With Dreamforce 2026 starting next week, Salesforce has an opportunity to show why it’s still relevant in an era dominated by agentic AI. The key to that could be an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mindset.

The company has spent most of 2026 fighting a war of words over the so-called death of SaaS thanks to the launch of powerful new agents.

The beginning of 2026 saw a mass sell-off of stock in software companies following the launch of Claude Cowork. The service offered new agents with sector-specific plugins designed to automate tasks across a range of areas, from legal and sales to marketing and data analytics.

With investors spooked, Salesforce was caught up in the sell-off, but CEO Marc Benioff shrugged off claims of a pending ‘SaaSpocalypse’ in typical fashion.

Convincing Dreamforce attendees that it’s still fighting fit could be a challenge nonetheless.

Claudeforce in the spotlight at Dreamforce 2026

The key to this, in my opinion, lies in Claudeforce, launched in partnership with Anthropic earlier this month. Closer collaborative ties with the company touted as a software killer makes perfect sense for the CRM giant.

This is a partnership that’s multi-faceted and mutually beneficial. It’s not just about integrating Claude within Salesforce’s portfolio of products but also Salesforce within Claude, with new plugins available for customers.

With this, it’s obvious that Salesforce is pinning its colors to the mast and betting that closer ties with Anthropic will insulate it from future market shocks.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is on the guestlist at Dreamforce, so I guarantee Benioff will be keen to show off the company’s fashionable new partner and provide customers with a roadmap on how this relationship will expand.

The happy family image won’t quite cut it though, and customers need real-world examples to get a gauge of how this will benefit them. Claudeforce is in beta with selected customers, so expect to see a steady stream of use-cases and case studies on how this is developing.

All roads lead to Slack

Slack has come on leaps and bounds since Salesforce acquired it in 2021. The one-time workplace collaboration platform now forms a core component of Salesforce’s agentic AI approach.

Serving as an ‘agentic OS’, Slack is a central point of contact for agents and customer business data within the broader Salesforce ecosystem. I expect this messaging will be drilled home further with Claudeforce on the scene.

Salesforce claims Slack will be the “intelligent backbone” of Claudeforce, although exactly what that means in practice is still up for debate. I think it’s safe to assume the platform will still retain its role as an agentic OS, but expect to see Salesforce emphasize its position as the critical intersection between core products and Claude.

Opening things up

Claudeforce might be the start of the show, but I want to see more detail on Headless 360. This is a new architecture for the CRM platform that essentially opens it up without the need for a traditional browser interface, but hasn’t received much attention since its April launch.

It’s an interesting proposition from Salesforce, enabling enterprises to link data, business logic, and workflows with third-party agents via APIs, model context protocol (MCP) tools, and command-line interfaces (CLIs).

This approach tracks with what we’ve seen from Salesforce in recent years, with the company focusing heavily on an open ecosystem approach when it comes to AI model choice.

I do wonder, however, if the noise surrounding Anthropic will drown things out on the Headless 360 front. Users aren’t limited to Claude, but you can bet they’ll be hearing about it more than other options such as OpenAI.

I will be reporting live from Dreamforce 2026 throughout the event, follow my coverage here and subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest from San Francisco.

Google Cloud and Accenture have unveiled a new joint business unit aimed at helping Gemini Enterprise customers scale AI capabilities.

The Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group will bring together Accenture’s Gemini Enterprise-certified consultants, forward deployed engineers (FDEs), and Google Cloud engineering staff to support enterprises.

According to the duo, the aim of the new unit is basically to help enterprises get more bang for their buck with agentic AI. In a blog post, Google Cloud said the scheme will help clients “realize measurable business value from their agentic AI and data investments”.

“The Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group will help clients achieve these outcomes faster, bringing together the talent, advanced AI and data capabilities, and industry expertise needed to reinvent with confidence and create value at scale,” said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO at Accenture.

The new business group will prioritize four key areas, according to Google Cloud, including:

• Increasing enterprise adoption of Gemini Enterprise
• Building “repeatable industry-specific solutions that reduce time to value”
• Driving user adoption and use of Gemini Enterprise tools
• Bridging gaps between AI experimentation and enterprise-wide transformation

The last of these is crucial for Google Cloud and is an area of intense focus in recent months. As ITPro reported in July, the hyperscaler and Accenture teamed up to drive AI capabilities for mid-market businesses, a demographic that has traditionally struggled with adoption rates.

AI adoption has been a difficult challenge for enterprises across the board, however, particularly in terms of measuring return on investment (ROI). Research from Accenture in April revealed only one-in-ten UK organisations had successfully deployed or scaled AI in core operations.

That same study noted that many enterprises are dealing with mismatched efficiency gains when it comes to AI. While individual workers are reporting productivity improvements, these aren’t translating into broader business value.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the launch of the business group “significantly expands the expertise and resources” available to customers to “deliver real business value”.

“Building on the success we’ve seen with world’s leading brands, we’re combining Google Cloud’s full-stack AI capabilities with Accenture's deep industry expertise to deliver transformation at scale,” he said.

FDEs in the spotlight

All told, Google Cloud said the new business group will establish a workforce boasting roughly 1,000 forward deployed engineers.

These engineers essentially act as consultants embedded within enterprises, providing teams with technical guidance along with practical support to co-design and build AI systems.

FDEs are now at the forefront of big tech’s attempts to drive AI adoption, as ITPro reported in July. Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft both pledged billions in funding to recruit and deploy FDEs.

Both companies said the use of FDEs aims to streamline adoption processes for enterprise customers and, crucially, “compress timelines” when it comes to deployment of the technology.

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Digital sovereignty is now a key focus for the C-suite, but new research shows organizations aren't confident they can fully achieve these goals.

In a study from Capgemini, 44% of organizations ranked sovereignty as a board-level priority, with efforts on this front accelerating across the US, Europe, and APAC. Nearly four-in-five are “executing or building a strategy”, for example, with a further fifth expected to put one in place within the next year.

Capgemini said this investment focus reflects mounting concerns over whether organizations can maintain critical business operations in an “increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment”.

Four-in-five respondents specifically highlighted geopolitical volatility and disruption as the “leading driver” of digital sovereignty initiatives.

Concerns over strained transatlantic relations have prompted calls to reduce reliance on US tech providers in recent months, and it’s a viewpoint that’s gaining significant traction across Europe.

The jury’s out on digital sovereignty

Despite this sharpened focus, more than half (59%) of organizations think that achieving full digital sovereignty is an unrealistic goal.

There are a number of contributing factors here, the study found. In particular, a concerning number of respondents revealed they are chronically overdependent on foreign technology solutions and suppliers.

Others, meanwhile, highlighted lengthy switching timelines as a key concern. More than one-third (36%) of respondents said that transitioning from a critical provider would take more than 12 months. One-in-ten said they have no “viable alternative provider” at all.

Limited supply chain visibility is another key hurdle when it comes to bolstering digital sovereignty. Indeed, 86% said they have “significant exposure to foreign or externally controlled supply chains”.

The result is that IT leaders now find themselves wedged between a rock and a hard place when it comes to sovereignty. From a practical and financial perspective, efforts to achieve full sovereignty just aren’t viable in many cases.

“Today’s organizations operate in highly interconnected technology ecosystems where complete independence is rarely achievable,” said Karine Brunet, chief operations and delivery officer at Capgemini.

Michael Murphy, Deputy CTO at Arqit, agreed that full digital sovereignty could be an unrealistic goal for many organizations – and pursuing it could actually be counterproductive.

Capgemini’s study noted that achieving full sovereignty could actually harm competitiveness, for example, although more than half believe they can achieve these goals without making sacrifices on that front.

“Most organizations depend on a global technology ecosystem, and attempting to own or control every part of the stack would mean giving up access to capabilities that are too costly, complex, or valuable to replicate.”

“A more useful approach is to treat sovereignty as a spectrum,” Murphy added. “Different workloads carry different risks, and the safeguards should reflect that.”

A more pragmatic approach

These concerns are driving a rethink of how organizations can improve sovereignty capabilities, according to Capgemini, with some targeting what could be described as a sovereignty-lite approach.

Rather than targeting complete technological independence, organizations are now taking a pragmatic approach that centers around “retaining control over key digital capabilities” and reducing dependence on a single provider.

Capgemini advised IT leaders to take into account a range of variables when pursuing this approach, including data localization considerations, access controls, and potential “technology constraints”.

Elsewhere, the consultancy recommended a tactic of “selective control” of critical technologies alongside strategic partnerships rather than fully sovereign ownership.

Matt Harris, SVP & UKIMEA managing director at HPE, echoed these recommendations, noting that organizations can still bolster resilience without embracing a fully sovereign stance.

“A more practical goal is to achieve meaningful control over the most strategically important layers, including sensitive data, AI deployment environments, security, networks, and governance,” he said.

“IT leaders should therefore begin by identifying their most sensitive data and critical workloads, assessing where external dependencies create operational or regulatory risk, and ensuring that portability, auditability and viable exit options are built into technology decisions,” Harris added.

A bridge too far?

Capgemini’s study isn’t the first to question the viability of complete digital sovereignty. As ITPro reported in July, analysis from Forrester warned true tech sovereignty could be a bridge too far for European enterprises.

The consultancy’s Global Sovereignty Forecast predicted that the shift toward tech sovereignty will move “slowly over the next five years”, warning that attempts to divest from US tech providers will fall flat.

Speaking to ITPro at the time, Dario Maisto, principal analyst at Forrester, said attempts to move away from popular vendors would require a monumental effort – and one many European enterprises simply cannot afford.

Commenting on the Capgemini report, Proton COO Raphael Auphan told ITPro that European organizations should consider the longer term costs of not pursuing sovereignty goals.

Auphan pointed to recent research from Proton that found nearly three-quarters (74%) of European firms fear a US-imposed ‘kill switch’ could cut them off from vital tools and services.

“Sovereignty doesn't threaten competitiveness, dependency does,” Auphan told ITPro. “Every Euro spent on US tech subsidises foreign competitors and hands leverage to another jurisdiction.”

“Europe won't outspend the Americans or outwork the Chinese, but it can lead on its values. In an era where AI companies vacuum up personal data and trust in US tech leadership is eroding, "built in Europe" is now a genuine differentiator.”

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In recent years, there have been tremendous technology developments and industry shifts. The rapid adoption of generative AI has been a significant disruptor, forcing both vendors and the channel to re-evaluate their offerings and take a more agile stance to expand market reach and boost operational efficiency.

New business opportunities are being driven by trends such as AI storage integration, cloud sovereignty, and the demand for proactive cybersecurity measures. However, given this rapid pace of change, with some partners still focused on legacy resale and non-proactive, break-fix models, are resellers really in a prime position for success?

