4. Activist Investors Will Pressure Solution Providers To Improve Their Performance

Activist investor Elliott Management's November letter to Teaneck, N.J.-based Cognizant, No. 7 on the CRN SP 500, calling for a share buyback and board of directors shakeup should put the rest of the channel on notice.

Activist investors such as Elliott and Carl Ichan (pictured) have previously taken action against IT vendors such as Citrix Systems, Xerox, Riverbed Technologies and BMC Software. The Cognizant letter marks the first high-profile case of an activist investor going after a solution provider.

Solution providers can avoid Cognizant's fate by bringing new blood onto their boards and investing aggressively in next-generation technologies.

Elliott's letter dinged Cognizant for having turned over less than half of its board seats over the last nine years and for making just eight acquisitions between 2014 and late November of this year, during which time rival Accenture dramatically expanded its cloud services footprint by carrying out 45 acquisitions.