payment flows from the buyer to the seller in a purchase and in infrastructure distribution alike. Both are paid the same way and the payment says nothing.
A revenue share. A share of what the buyer earns looks like partnership economics and does not change what was bought. Only customers reached changes it.
Contract size. A large multi year agreement is a large purchase. Several of the biggest arrangements in this dataset by stated value are purchases.
The word partnership. Press releases call purchases partnerships routinely. The word appears in the headline of most technology vendor rows recorded here.
Boundary cases
A bank licenses models and uses them to speed up its own underwriting.
Technology vendor. The capability is consumed inside the bank and no customer meets it.
A processor builds an agent on those same models and offers it to the banks it serves.
Not this type. The capability left the processor, so it is distribution, and because the provider is not a financial company it is non financial provider distribution.
A company does both with one provider, announced together.
Two arrangements and two rows, of which only the one that reaches customers is counted. Where an announcement covers both without separating them it establishes neither, and it is declined until a source says which is which.
A bank buys accounts receivable automation for its own invoicing.
Technology vendor, even though the buyer's own customers are the ones paying those invoices. The capability serves the buyer's back office. Its customers encounter the output, not the capability.
A payments company buys fraud scoring and resells it to its merchants.
Not this type. It is resold, so it reaches an end customer, and it is infrastructure distribution where the provider is a financial company.
How it appears on this site
Purchases are listed on company pages under their own heading and counted in no statistic here. Keeping them visible shows you something useful: a company that buys a great deal and distributes very little.
The type describes the arrangement, not the company. The same provider is often a vendor to one partner and a distribution partner to another.
Part of the Schwaner and Co. partnership taxonomy. See what is recorded against it.