The biggest trap channel partners could fall into is failing to recognise new opportunities and respond with agility. With AI-driven workflows, regulations, and shifting buyer expectations, those who stick to old approaches risk being sidelined and seeing their margins shrink.

Key industry and technology shifts

Major trends reshaping the channel landscape include the integration of AI with storage infrastructures, the rise of sovereign clouds for data compliance, and the development of advanced data protection platforms.

Another area we see skyrocketing is the edge-cloud-hybrid ecosystem. Organizations are seeking to operate across edge, on-premises, and public/hybrid cloud with seamless data mobility and unified management. With multi-cloud and hybrid architectures becoming the norm, especially for backup and disaster recovery (DR), scalability and cost control remain paramount issues for organizations.

Equally apparent is the need for consistent security and compliance measures across these environments, along with ensuring flexibility to prevent reliance on a single vendor. Data sovereignty, which requires that data be governed by the laws and regulations of the country where it is stored or processed, marks a shift away from generic cloud-first strategies towards more localized management, hybrid-cloud arrangements, and thorough sovereignty evaluations.

With organizations struggling to balance increasing data volumes against rising infrastructure costs, there is also growth in smart multi-tiered storage. This includes storage analytics and tools for real-time monitoring and automated management to enable visibility across different tiers. With the capability to assign "hot" or frequently accessed data to high-speed, premium storage and "cold" or archival data to more affordable options, organizations can avoid the costly mistake of over-provisioning with high-performance drives.

Meanwhile, legacy hardware sales and on-prem-only solutions will continue their sharp decline, falling short for partners who rely on them. The shift to cloud and as-a-service models, combined with economic pressures, has made this a low-margin area.

Channel opportunities for business growth

As global data volumes near 200 zettabytes and AI-native technologies become increasingly sophisticated, customers are demanding comprehensive services that extend beyond traditional project-based hardware or standard cybersecurity offerings.

Customers are seeking partners who can provide AI-ready, sovereign, and resilient data protection that works seamlessly across on-prem, edge, and cloud. With this in mind, key growth areas for the channel are:

AI-driven services and automation

Cyber-resilient data storage solutions and integrated, AI-powered security platforms are driving significant growth opportunities for channel partners. These companies can tap into new opportunities by providing services focused on AI integration that extend beyond just implementing AI tools. These offerings may include automating IT operations, AI monitoring, and intelligence in data protection.

The recent geopolitical shift created by the U.S. government’s unprecedented export-control directive - which restricts global access to the most powerful AI models developed by Anthropic (the prominent US-based AI research and safety company) - has created immediate channel opportunities. If Value-added Resellers (VARs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) pivot quickly, they can offer services such as sovereign AI consulting (providing data residency, technological autonomy, and jurisdictional control), regional cloud hosting with sovereign cloud space, as well as advisory services on cross-border regulatory compliance, such as offering risk mitigation audits.

Hybrid-managed offerings

Customers are increasingly adopting multi-tiered architectures that integrate edge computing, on-premises systems, and public cloud solutions. This shift calls for seamless data mobility, unified management, and real-time analytics to ensure efficiency. For channel partners, this trend opens new opportunities for designing, managing, and securing these distributed, complex environments.

The ubiquity of cloud has highlighted a challenge: the importance of operational visibility. Managing data across multiple environments without a unified dashboard has introduced unnecessary complexity and increased the risk of security blind spots. The lack of visibility across edge-cloud-hybrid ecosystems presents an opportunity for partners to act as trusted advisors while also delivering unified management and monitoring across fragmented infrastructures.

Cybersecurity and compliance-as-a-service

Cybersecurity continues to be the foremost growth driver for the channel. Providers are already broadening their offerings to counter the rising frequency of cyberattacks, introducing services such as managed detection and response (MDR), ransomware protection strategies, and compliance solutions. With the emergence of AI-driven threats, there is a growing demand for integrated cyber recovery solutions, presenting lucrative opportunities for partners capable of delivering robust managed security services.

Many opportunities will come from customers who are ready to adopt AI-powered infrastructures and hybrid governance models (the framework that enables managing operations across both physical offices and remote endpoints) in response to data sovereignty pressures. As organizations incorporate AI into their operations, they must address increased security vulnerabilities while ensuring their workloads and data adhere to relevant jurisdictional and privacy laws. Therefore, partners who can offer high-value consulting, data auditing, automation, and managed services, as well as architecting hybrid or sovereign cloud environments, will see the most growth.

Potential challenges

Obstacles to capitalizing on opportunities in the AI era include a lack of sufficient expertise (the talent gap) and longer sales cycles. The channel could struggle to find people who can manage hybrid ecosystems, navigate compliance, and handle the complexity of AI-driven environments. This is an area where vendors can really add value, especially in helping partners bridge that gap with hands-on training, workshops, and webinars.

Another hurdle is that most customers, especially outside the enterprise segment, will face tighter budgets and more cautious spending, which could slow adoption and delay new projects.

There could also be setbacks resulting from vendor complexity, too many tools, programs, and licensing models, which could further slow down the momentum if not simplified early in the year.

The path to success

To embrace these new opportunities, the channel must anticipate changes among customers, vendors, and markets. Buying technology is no longer what customers are looking for; they want solutions that deliver resilience, compliance, and sustainability. The channel must move from being generalists to specialists, guiding and supporting customers and accelerating the shift to service-led models in areas like AI and cybersecurity (such as delivering Backup-as-a-Service and cyber recovery).

Meanwhile, vendors must support this shift by making things easier: offering flexible licensing, providing specialised training and integration tools, and driving closer collaboration with partners. Vendors will also be expected to simplify hybrid and sovereign architectures, provide automation tools, and jointly develop go-to-market initiatives that help partners scale their operations.

The current industry transformation presents a huge opportunity for channel businesses to shift from just reselling to delivering high-value, integrated solutions. As the rise of AI-native and autonomous storage creates a demand for consulting and managed services, clients will most definitely need expert guidance to implement and manage these complex systems.

eSentire has announced a new strategic partnership with CMS Distribution, designed to expand the availability of its managed detection and response (MDR) services across the UK and Ireland.

Through the agreement, CMS now offers eSentire’s cyber security capabilities to its ecosystem of resellers, MSPs, MSSPs, and other value-added partners.

With immediate effect, partners gain access to the vendor’s multi-signal MDR platform, alongside 24/7 security center expertise, threat hunting, incident handling, and response services.

In an announcement, eSentire said the move aims to help partners expand their cyber security portfolios and provide customers with expert-led detection and response capabilities – without adding complexity to their existing security operations.

“CMS Distribution has a strong reputation for helping technology vendors scale through the channel,” said Phil Skelton, senior director at eSentire, in an announcement. “Together, we can make advanced MDR more accessible to partners and their customers, helping organisations strengthen resilience, reduce response times and stay ahead of disruption.”

Founded in 2001, eSentire specializes in Controlled Autonomy SecOps (CASO) and provides managed security services to more than 2,000 organizations across 35 industries worldwide. The vendor’s offering combines AI technology, security analysts, threat hunting, and human expertise to identify and respond to cyber threats.

CMS Distribution represents more than 200 technology vendors and provides partners with services across areas including cyber security, software, hardware, networking, cloud services, and information security.

eSentire said CMS brings a strong channel footprint, deep vendor relationships, as well as a broad technology portfolio to the partnership.

The pair added that the move will help address growing demand for fast and reliable protection from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, enabling partners to deliver enterprise-grade MDR while maintaining flexibility and support for existing security investments.

“Cybersecurity has become a board-level priority for organisations of every size, and partners need proven solutions that are simple to position, easy to adopt and trusted to deliver outcomes,” commented Huw Jones, chief business officer at CMS Distribution.

“Our partnership with eSentire expands the capabilities available to our channel community and helps partners address one of the most urgent customer challenges in the market.”

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The UK channel is entering one of the most consequential periods of change it has faced in over a decade. The Broadcom/VMware acquisition has acted as a catalyst, accelerating changes that were already underway and encouraging partners to address a new reality that the old channel playbook no longer works.

The reshaping of VMware’s traditional partner ecosystem, along with the move to subscription‑only licensing and the subsequent contraction of mid‑tier partner opportunities, has created a vacuum that the market needs to fill.

However, this disruption can also provide clarity. For those willing to adapt and embrace change, this year represents a structural reset and a chance to modernize virtualization portfolios. Partners can strengthen hybrid cloud capabilities and build new alliances that reflect the needs of a very different customer landscape.

From resale to services: A new channel economy

The channel is moving decisively away from a resale‑led model and toward a services‑first economy. Customers are looking for partners who act as strategic advisors, who can guide them through migration and manage complex multi‑cloud environments. They are seeking partners that actively optimize their infrastructure over the long term, rather than just selling licenses.

By changing VMware, Broadcom accelerated the end of an era where broad vendor lists and transactional relationships were enough to compete. UK partners must now decide whether they will evolve into cloud and infrastructure specialists or risk being left behind in a market that has already moved on.

This transformation is happening alongside a broader consolidation across the partner ecosystem. After years of juggling sprawling vendor portfolios and chasing every certification and incentive, partners are now being pushed to focus. With fewer viable vendors in play, partners can finally invest in the relationships that deliver commercial value.

This is raising expectations across the board. As the generalist reseller falls behind, a channel is emerging defined by sharper positioning and more deliberate ecosystem choices as vendors seek partners with technical depth and consistent execution.

Ecosystem alignment as a competitive advantage

This means success will hinge on alignment. The partners who prosper will be those who embed themselves within an ecosystem and operate as true extensions of their chosen vendors. This means co‑marketing, co-selling, and delivering with a level of reliability that customers can measure.

As channel programs mature, customers will increasingly gravitate toward suppliers who demonstrate operational strength and a clear plan for supporting multi‑cloud, AI‑driven, and cost‑optimized environments. In a landscape shaped by consolidation and rising expectations, a well‑structured, high‑performing ecosystem becomes a competitive advantage.

Across the industry, the vendors making the greatest impact are those helping partners strengthen cyber resilience and accelerate cloud and network modernization. Those who get ahead will also deliver measurable value for customers while unlocking new growth opportunities across the channel.

The successful vendors will be those who have a commitment to empowering partners with the technology, expertise, and support needed to deliver exceptional outcomes, a model that is increasingly becoming the benchmark for what effective ecosystem leadership looks like.

The rise of service‑centric models

At the same time, the channel is undergoing a structural reset that goes beyond VMware. Customers are rethinking their entire approach to infrastructure, resilience, and cloud economics. They want predictability and outcomes over a complicated patchwork of point solutions.

This is driving the rise of service‑centric ecosystems, where the value lies not in the number of vendors a partner represents, but in the ability to integrate, manage, and optimize across environments without locking customers into a single technology path.

