Thought I'd take a moment to clarify the difference between these two terms. It can cause a lot of confusion when you're talking business relationships among your team or with potential suitors.
Channels - you sell through, they represent your product, and you pay them a margin off the selling price for the value they bring - access to markets, customers, complementing your product, support/service, and of course ability to sell. Channels are motivated by margin - they want to see momentum building for your product and an opportunity to ramp sales.
Partners - come in different shapes and sizes. Partners in the true sense collaborate with you to build out a joint business opportunity. The most common partnerships I've experienced come in product development, product bundling, marketing, & business development.
In my last senior role, I had both reseller channels and business partners working to bring coverage to the market. The business strategy and support to each was quite different. Be careful to think this through -- draw it out on a whiteboard and look at the different "paths to market" to reach your customers.
One final thought -- this week I had someone tell me that one of their customers was in fact going to be a "partner" - a word to the wise -- be careful of the words ..."we'll partner with you" -- it may be another way to say "we'd like the product but don't want to pay for it".
Make sure a partner is a true business partner - bringing value in to the relationship.
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