Vendor‑agnostic service providers are gaining traction because they offer freedom, which is something that is increasingly rare in the industry. The ability to deliver resilience as a baseline and give customers room to evolve their stack without disruption is becoming a defining differentiator.

Another trend that is reshaping the channel is resilience‑first architecture. With regulatory pressure increasing and cloud costs rising, organisations are evaluating how they protect and operate their environments. Partners who can deliver integrated continuity, security, and recovery capabilities across clouds, data centers, and edge environments are becoming indispensable.

Customers want a consistent operational model regardless of where workloads live, and they expect partners to provide it.

Operational excellence and AI‑enabled scale

Customers are tired of fragmented support models and inconsistent delivery: they want a single operational fabric, predictable SLAs, and clear accountability. This is where ecosystem alignment becomes essential. Partners who can plug into a broader, well‑orchestrated service framework will outperform those trying to stitch together disparate tools and vendors.

The channel is evolving from “best of breed” to “best of integration,” with the partners who understand this leading the next phase of growth.

The rise of AI‑enabled operations is also widening the gap between partners who can scale intelligently and those who cannot. Customers now expect proactive monitoring, automated remediation, and data‑driven optimization as standard. The channel’s role is moving from selling technology to delivering continuous service improvement, and that requires platforms capable of ingesting, correlating, and acting on signals across the entire estate.

Vendor‑agnostic service providers are uniquely positioned here because they can apply AI across heterogeneous environments rather than being constrained by a single vendor’s ecosystem.

Partners who align themselves with ecosystems that simplify complexity, enhance resilience, and remain vendor‑neutral will be the ones who advance. The winners will be those who help customers navigate choice; who deliver outcomes rather than components; and who build ecosystems designed for the long term.

Glean has cut the ribbon on a new global partner program as the enterprise AI startup looks to expand its channel ecosystem.

Unveiled at the company’s inaugural Glean:GO Partner Summit, the Glean Partner Network brings together its existing partner pathways, expertise, and resources under a single global program.

The initiative gives partners access to training, commercial support, and go-to-market resources, providing greater flexibility in how they work with Glean and helping them grow their business around its enterprise AI platform.

The offering brings together company knowledge, people, permissions, and activity, giving AI applications and agents access to context from across an organization.

Glean said it is building on strong momentum for its channel ecosystem, which has grown to span North America, EMEA, APJ, and Latin America, while its partners have now completed more than 2,000 accreditations across sales, technical, and delivery disciplines.

“Partners are central to making enterprise AI work,” said Zubin Irani, vice president of partnerships at Glean.

“The Glean Partner Network gives partners more ways to build real businesses with Glean and gives customers a clearer path to the expertise they need. As partners build their capabilities and deliver results, we will invest alongside them.”

The new Glean Partner Network

Glean said its new partner program has been built to recognize partners for the capabilities they build, the value they create, and the results that they generate.

The Glean Partner Network includes referral, commercial, services and solutions, and technology pathways, with partners able to participate in more than one depending on their capabilities.

Partners can develop agents and custom connectors, co-sell and transact Glean technology, lead implementation and adoption, operate AI services, or develop technology extensions and customer solutions.

The program also includes self-service training and tiered ‘Boost Camps’, alongside specialist competencies across areas such as agent building, custom connectors, and embedded experiences.

Additionally, partners have access to resources such as deal registration, market development funds (MDF), co-marketing opportunities, as well as dedicated sales, technical, marketing and executive support.

Meeting partner and customer needs

Glean said its new initiative will generate opportunities for partners to expand across sales, services, technology, and solutions as their capabilities develop, with the potential to earn greater investment from the vendor as they grow and deliver customer impact.

For customers, the program aims to make it easier to find partners with the expertise required for different AI projects – including deploying Glean, building an integration or an agent, operating AI services, and creating industry-specific solutions.

Scott Blahauvietz, vice president of AI and cloud sales at AHEAD, a Glean partner, said enterprises require a practical way to apply AI across data, permissions, and workflows, rather than more AI models.

“Glean provides the permission-aware foundation to move from experimentation to adoption,” he commented. “Through the Glean Partner Network, AHEAD can pair that foundation with the implementation, governance, and enablement needed to build AI programs that are secure, scalable, and embedded in how people work.”

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New research from McKinsey suggests enterprises are finally reporting benefits from AI, but cost-related concerns and “constrained” productivity gains still weigh heavy on the minds of IT leaders.

Figures from the consultancy’s State of AI in 2026 report show more than one-third (37%) of respondents recorded “some” earnings impact with the technology, although that marks the same share from last year’s report.

Meanwhile, “AI high performers” said AI is now having a “significant” impact on operational efficiency and earnings.

The report suggests that enterprise AI maturity is rising, with an increasing number of enterprises now successfully scaling the technology. Improvements in this regard are being reported across the board, McKinsey noted, with respondents scaling chatbots, coding agents, and more sophisticated AI agents.

The use of agentic AI has increased significantly, for example, with 40% of large enterprises scaling agents, up from 27% last year. Meanwhile, around two-in-ten are actively scaling software coding agents.

“Among AI tools, chatbots are the most widely scaled, with 47 percent of respondents saying their organizations are scaling them across the enterprise,” the report states.

“About two-in-ten respondents report reaching the scaling phase across their organization with AI agents and a similar share report the same with software coding agents.”

Mismatched AI productivity

Workforce productivity gains rank among the most notable improvements for enterprises, according to McKinsey.

Around 80% of respondents said that AI has improved individual productivity, while 50% report that AI helps them “make better decisions”. Crucially, however, McKinsey warned that “the experience is not universally positive”.

Mid-level managers and individual workers are more likely than executives to report AI-related problems. McKinsey said this shows that AI impact “remains concentrated” among certain groups within the enterprise.

This is by no means the first study to highlight this trend. Research from Accenture in April this year found many enterprises are dealing with mismatched AI productivity gains.

Similar to McKinsey, the report found that workers are reporting benefits with the technology such as higher-quality output levels and faster project delivery times.

Yet the report pointed to a “widening gap” between the basic use of the technology and its wider enterprise impact. A key factor, Accenture said, lies in the fact that organizations' process changes are “lagging behind” integration rates.

Similarly, many AI strategies typically fail to modernize underlying IT infrastructure or workflows to accommodate the technology.

“A striking finding this year is the gap between individual gains and enterprise impact. At the individual level, AI is clearly a boon: 80 percent of survey respondents say it has improved their productivity and half say it helps them make better decisions,” said Dan Tinkoff, senior partner at McKinsey.

“Yet, only 37 percent of organizations report any positive EBIT contribution, essentially flat compared with last year.”

AI costs are taking the shine off enterprise gains

Cost-related concerns continue to weigh heavy on IT leaders’ minds, according to McKinsey. Around 20% of respondents said that AI-related operating costs have “constrained their AI use”.

“Those cost constraints are being reported across the full range of AI tools. For each of three tools – AI chatbots, AI agents, and software coding agents – about one-in-ten respondents say their organizations’ use has been constrained by costs,” the report states.

McKinsey also highlighted token-related cost concerns. This has become a recurring pain point for some businesses over the last year as firms ramp up adoption of the technology.

The ‘tokenmaxxing’ trend, for example, has prompted a surge in usage and landed some firms with hefty bills.

As ITPro previously reported, Accenture asked workers to stop using AI for basic tasks amidst skyrocketing costs while Uber revealed it blew through its entire annual AI budget in just four months.

Rising operational costs haven’t dampened investment rates, however. More than one-quarter (28%) of respondents said their organisation is now spending more than 10% of their total IT budget on AI tools.

“Looking ahead, 60 percent of respondents expect their organizations to increase their AI investments over the next year,” McKinsey noted.

“Respondents in pharmaceuticals and medical products, insurance, and banking and other financial institutions are the most likely to expect increasing investment.”

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Enterprises are falling into a trap of using AI when it’s not necessarily needed, and it’s costing them dearly, according to Roger Lee, AVP of solutions consulting at Appian.

Speaking to ITPro, Lee said the hype surrounding AI - particularly agents - is pushing some IT leaders to apply the technology in an ‘AI for the sake of AI’ type approach.

“I think a lot of organizations and a lot of senior executives and staff within organizations have been told to ‘do AI’,” he said.

“So rather than just pushing AI for the sake of AI, look at what the decisions are we’re trying to improve, what data we are using, and where does that human oversight sit.”

Lee’s comments come after Accenture told staff to stop using AI for unnecessary tasks amid surging costs. As adoption of the technology accelerates, he told ITPro that enterprises need to have a serious conversation on how they integrate AI tools.

Agents vs business rules

Pursuing the ‘AI for the sake of AI’ approach means that many businesses aren’t just incurring huge costs, but adding needless complexity to processes that were already streamlined prior to the generative AI race.

“The key thing is really trying to identify the right place for AI versus just trying to use AI to solve everything,” he said.

“In many cases, if it’s straightforward automation, if there’s a business rule where you’ve got a definitive yes or no answer, then sometimes business rules and workflows that result in a definitive answer are the right way to go.”

Admittedly, Lee said there are instances where agents are necessary, especially with regard to research or complex problem solving tasks. Acknowledging that this is a case of different strokes is crucial, however.

“I take an example from insurance with an automation claim, where you wanted to do some research and do some work, then an AI agent might be the right solution for that,” he said.

“But it's really understanding the right place to use a rule versus an AI agent, and the impact that that can give.”

This is particularly relevant in regulated industries, Lee said, where margins of error can have huge ramifications.

Agents are highly effective in terms of dynamic reasoning, he noted, but in cases where businesses need a “really definitive zero error response” then IT leaders need to know where and when to automate.

“Regulated industries is another area where humans in the loop are really important,” he said.

“It's what makes processes accountable. So to ensure that not everything is automated, where you have things that are exceptions or outliers, that you absolutely have humans in the loop to respond to those.”

Shoehorning AI into processes

Enterprises have found themselves shoehorning AI into areas and processes that aren’t applicable, research from Gartner shows. Moreover, they’re expecting near-immediate returns with the technology.

Ironically, a key factor behind this lies in the desire to deliver returns on investment with AI. Yet by doing so they’re less likely to unlock any benefits.

Speaking at the time, Melanie Freeze, director of research at Gartner, said that many AI initiatives are “overly ambitious or poorly scoped” and don’t align with “real operational needs”.

Ultimately, Lee told ITPro that as with any adoption process, AI should still be viewed as a “business pull rather than technology push” approach.

“I think that the whole value that you can get from AI within an organization is all around what the business needs, rather than what the technology can push to the organisation,” he said.

“First and foremost, what problems are we trying to solve, rather than where can we use AI, and that changes the perspective on what we're trying to do,” Lee added.

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Exclaimer has announced the launch of MSP Connect, a new partner program designed to help managed service providers (MSPs) provision, manage, and scale email signature services across customer environments.

Available immediately, the initiative brings consumption-based billing, centralized self-service provisioning, and dedicated channel support together with integrations for ConnectWise, Kaseya, and Microsoft Marketplace.

Exclaimer said the program has been designed to address the operational challenges MSPs face when managing email signatures across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace environments, where updates can otherwise require manual, user-by-user administration.

With MSP Connect, billing adjusts according to actual customer usage, allowing MSPs’ costs to increase or decrease as customers add or remove users.

MSPs will also have access to a redesigned partner portal that allows them to provision and manage signatures across multiple customer environments from a single location, while native integrations with PSA platforms aim to reduce administrative work.

In an announcement, Exclaimer chief operating officer Jim Turner said MSP Connect was developed in response to feedback from partners around the ease of use and billing model of the program’s predecessor.

"MSPs have been clear about what they need from us: a platform that is easy to provision at scale, a commercial model that flexes with their customers and commercial support that helps them grow," he explained.

“MSP Connect is the reset. It removes unnecessary steps, gives partners more control through self-service, and aligns billing with what their customers use."

Strengthening MSP revenue generation

Exclaimer’s MSP Connect launch marks the next phase of its channel-first growth strategy as the email signature management specialist looks to strengthen its partner network.

Partners already account for 30% of the firm’s annual recurring revenue, while its global channel ecosystem includes around 5,000 partners.

The company said MSP Connect will now enable partners to add email signature management to existing Microsoft 365 and managed services relationships without introducing a complex deployment or support burden.

MSPs can generate license margin, bundle Exclaimer’s technology into wider managed services packages, as well as create additional revenue through services such as signature design, deployment, and ongoing management.

"An MSP is a business within a business. It needs to manage hundreds of customer environments without adding operational drag," commented Louise Taylor, vice president of channel at Exclaimer. "If getting one customer live requires a long sales process or a services project, the economics stop working."

Reducing friction for MSPs

Exclaimer’s new program includes not-for-resale (NFR) licensing, dedicated channel account management, as well as co-brandable partner enablement materials.

The vendor said its platform can be deployed by MSPs in under an hour depending on the customer environment, using directory data to populate approved signature attributes across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace without requiring any heavy integration project or mandatory professional services.

Additionally, MSPs can build additional services around the platform, including signature template design and template catalogue creation, while their customers’ marketing teams can utilize approved campaign banners, engagement analytics, and rule-based signature content.

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For years, much of the relationship was anchored by the renewal itself. Customers turned to partners for help making sense of license positions and vendor terms, and the transaction carried enough margin to support the account work around it.

With Gartner expecting worldwide IT spending to reach $6.31 trillion this year, driven by software and AI infrastructure, the market is still growing around partners. The difficulty is that growth no longer flows through the channel in the same way.

A license can still open the account. Its value now depends on whether the partner can use that moment to extend their services to support the broader software estate.

Buying is moving around the reseller

A large part of the traditional reseller model grew around Microsoft licensing and the incentives attached to it. Backend fees historically gave partners dependable income around the customer relationship, often through repeatable work across accounts.

As those economics have narrowed, customers have gained more ways to buy technology. A reseller may spend months shaping the right solution, then see the purchase move through a marketplace because the customer wants to draw down an existing cloud commitment. The advice remains valuable, even when the transaction lands somewhere else.

Months of account work can suddenly become detached from the order. Understanding how the customer intends to buy has become just as important as understanding what they intend to buy.

A renewal now sits on top of a software estate that may have moved faster than the agreement in front of the customer. SaaS spreads through different parts of the business before central teams have a full grip on ownership. Cloud costs shift the economics of tools that once looked predictable. On top of this, AI capabilities are arriving inside the platforms customers use every day.

By the time the renewal comes around, the agreement today may not show enough about whether spend still accurately reflects how the business operates.

The license should open a wide view of the estate

To protect the relationship, partners need to turn the renewal into a clearer view of the estate behind it.

The license position shows what the customer is entitled to use. Usage data shows whether the business still depends on it. The gap between those two things often reveals important opportunities for optimization, cost control, and better decision-making.

Partners with Software Asset Management (SAM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM) expertise already have much of that capability. They understand how quickly entitlement can drift away from real use, especially when software is purchased centrally and then adopted unevenly across the organization. Turning that knowledge into a managed service gives customers a clearer view before the renewal deadline forces a decision.

SaaS management builds naturally from there. Applications can spread through teams long before central IT has a clean view of ownership or spend. A partner that can show which tools are active and which contracts no longer reflect use is helping the customer make a better renewal decision.

AI adds the same pressure in a newer form. Capabilities are being added into platforms customers already run, so the cost can build inside familiar contracts before the business has worked out where the value sits. Connecting that spend back to usage gives partners a stronger role than simply helping the customer process the next agreement.

Our 2026 State of the Cloud report findings suggest the services market is already moving this way, with nearly half of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) planning to offer AI consulting and SaaS management services. Enterprise use of MSPs has also risen year on year, which points to larger organizations looking for specialist help as their estates become harder to manage.

Margin must come from the services around the license

Partners that stay closest to the customer will be the ones that make the estate clearer between renewals. The license gives them a route into that work, then the service relationship has to carry it forward.

Account teams need enough visibility into usage and consumption to challenge assumptions before procurement turns the renewal into a price negotiation. Sales teams also need to be measured on the service opportunities created around the license, not only on the order itself.

Resale remains a key part of the channel, and the license still opens the door. More of the margin now comes from helping customers understand the full technology estate behind it. Understanding what they own, what they use, where costs are increasing, and where technology investments are delivering value.

In that environment, the most successful partners will be defined by the insight they provide and the outcomes they help customers achieve.

Organizations are mostly seeing a return on their AI investment, new research shows, but many are struggling to translate business context into AI systems and workflows.

Eight-in-ten IT leaders globally expect AI spending to increase over the next two years, according to Alteryx's 2026 IT Leader Research: The State of AI Ownership, Agents, and ROI report.

While 77% agree business context - the rules, definitions, and operational knowledge that shape how their organizations operate - is critical to producing accurate and relevant AI outputs, 53% say they struggle to incorporate this within AI systems and workflows.

The result here is that AI models are forced to make generic assumptions that could lead to mistakes, false insights, or incorrect metrics – and that has a big impact on business efficiency.

More than a third of respondents told researchers that the ability to measure AI ROI will be one of the capabilities that most distinguishes technology leaders from their peers.

Notably, firms are increasingly measuring AI success through productivity improvements (53%), cost reduction (45%), and revenue growth or broader business impact (39%).

“Our research highlights a growing gap between AI ambition and enterprise-scale execution,” said Andy MacMillan, CEO of Alteryx.

"Organizations have proven they're willing to invest in AI, and many are already seeing returns. But scaling AI requires more than better models. It requires making the business knowledge people use every day available to the systems making decisions.”

Lacking context

While AI can analyze information and generate responses, it can't consistently apply company-specific rules, policies, thresholds, and decision criteria unless that knowledge is built into the workflows it uses to make decisions.

Part of the problem is limited data access, Alteryx found, with only 18% of organizations reporting that business users have fully self-service access to cloud data.

Indeed, most are still relying on IT or data teams for routine data access and analytics, with 38% describing a mixed model and 15% saying business users remain largely dependent on technical teams.

Two-thirds of technology leaders say AI and agent-based systems are most productive when managed within the line of business, with 71% saying that AI initiatives are most successful when IT and business teams collaborate closely.

However, strategy (37%) and delivery (38%) remain concentrated within IT, while business teams are most often responsible for defining requirements (30%).

"The organizations creating lasting value from AI will be the ones that operationalize their business logic so it becomes visible, governed, repeatable, and ready for AI," said MacMillan.

What’s driving AI ROI?

The AI investments that appear to be delivering the best ROI are workflow automation and autonomous agents, cited by 27%, followed by copilots or assistants, at 16%, and AI-powered customer experience at 14%.

Virtually all IT leaders (93%) told Alteryx they were confident agentic AI could deliver measurable ROI for their enterprise within the next two years.

The first processes to be automated by agentic AI, they reckon, will be IT operations and incident management, cited by 47%, followed by customer support and service workflows at 39% and data analysis and reporting at 36%.

"Within our research, a small group of organizations self-identified as leading the way in AI innovation, confirming a clear path to achieving meaningful business value with AI technologies," the researchers concluded.

"These organizations point to a clear set of priorities behind their progress: rigorous measurement of AI's business impact, treating AI rollout as a strategic and operational priority, and building the governance and literacy needed to scale with confidence."

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UK small businesses have an increasingly optimistic outlook on the potential of AI tools, new research suggests, but bold leadership will be required to ensure successful deployment.

A study published by Dell Technologies shows two-thirds (66%) of UK SMBs now view AI as a “route to growth”. More than half (56%), meanwhile, told the firm that AI could give their business a competitive advantage moving forward.

This optimism is driving investment, the research found, with funding primarily aimed at unlocking productivity gains, improving customer experience, and improving decision making.

Brian Horsburgh, UK small business country manager at Dell Technologies, told ITPro the study shows AI is having a marked positive impact for SMBs, particularly in terms of allowing workers to sharpen their focus on specific tasks.

“One of the realities of working in a small business is that everyone wears multiple hats. Many people find themselves spending hours on admin, reporting, marketing or customer queries, even though those aren't the things that inspired them to start or join the business,” he told ITPro.

“AI can help take some of that work off their plate, giving them more time to focus on customers, creativity, and growth.”

Pulling ahead of the pack

According to Dell Technologies, a small group of “AI front runners” has emerged among UK small businesses.

Representing around 7% of the firms surveyed, these report the strongest gains from using AI, allowing them to free up six or more hours each week with the technology.

Horsburgh told ITPro that a recurring theme with these front runners is having a clear cut strategy and not rushing headlong into adoption for the sake of it.

Indeed, these companies are more likely to have dedicated leaders championing AI than their slower-moving competitors.

More than half (52%) have “clearly defined specific AI use cases”, the study found, often starting with small examples before moving to more complex use cases as they mature.

“Having the right strategy is critical. Our research shows that those who are gaining the most from AI today say that AI use is coming from leadership as a priority,” Horsburgh said.

“Adopting AI means identifying ways it can help you do more of what helps your business grow and in fact, the number one piece of advice that came through from businesses of all sizes is to start small and iterate.”

Horsburgh said the findings highlight the need for dynamic, open-minded leadership when it comes to AI adoption. Initial use cases are key, he noted, but employee training and cultivating an “AI-friendly culture” are equally important.

“Those three pieces are critical to building a culture that drives benefits,” he told ITPro. “The outcomes that SMBs are seeing are positive for staff: more time to think strategically, improving decision making, improving customer experience, and having the right environment can help teams see those benefits sooner.”

The SMB agility dynamic

Dell Technologies’ study emphasized that small businesses have an inherent advantage over larger organizations when it comes to adoption.

First and foremost, they’re typically more agile and flexible with how they approach the technology – and the report noted that is now translating into higher rates of success.

This advantage isn’t lost on large businesses, either, Dell Technologies found. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of larger firms said greater flexibility is a key advantage for SMBs. Similarly, they have “more focused business needs” and are less risk averse.

SMBs also recognize these advantages, according to Dell Technologies, and are less likely than their larger counterparts to cite key barriers, such as lengthy approval processes, employee resistance to change, or fear of failure.

“Smaller businesses can have an advantage because they're often more flexible and can move faster than larger businesses, so starting with one or two key opportunities can potentially have an outsized impact.” Horsburgh told ITPro.

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QBS Software has expanded its European security portfolio through a new distribution partnership with Futurex, a provider of enterprise cryptographic solutions.

The agreement will see QBS act as an official Futurex distributor across Europe, making its technology available to the distributor’s network of resellers and managed service providers (MSPs).

The deal means QBS partners will be able to support customers looking to modernize their cryptographic infrastructure, move security workloads to the cloud, and address evolving regulatory requirements.

Futurex’s portfolio covers a range of enterprise use cases, including hardware security modules (HSMs), centralized key management, public key infrastructure (PKI), certificate lifecycle management, code signing, data protection, and payment security.

The solutions can be deployed across on-premise, private and public cloud, as well as hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

In an announcement, Jordan Travers, group head of security sales at QBS Software, said Futurex’s portfolio offers a “comprehensive approach” to enterprise cryptography.

“Our partners can now support a wider range of customer requirements, from cloud HSM and key management to PKI and payment security,” he explained. “This partnership gives the channel a strong foundation for building trusted, scalable cryptographic services across Europe.”

Expanding partner opportunities in Europe

Part of the QBS Technology Group, QBS Software operates out of 20 offices across Europe and connects more than 12,500 SaaS and software vendors with resellers globally.

QBS partners will now have access to Futurex platforms including CryptoHub, which brings together cryptographic services and key management across distributed environments, as well as the firm’s cloud-based cryptographic infrastructure, VirtuCrypt.

The platforms are designed to help organizations reduce operational complexity, maintain control of cryptographic keys, and apply consistent security policies across applications and infrastructure. They also offer flexible deployment models, centralized administration, and support scalable service delivery.

For resellers and MSPs, the companies said the partnership will generate new opportunities to differentiate their security offerings without adding fragmented tools or complex operational processes.

Simon Marrion, Futurex’s director for channels, Europe, said QBS’ established network of security-focused partners will help the vendor expand its reach across the continent.

“QBS Software combines deep regional expertise with an established network of security-focused partners,” he commented. “Together, we can help European organizations modernize cryptographic infrastructure while maintaining the control, resilience, and compliance their environments require.”

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Globant has announced the launch of Glob.AI, a new AI marketplace designed to transform how enterprises access, purchase, and deploy AI services.

The platform brings a self-service experience to Globant’s AI Pods model, allowing organizations to identify a business challenge, select an AI Pod suited to the task, and access production-ready services through an output or consumption-based pricing model.

Released in mid-2025, Globant’s AI Pods are service units run by a set of AI agents and supervised by humans. According to the company, more than 40% of its top customers are already using AI Pods, generating a pipeline worth around £261 million.

Globant said Glob.AI uses defined and repeatable processes, while allowing customers to choose which AI models they use and where those models run.

Additionally, the company confirmed that customer data will not be used to train external AI models, while token consumption will be managed through a proprietary Token Vault designed to provide greater visibility and traceability over AI usage.

In an announcement, Globant CEO and co-founder Martín Migoya described the new platform as a “one-stop shop” for its AI Pods, with each one specialized by task and industry.

“Traditional AI adoption drives token consumption far beyond what efficient output requires, and the real cost is the wasted tokens plus the unstructured, manual supervision of AI,” Migoya said.

“AI Pods introduce a smarter model, running the right AI through parallel agents, loops, workflows, and deterministic processes, representing the true state of the art of what AI can deliver today.”

Globant also highlighted a number of early results from its AI Pods, including a 20% increase in throughput generation at global football governing body FIFA while improving or maintaining quality rates.

The technology also enabled AI deployment across key functions at LALIGA within three months, as well as a reduction of up to 40% in contract timelines at Argentine energy company YPF.

Elsewhere, pharmaceutical company PharmaMar has implemented the technology to accelerate oncology research insights by 15x, while a leading commercial bank completed a COBOL migration in two months compared with a projected 14 months using a traditional approach.

Globant said its Glob.AI platform aims to move technology delivery away from fixed-term projects and lengthy procurement processes towards a more continuous model, with customers able to access and monitor work in real-time.

The marketplace will also feature AI Pods developed with technology partners including Anthropic, AWS, OpenAI, Google Cloud, SAP, Salesforce, Vercel, Adobe, and Microsoft Azure.

"AI is not just making the same projects faster, it is making thousands of projects viable that never were before," commented Guibert Englebienne, co-founder of Globant. "Until today, enterprises could not buy technology services this way: instantly, transparently, paying only for results.

“That is the shift Glob.AI delivers, and the strong demand for AI Pods shows enterprises are ready for it."

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Rapid7 has announced a new distribution partnership with Exclusive Networks that will see the cybersecurity vendor expand its channel presence in the UK.

The agreement will see Exclusive Networks act as Rapid7’s strategic distribution partner across the UK, providing partner enablement and go-to-market support across Rapid7’s cyber security portfolio.

The partnership will see the companies work with strategic partners and managed security service providers (MSSPs) to expand access to Rapid7’s cyber security portfolio, as well as create new opportunities for channel-led growth.

In an announcement, Rapid7’s senior sales director for Northern Europe Ross Baker said Exclusive Networks’ regional expertise and cyber security focus made it well-suited to support the company’s UK expansion plans.

“This partnership is about creating long-term value for partners and customers alike,” he commented. “The UK market is a highly advanced, partner driven region and increasingly focused on outcome-based cybersecurity.

“Exclusive Networks’ deep regional expertise, cybersecurity specialisation, and commitment to partner enablement make them an ideal strategic distributor for Rapid7 as we continue investing in growth across the region.”

Rapid7 targets channel expansion

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Rapid7 specializes in cybersecurity software and managed services designed to help organizations tackle security threats, with its Rapid7 Command platform bringing together security data, AI, threat intelligence, exposure, and detection capabilities into a single offering.

The vendor said its distribution deal with Exclusive Networks will focus on increasing channel capacity, strengthening technical enablement, and accelerating go-to-market execution across its portfolio.

Exclusive Networks brings an established footprint in Northern Europe to the partnership, which includes more than 550 reseller relationships, as well as its cyber security-focused go-to-market expertise.

Additionally, the pair said they will work to help partners develop deeper cyber security capabilities and deliver services across the entire customer lifecycle.

Commenting on the agreement, Neil Brosnan, vendor alliances director at Exclusive Networks UK, said the next phase of cyber security growth will come from helping customers simplify their operations – rather than simply selling more point products.

“Customers don’t need more tools; they need platforms that help them see more, respond faster and reduce risk with confidence,” he explained. “That’s why Rapid7 is such a great addition to our portfolio.

“Together, we’re giving partners the technology and expertise they need to build more strategic security practices and deliver better outcomes for customers.”

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Otter.ai has appointed Mike Barnes as its first head of partnerships and alliances, as the AI software specialist looks to build out its global partner ecosystem and accelerate its enterprise growth.

Barnes is tasked with building and scaling the vendor’s channel ecosystem across the US, UK, and Europe, with an initial focus on recruiting technology partners, resellers, MSPs, systems integrators, and distributors.

He joins the business from Gainsight, where he most recently led partnerships, and brings more than two decades of experience across channel and partnership roles in enterprise software and marketing technology.

In an announcement, Otter.ai CEO and co-founder Sam Liang described Barnes’ appointment as an “important step” in the expansion of the company’s enterprise growth strategy.

“Mike has spent his career building successful partner ecosystems and understands what it takes to create value for both partners and customers,” he commented. “His experience will be instrumental as we expand our enterprise reach through the channel.”

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Otter.ai develops conversational AI designed to capture and structure knowledge from workplace conversations.

The firm’s platform automatically transcribes meetings and calls, generating insights and action items that can be shared across teams and integrated into existing workflows.

With the platform now used by more than 35 million professionals globally, the company is looking to expand its offering beyond meeting transcription towards becoming a tool for capturing institutional knowledge from across the wider enterprise.

Building a channel ecosystem

Barnes’ appointment marks the beginning of Otter’s plans to build a structured partner program from scratch, with the first phase to focus on partner recruitment, foundational go-to-market activity, and early lighthouse partnerships.

According to the vendor, the second phase will expand partner enablement, training, support, co-selling, and co-marketing resources, with the company also planning to develop regional growth opportunities across its priority markets.

Otter said it is looking to work with partners capable of helping enterprises deploy conversational AI across areas including sales, customer success, operations, media, education, financial services, and construction.

Commenting on his new role, Barnes said partnerships will play a key role in helping enterprises connect Otter’s AI capabilities with the systems and workflows they already use.

“As more enterprises adopt AI across their business, those tools are only as valuable as the context they can access,” he explained. “Partnerships will be critical to bringing Otter’s conversational knowledge into the systems, workflows, and teams where work happens. I’m excited to help build the ecosystem that makes that possible.”

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The doom-sayers appear to be wrong about AI leading to job losses, with government figures showing that UK businesses are using the technology to automate roles and support staff, not replace them.

New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that firms are far more likely to use AI to improve operations than they are to reduce staffing levels.

Researchers found that, when asked how AI was being used internally, the most frequent answer was 'improving business processes', particularly among organizations with more than 50 employees.

AI adoption among UK businesses with 10 or more employees has almost tripled since late 2023, rising from around 12% to 35%. Larger organizations are leading the way, with 49% of those with 250 or more employees saying they use at least one AI system, compared with 28% of businesses with nine employees or fewer.

Notably, fewer than 10% of firms have reduced employee headcount as a result of AI, according to ONS figures.

But they're not taking on extra staff either, which is a problem. Just 1% of the smallest businesses and 1.2% of the largest businesses report increasing headcount as a direct result of AI. Around half of businesses report no change at all.

UK firms ramp up AI skills training

Businesses mostly said they were integrating AI skills into their workforce through training or reskilling existing staff.

Over 60% are doing so to reduce barriers to AI expertise within their workforce, and around 40% of medium- to large-sized businesses report integrating AI skills through training.

According to Fasthosts, which has analysed the data, fears that workers across multiple industries will be replaced may be unfounded.

"Economists are pushing to distinguish between task automation, where AI automates specific activities, and job automation, where an entire role disappears," the researchers said.

"Current evidence suggests that the former is occurring much faster than the latter, for example with tools such as AI receptionists which can step in by picking up routine enquiries when staff are unavailable. AI is primarily being used to automate repetitive tasks within existing jobs, rather than eliminate roles altogether."

Long-term gains

The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that technological change could create 170 million jobs while displacing 92 million by the end of the decade, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs.

As ITPro recently reported, UK firms specifically view AI as a long-term growth driver when it comes to jobs.

Analysis conducted by Box found 65% of business leaders expect their overall headcount to increase in the next three years, with just 14% expecting numbers to decrease.

Of those using agents, only 8% said the technology was eliminating existing roles. If anything, it was creating demand for new AI-focused expertise.

Nearly half are hiring ‘AI agent operators’, for example, with 32% adding ‘workflow automation specialists’.

Other key areas such as security and compliance, governance, and ethics all recorded significant AI-focused job growth.

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It might not have the draw of the recent FIFA World Cup, but esports has a global, and growing, following.

Research suggests the global esports market is worth some US$5bn, according to data firm Statista. This is growing steadily, with some analysts predicting that the sector will reach US$10bn by 2035.

At the same time, the number of esports players is significant: Statista predicts 925m users by 2030. In the UK, trade body UKie values the sector at £111.5m.

UKie's figures date from 2019, though, so are certain to underestimate both the value and levels of participation in esports, not least because of increased uptake of gaming during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

In the game

Esports, or competitive video games, are not new. According to UKie, the first “esports” event was the Atari Space Invaders Tournament, back in 1980; 10,000 dedicated fans took part. Since then, the trade body says, esports has become the world’s fastest-growing entertainment sector.

This makes esports an important industry in its own right. Saudi Arabia usually hosts the Esports World Cup (exceptionally, this year’s tournament was moved to Paris). The Kingdom has put esports at the centre of its Vision 2030 strategy for economic diversification, with the sector expected to employ 39,000 people by the end of the decade.

Closer to home, British Esports has built a 15,000 sq ft arena and the National Esports Performance Campus in Sunderland. Clearly, there is more to esports than playing Call of Duty in a darkened basement.

And, while the direct economic impact of esports – from games development, tournaments and events and even merchandising – is significant, there is another reason it is attracting attention. Esports is gaining recognition as a way to develop digital skills. And organizations are starting to view gaming, and especially esports, as a way to attract and retain talent.

British Esport cites figures from the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport stating that 80% of advertised jobs now need digital skills. At the same time, the digital skills gap is costing the economy £63bn a year. And, despite a cooling market in some areas of the technology sector, employers still struggle to attract digital talent.

Military first

One of the earliest sectors to recognize this is defence. Esports in the UK armed forces has developed largely from the ground up. But the activity now has official backing, with esports facilities on RAF stations and Army barracks and even an esports suite on HMS Prince of Wales.

In 2024, the MOD recognized esports as an official, military sport. Last year, the MOD’s Cyber and Specialist Operations Command worked with the British Esports Federation to deliver a defence and industry tournament, the International Defence Esports Games (IDEG). This will be open to military personnel from Allies and partners around the world, in due course extending to veterans, cadets and players in the defence industry. The inaugural IDEG Finals will take place in Sunderland this October.

The connection between esports and workplace skills in the military is a direct one. As the MOD states, fast responses and hand-eye co-ordination, honed by competitive gaming, are essential for troops operating drones.

But, the MOD says, esports develops other key skills, such as cyber awareness, decision-making under pressure, and leadership.

This, of course, is not new.

“For centuries we’ve used ball games like rugby and football to develop teamwork, hone mental and physical fitness and build resilience," said Lieutenant General Sir Tom Copinger-Symes, at the time Deputy Commander of UK Cyber & Specialist Operations Command.

"We’ve also used games to discuss ethics - how to win, but win well. That’s increasingly relevant in a world of AI and autonomous drones on the battlefield. Esports perfectly complement these games in preparing us for 21st Century security challenges."

And it is those “soft” skills that make esports a valuable tool for business too.

Business next

Esports can, and possibly should, be part of any business’ digital skills toolkit. And using esports to develop teamwork and communications is in many ways more practical than physical sporting leagues.

“Gaming generally is a good way of getting people to learn. It taps into a human love of play and collaboration,” Adam Waters, director of AI culture and gaming at BFBS, the forces’ broadcasting and media charity, told ITPro.

“It doesn’t have to be a competitive Call of Duty league, which is what many think of when it comes to esports.” BFBS recently launched its own esports Pro League for the wider forces community, with an emphasis on casual gaming.

Waters is also seeing defence companies standing up esports teams to play alongside service personnel. “Esports itself is something more companies seem to be formally getting involved in,” he says.

“Something I’m seeing in a lot of organizations is a need for technical skills combined with emotional intelligence or ‘people skills.’ People who game in teams should look at developing these.”

One advantage of esports is the way it is built around teams, with teams competing in leagues based around individual games. This allows players to gain skills, not just from play, but from managing teams or even running tournaments. The broader emphasis on teamwork is one reason the military and cadet forces value esports.

Professional skills

Learning to develop professional and organizational skills through esports goes alongside leadership and communication skills. But the way esports fosters a sense of inclusion is also important, according to George Osborn, author of Power Play and Editor of Video Games Industry Memo.

“Outside of a handful of direct links between playing games and developing a useful professional skill, such as using a controller and becoming a drone pilot, esports develop similar soft skills to sporting activities,” he told IT Pro.

And businesses can also build esports into social activities, brand building and potentially, recruitment. Skilled workers might be more attracted to a workplace that reflects their interests, and esports can be part of that.

But Osborn cautions that enterprises need to be aware of cultural nuances around esports, and understand that building a community takes time.

Some esports, he says, are more commercial in nature; for others they are driven by the local gaming culture. Some games, such as fighting games, are even “properly countercultural”, he warns, and might not lend themselves to a corporate endeavor.

“Take baby steps to understand these things, align around communities that can work with you, and provide long-term support to a sector that is still finding its feet,” he recommends.

On the face of it, the channel model is the perfect arrangement. Partners gain access to technologies and revenue opportunities they could never build alone. Customers benefit from top-drawer advisers who can bring together the right solutions for their needs. And vendors get to extend their reach into markets and sectors that would be impossible to serve directly. Everybody wins.

So why is there so much friction in the channel, and why is it seemingly getting worse? A report by the global channel trade association – the GTIA – found that satisfaction with vendor relationships has declined year over year, falling from 39% in 2025 to just 18% in 2026. 

The reasons cited in the report touched on a number of challenges, including the rise of AI. But there are other issues as well, such as the sheer complexity and administrative burden of setting up and maintaining a properly functioning partner program. 

The hidden operational cost for partners

The result is that staff end up spending a disproportionate amount of time running the program rather than working with customers. 

Sales teams are forced to spend time on administration rather than selling. In some cases, people are employed for no other reason than simply to carry out the back-office functions of running a program. 

There are certification and recertification requirements. Time is spent completing mandatory training courses, as well as tracking and maintaining multiple vendor accreditations. 

Then there are the onboarding processes for new vendor relationships, managing multiple partner portals and logins, deal registration administration, and rebate and incentive program management. And let’s not forget the inconsequential task of monitoring program changes, updates, and new requirements. 

The operational cost of running some programs is becoming a real burden. And it’s happening because somewhere along the line, the channel has started to mistake complexity for sophistication. 

In other words, the IT channel has become so focused on complicated products, architectures, services, and business models that it assumes something is better simply because it is more complex.

Little wonder, then, that when the conversations dwell on such matters, they ‘risk turning into therapy sessions about how bad some programs are’.

Clearly, one approach to handle increased complexity is to invest in platforms, processes, and people to handle it. In fact, the channel ecosystem has become so convoluted that an entire specialist software sector has emerged to help vendors manage the process. 

The 2025 Canalys Channels Ecosystem Landscape report found that there are 261 companies – driving $7.46 billion in revenue in 2024 – simply to help companies ‘design, develop, execute and manage a broad channel partner and alliance ecosystem’.

Simplicity is becoming a competitive advantage

The other approach, though, is to make them simpler – something that really hit home during a recent bucket-list trip to Italy. 

Life there moves at a different pace, and it pushed me to reassess how I look at things – not just personally but also in terms of my work with the channel as well. I have to say that it has reshaped my own thinking in terms of making things simpler, clearer and less complicated.  

For me, that means going back to basics. And I think it can be boiled down to four core areas. 

First, vendors need to simplify the rewards and incentives on offer. As we’ve seen repeatedly, complex incentive structures, overlapping programmes, and opaque reward mechanisms tend to create unnecessary administrative effort and uncertainty. In reality, partners should be able to clearly understand how their investment translates into benefits. 

Second, sales enablement needs to focus on capability, not box-ticking compliance. Training, certifications, and specialisations should help partners solve customer problems and grow their expertise, not tie them up in unnecessary red tape.  

Third, there should be a laser-like focus on improving the overall partner experience. Portals, onboarding processes, deal registration systems, and day-to-day workflows shape how partners experience a vendor. As I mentioned earlier, small points of friction can quickly accumulate into a significant operational burden. 

Finally, vendors need to create greater commercial predictability for their partners. After all, they need to make decisions about hiring, training, and business development based on expected returns. Without clear discount structures, transparent requirements, and predictable program rules, how can partners be expected to plan and invest with confidence?  

In fact, I’m so convinced that this is the right approach that I would argue that simplicity is becoming a competitive advantage. After all, partners have finite time and resources to deal with such matters. Vendors that respect those constraints, through clear programs, predictable rewards, streamlined processes, and reduced friction, are much better placed to succeed. 

Knowledge workers are secretly yearning for the days before AI entered the mix, with three-in-ten saying they preferred work before adoption of the technology.

In a survey of office workers by digital transformation firm Adaptavist, 65% said they preferred the pre-AI era and 38% would remove generative AI tools from the world entirely if they had the chance.

Younger workers in particular are among those most frustrated by AI, with 40% of Gen Z and Millennials saying they would scrap generative AI tools, compared with 32% of Gen X and 29% of Boomers.

The findings mark a shift in feelings about AI, the researchers said. While businesses continue to invest heavily in the technology, public concern is growing over its impact on jobs, workplace surveillance, privacy, and security.

Meanwhile, AI has introduced new pressures for workers, eroded the value of skilled work, and left employees feeling less engaged and less valued than before.

"These findings point to an underlying gap we see in most AI implementations," said Neal Riley, AI innovation lead at Adaptavist.

"It is much easier for organizations to focus on adoption metrics – who is using AI, how often they are using it – than it is to measure its impact on the work itself."

Just over three-in-ten (31%) of the workers who said they'd like to get rid of AI said it was because they believed it reduces creativity. Almost as many had ethical doubts, with 29% citing concerns over misuse and 28% worrying about surveillance and privacy.

‘AI slop’ is a leading frustration

Notably, nearly half (46%) said that dealing with low-quality 'AI slop' makes their job feel less meaningful and more repetitive. More than one-third (37%), for example, admitted it has made them less engaged at work overall.

It's not as if workers are seeing the big efficiency benefits often associated with AI, the study found. More than four-in-ten (42%) now spend more time verifying and fact-checking AI output than they actually save by using it.

Almost half said that poor quality AI-generated work is actively slowing down their projects, while 55% believe it is reducing overall team efficiency.

The findings from Adaptavist align with recent research from ISC2, which found nearly two-thirds (65%) of cyber professionals are spending more time deciding whether to trust or act on AI-generated recommendations.

A similar number (63%) said they now find themselves reviewing and validating AI outputs, creating larger workloads and essentially wasting time on a daily basis.

‘AI slop’ has become a recurring buzzword over the last 18 months. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella penned a blog post in January this year calling on the industry to disregard the term.

Yet research shows this is having a direct impact on workplace efficiency and productivity. As ITPro reported in January, analysis from Zapier found employees are working an extra four and a half hours each week cleaning up mistakes.

The consequences of not acting on low quality AI-generated outputs can be grave, the study noted. Respondents reported having had work rejected due to poor AI outputs, while others highlighted customer complaints and even security incidents.

AI is adding pressure

Workers are also feeling pressured, with half believing that their performance is now being compared – fairly or not – to AI-generated output.

Around a quarter are facing intense pressure to improve performance, improve quality, and be more efficient, just to keep pace in a machine-accelerated environment.

Another quarter said they use AI simply to meet workload demands, and 23% rely on the technology to keep up with colleagues.

"By understanding the nature of the work and the different value streams across your business, you can more accurately measure outcomes and impact rather than simply counting actions," said Riley.

"When AI is introduced thoughtfully, with the right guardrails and genuine support for the people using it, it can enhance rather than erode what makes work meaningful and impactful."

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Barracuda Networks has announced a series of enhancements to its Partner Success Program in a move the cybersecurity vendor said will help MSPs and channel partners strengthen expertise and accelerate growth.

The initiative now includes new enablement, marketing, and partner engagement capabilities designed to improve operational efficiency, deepen technical knowledge, and unlock new business opportunities through the BarracudaONE cyber resilience platform.

The update includes expanded demand generation tools, enhanced marketing resources, and partner experience improvements, alongside additional training and certification options via the Barracuda Mastery Program.

In an announcement, Michelle Hodges, senior vice president of global channels and alliances at Barracuda, said the latest enhancements reflect the company’s continued commitment to partner success.

“At Barracuda, our partners are at the center of every decision we make, from product innovation to go-to-market execution," she commented. "We’re creating more opportunities for partners to engage customers, sharpen differentiation and grow their business — and making it easier than ever to do so.”

Expanded partner capabilities

As part of the update, Barracuda is introducing a new through-channel marketing automation platform that features co-branded campaigns, social and email syndication, and turnkey campaign execution to help partners generate demand.

The company also revealed that it plans to launch a Partner Locator tool designed to connect customers with certified partners and help drive high-intent sales opportunities.

On the training front, the Barracuda Mastery Program has been expanded with additional role-based learning, technical labs, and advanced sales and technical badges aimed at strengthening partner expertise and validating specialist skills.

Elsewhere, the company has introduced new role-based experiences and automation within its Partner Portal, including guided onboarding journeys designed to simplify engagement, accelerate time to value, and help businesses scale.

Commenting on the refresh, Sean Furman, president at STF Consulting, said the enhanced program will help partners strengthen their expertise while tapping into new revenue opportunities.

“Barracuda’s expanded training, certifications and partner recognition programs give us the tools to build expertise and stand out in a crowded market,” he explained.

“These investments elevate our credibility as a strategic advisor and translate directly into greater customer value, stronger retention and new opportunities to grow high margin recurring revenue.”

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Google Cloud has recorded its best quarterly growth to date, with earnings reports showing revenue surging 82% to $24.8bn.

Across the wider company, Google-owner Alphabet saw revenue climb 24% to $119.8bn, with income up 30%.

Despite such gains, Google was still on the back foot, with share prices falling 3% after revealing a big boost in capital expenditure and being forced to defend delays to its top-end AI model.

"Q2 was an amazing quarter, with Alphabet revenues growing 24% year-over-year and Google Cloud revenues accelerating to 82% growth, driven by demand for AI infrastructure and AI solutions," said CEO Sundar Pichai in a statement. "It’s great to see wide adoption of Gemini Enterprise, with nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 using it."

"Our AI investments are redefining what’s possible across every part of our business."

Continued capex concerns

After the results were announced, Google admitted in a conference call it will increase its capital expenditure this year, which is largely focused on AI infrastructure spending such as data centers.

Last quarter, that was bumped up by $5bn to an already massive $180bn to $190bn, and it has now been increased to $195bn to $205bn.

Over the second quarter alone, Google recorded capex of $45bn, with most used to boost "technical infrastructure to support our investments in AI," said Anat Ashkenazi, senior VP and CFO, according to a transcript of the conference call.

"The increase in the range is primarily due to an acceleration in the delivery of capacity to meet growing demand," said Ashkenazi, adding that spending would "increase significantly" in 2027.

Google isn’t alone in dealing with surging capex rates. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is projected to spend $200bn and Meta plans as much as $145bn.

These huge outlays have sparked concerns about the cost of AI over the last 18 months, but industry leaders insist it's all part of the process. Pichai compared this stage of AI to the early days of the shift to the cloud.

"I do think it feels like we are in very early innings of what feels like a secular shift across multiple areas in our core information businesses just the possibilities when I see what all you can do with the absolute frontier capabilities, there's still a lot of work ahead to translate all that into experiences for our consumer users," he said, in response to an analyst question.

Ashkenazi added that "while we have increased our capacity quite significantly over the past 3 years, the demand still outpaces that investment."

AI delays

Google Cloud might be flying high, but concerns over AI model-related delays are rising among investors. The firm’s flagship model was once again delayed this week.

The company unveiled Gemini 3.6 Flash and a cyber-focused model, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber this week, following the lead of competitors such as Anthropic in the space.

However, Gemini 3.5 Pro wasn’t included in the launch after initially being set for release in June. Google said it would be made available "as soon as it's ready".

"Gemini 3.5 Pro is currently in testing and our team is already building the next generation of models," Pichai said on the conference call. "We have started our most ambitious pretraining run yet for Gemini 4 and are excited by the progress we are seeing at the frontier."

That didn't convince one analyst, Douglas Anmuth from JPMorgan Chase & Company, who asked about Pichai's confidence in keeping Gemini models at the frontier — the front of the pack, the leading edge of AI development.

Pichai defended Google's AI efforts, saying the company was "very committed and very confident of being at the frontier, and, model releases aside, remains a leader on "many attributes" — though he admitted work was needed on coding and agentic coding.

"I am very excited by the progress I'm seeing internally on Gemini 4, and I'm confident that people will be pleased when we are putting it outside," he added.

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Writing recently in ChannelPro, Lutz Lambrecht, chief partner officer at SNP Group, observed that strong partnership ecosystems show greater resilience in the face of economic turbulence and market disruption. He highlighted value alignment, versatility, and adaptable technology as key factors that build partners’ and vendors’ resilience.

Lambrecht described how stronger alignment on solution positioning, definitions of customer success, and the measurement of outcomes puts partners in a stronger position to communicate value and build credibility with customers.

The power of partner and provider alignment resonated with me as the CEO of a transatlantic digital agency that aims to help UK and US organizations in the public, private, and membership sectors to navigate cloud, digital, and AI transformation.

Looking for strong leadership

Many of our customers are seeking support to implement generative AI tools within their membership organisations.

Data from the Professional Associations Research Network (PARN) report 2025 [pg33) revealed that members expect their professional body to guide how to safely implement AI, and even which LLMs to select:

• 82% told PARN that they want best practice guides and case studies on AI implementation
• 67% want training on AI
• 64% want their professional body to regulate the use of AI in their profession
• 63% want their professional body to vet and provide access to approved AI tools

There is clearly a chain of trust at work. Members are looking for AI guidance from their professional bodies. In turn, professional bodies seek trustworthy support from their digital platform providers. And, finally, digital platform providers rely upon their technology partners.

Navigating change together

When you’re responsible for the performance, stability, and security of an organization’s website or e-commerce platform, you need full confidence in the technologies that you select to build it. But it goes deeper than that. You must also have faith in the people within the vendor’s organization and its core values.

During the recent Codegarden conference in Copenhagen, Karla Santi, CEO of American digital agency, Blend Interactive, presented the findings from the platinum partner’s survey of 40 small, medium, and large digital agencies, undertaken by Promethean Research. This revealed:

• The average revenue growth over the past year was 7.5% compared to 20% in previous years
• Sales cycles are extending
• Clients are seeking more business case framing and asking ROI questions earlier in engagements
• Agency leaders are feeling the strain of navigating market disruption
• agencies that reduced services and specialized achieved above-average growth

Based on the survey data, Santi encourages fellow digital agency leaders to refine their services and protect their relationships.

In the first episode of the Loom podcast, I sat down with Mats Persson, CEO of the open source CMS platform company, Umbraco, to discuss how business leaders can remain confident in such uncertain times.

We discussed how the vendor’s values of transparency and flexibility are tightly aligned with our own, and how this helps us to build trust with customers.

An open culture opens doors

Referring back to Lambrecht’s point about value alignment, it was Umbraco’s openness that first attracted us to become a partner. We were able to make an informed decision about whether it was the right organization and technology for us to partner with because, to a large degree, we were permitted to look behind the curtain.

We could see what the company was really like, what its enterprise aspirations were, and how central partners really are to its growth strategy.

As Persson commented during the podcast discussion, “You gain more trust if you're open and willing to share your challenges. Partners can handle the truth. If you're transparent with them, it’s an opportunity to fix something, and that becomes more trustworthy.”

Gaining confidence in the cloud

Vendor trust was a really important aspect in my decision to put Umbraco Cloud forward when speaking to our clients about their projects. The company’s transparency solidified my decision to move from us hosting customers’ sites to building enterprise customers’ projects on Umbraco Cloud.

There was an established feedback loop of Umbraco listening to partners and customers. This is not merely performative. Umbraco has demonstrably acted upon feedback. That gave us enormous confidence that when we saw a pain point, we knew it would get fixed.

We didn't switch everything over all at once. We started to feel it out, to see how the support functions. We explored what the challenges were and what we needed to change to get the best out of it. We liked what we saw and started to build increasingly complex sites on Umbraco Cloud.

Quality beats quantity

As Lambrecht wrote in ChannelPro, “The strength of a partner ecosystem is not defined by the number of partners in a network, but by how effectively partners are aligned, enabled, and equipped to deliver value in changing conditions. At the core is a shared value narrative that brings together complementary strengths of vendors and partners, with both combining to create a joint proposition that is clearly differentiated.”

We talk about trying to build a culture of openness within our organization and with our stakeholders. But if we were dealing with a CMS vendor that didn't share those values, wasn't providing the necessary level of support, and wasn't adapting the product based on feedback, that would show to the end client.

Ultimately, carefully choosing who you work with is a major consideration as we all navigate these uncertain times together.

We are not unique. Indeed, many other companies are on the same journey of discovery to get to a point of established trust and create the foundations of current and future success.

When Allbirds, an eco-friendly luxury shoemaker, announced in April it had struck a $50 million (£37 million deal) to become an AI data center provider, its stock surged more than 580% in a single trading session.

Whether things aren't quite working out, or whether you've identified a brilliant opportunity, pivoting into a new space is often the best bet for surviving – and thriving.

The technology industry is rife with reinventions. Take Nintendo, which started out making handmade toys, or Amazon, which was a mere humble bookseller.

Plenty of companies have successfully made a transition from one line of business to another – sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes out of necessity, and sometimes so dramatically we've forgotten their original purpose. Here are some of our highlights.

1. BlackBerry: From phone maker to auto software developer

In February 2016, BlackBerry acquired the U.K. cybersecurity company Encription as it embarked on a dramatic pivot into cybersecurity consulting. It then broadened its horizons to the software space and now, with the QNX operating system, the firm develops critical software and services for more than 275 million cars around the world.

"It's been a large transformation over the course of the last decade as we've divested businesses and really narrowed our focus towards the B2B segments of QNX and Secure Communications," BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo told Richard Quest in an interview with CNN in January this year.

"So that narrowing of focus has allowed us to simplify, reduce our costs, divest ourselves from subscale businesses, and really put ourselves in a much better position for profitability and long-term growth."

2. Nokia: From paper mill to handsets to next-gen networks

Like BlackBerry, Nokia gained worldwide recognition for its outstanding mobile phones – manufacturing devices from 1982, starting with the Mobira Senator, and now continuing in spirit under the spun-off HMD Global brand.

The origins of the Finnish technology icon, however, stretch back to 1865, when engineer Fredrik Idestam established the company as a paper mill.

It wasn't until a significant merger more than 100 years later — where Nokia, Kaapelitehdas, and Finnish Rubber Works merged to create the Nokia Corporation — that electronics became a key line of business.

Although its reputation faded in the 2000s with the birth of the smartphone — and the eventual sale of its mobile and devices division to Microsoft in 2013 — Nokia continued to make waves under the radar, and under the ground.

It began focusing on networking in 2014 and is now undergoing a major pivot away from sluggish telecom hardware toward AI-native networks, data center networking and 6G tech.

3. Samsung: From groceries to electronics and beyond

Samsung is among the world's most widely known brands and one of the 21st century's biggest technology success stories. The South Korean institution deals in all kinds of goods from fridges to smartphones to laptops to speakers.

In fact, it's hard to find an electronic device that Samsung doesn't manufacture. But the company didn't always start this way.

The company actually started life as a small grocery trading company in 1938, with the 40-employee-strong entity dealing in dried fish, local groceries and noodles. Amazon may have pivoted into this space recently with its Fresh stores, but for Samsung, groceries have always been in its lifeblood.

Samsung didn't enter the electronics industry until the late 1960s, when it started manufacturing black-and-white TVs. It's now a trillion-dollar company that comprises 80 separate companies, spanning construction, financial services, medical services, and many other areas.

In the future, Samsung is hoping to focus on the technologies of tomorrow, including agentic AI and 6G communications.

4. Slack: From gaming to workplace collaboration

Slack is one of the most widely used collaboration platforms on the planet, with the multi-billion dollar business boasting tens of millions of daily users each day.

Well before its massive acquisition by Salesforce for a tidy sum of close to $30 billion (£22.5 billion) – and indeed before it rose to prominence – the company's origins lay in the world of gaming.

When co-founder of photo-sharing site Flickr, Stewart Butterfield, attempted to get his new venture Tiny Speck off the ground in 2009, he developed an internal communications platform to help the team as it was developing its computer game Glitch.

This fanciful 2D MMORPG launched in 2011 and was eventually shut down roughly a year later — with these efforts to make it big in the gaming world ending in tears.

From these ashes, however, Butterfield pivoted the company and instead focused his team's efforts on making their internal communications tools public. Hence, Slack Technologies — and the widely used platform we now know today — was born.

Why Slack? It stands for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge". Glitch is long dead, but you can still find a wonderful homage to Slack's origins on its website.

5. YouTube: From dating site to video hosting

The video-sharing platform YouTube has become a giant force in the technology industry, especially since its acquisition by Google, and it's become a hub for businesses across the world.

Millions of users have created businesses using the site, and many existing organizations use the hosting platform as an extension of their own businesses to push video content to billions of viewers.

But before the first video, 'Me at the zoo', was uploaded more than 20 years ago, its founders originally aimed to create a video dating site. The vision, according to co-founder Steven Chen, was to build a platform that allowed people to upload videos of themselves describing their ideal partners.

"We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application?" Chen said at SXSW 2016 in Austin, Texas, according to CNET.

"We thought dating would be the obvious choice."

Delinea has cut the ribbon on a new global partner program designed to improve partner profitability and simplify engagement with the identity security vendor.

The Delinea Partner Advantage Program introduces a range of new incentives and operational changes, including protected discounts, published deal registration rules, AI-powered training, and streamlined quote-to-cash processes.

Developed following partner feedback gathered through a global listening survey, the initiative aims to address ongoing channel concerns around margin erosion, channel conflict, and unclear rules of engagement, while providing partners with a more structured framework geared towards long-term growth.

In an announcement, Scott Goree, Delinea’s senior vice president of channel and alliances, said the company has avoided unnecessary complexity and focused on combating the practical challenges faced by partners.

“Partners don’t care about your partner program,” he commented. “They care about technology that works, protected discounts, and a vendor that’s easy to work with. We built this program around what partners told us they actually need.”

Inside the Partner Advantage Program

California-headquartered Delinea’s identity security platform governs access for human users, machines, and AI agents across on-premises and cloud environments, continuously working to discover identities, analyze risks, and apply least privilege access controls.

The firm said its new channel program has been built around three pillars – Protect, Align, and Scale – and includes codified rules of engagement, AI-driven enablement, and greater channel autonomy to help partners drive growth through the platform.

According to the vendor, partners will benefit from published deal registration policies, teaming protections, and earned incumbency discounts designed to reward them for maintaining and expanding customer relationships.

The program also includes AI-powered training and certifications alongside a new partner portal that offers guidance throughout the sales cycle.

Elsewhere, Delinea is also providing simplified tools and automation to help reduce administrative complexity across the quote-to-cash process, allowing partners to spend more time on customer engagement.

AI adoption fuels channel opportunity

The launch of the Delinea Partner Advantage Program comes as organizations continue to adapt to identity security challenges driven by the increasing presence of AI technologies.

According to the vendor’s 2026 Identity Security Report, 92% of surveyed organizations said they expect AI to amplify identity-related threats in the coming years, while 42% said that AI expansion has already increased their non-human identity risk in the past 12 months.

Delinea said its new program will help partners tap into this growth opportunity and benefit from a new revenue stream backed by its identity security platform.

Commenting on the launch, Mark Thornberry, senior vice president of partnerships at GuidePoint Security, a Delinea partner, said the vendor’s new initiative “reflects a strong commitment” to building successful, long-term channel collaboration.

“The program provides a clear framework that supports how we work together in the market, while recognizing the value partners bring through the customer relationships we cultivate and support," he said.

Enrolment for the Partner Advantage Program is now open for selling partners, with roles for MSPs, GSIs, advisory, and technology partners to follow.

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The IBC event is back again for another year. And we’re pleased to announce that our IBC Best of Show Awards program is still open for submissions.

The Amsterdam-based event, which runs from 11-14 September, is designed to recognize the most outstanding broadcast products and solutions. ITPro's Best of Show awards aim to showcase the best of the best. Entries are open now until the extended closing deadline of 23:59 CET on Friday, Sep 4. You can enter via the website here.

ITPro is joined by other key Future B2B sites - AV Technology, Installation TV Tech, TVBEurope, Radio World,, and Sound & Video Contractor - in hosting the awards program.

Nominations are reviewed by a panel of industry experts who consider the overall quality and relevance of a given product, its design and build quality, the business/operational benefits, and other key factors such as cost-effectiveness and innovation.

It's £525+VAT per entry, but it really is worth entering to ensure your innovation gets the attention it deserves.

The benefits of entering are:

•  Fully-licensed nominee badges for all entries to use in both digital and print promotions.
• Dedicated editorial coverage across participating brands. Online, newsletter and social promotional activity for all winners from participating brands. 
• Winner marketing assets to further promote your success. You will receive an official award winner's badge, fully licensed to be used with your winning product both domestically and overseas at no additional cost in addition to a winner's social assets.
• Complimentary winner trophies to display your success. Winners will receive a trophy to display their success to IBC attendees.

So don't delay; make sure you enter today! Or certainly before the closing deadline of 23:59 CET on Friday, Sep 4.

A group of current and former Meta employees is suing the company, claiming that it used AI to target those on medical or family leave for layoffs.

In May, Meta announced it was cutting around 8,000 staff, representing roughly 10% of its workforce. According to the lawsuit, the tech giant used AI systems to identify those set for redundancy.

These systems allegedly took into account keystroke monitoring data, AI token usage

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” court filings state.

“Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems — including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration — to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list.”

Complainants allege this put employees on protected medical or family leave, or those whose output was reduced by a disability, at a disadvantage by penalizing them with reduced performance scores.

"The result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalized the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves."

In one example, an employee was laid off while on approved pre-birth pregnancy leave – the day before her waters broke, and just two days before she gave birth.

In another, a manager’s own performance review noted that his demotion followed his return from medical leave; he was put on the list sixteen days into a second medical leave.

The 26 plaintiffs claim that Meta has violated state-protected leave laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

They're calling for a preliminary court ruling that would stop Meta from finalizing the layoffs while they pursue their ​claims.

“Once these separations are final, the harms are irreversible: employer-subsidized health coverage lost during pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and active medical treatment; time-bound leave rights extinguished; unvested equity forfeited; and immigration consequences triggered,” they said.

Plaintiffs are also seeking financial compensation that could include reinstatement, back pay, lost equity, benefits, and other damages.

AI in HR is a delicate balancing act

The use of AI systems in HR and recruitment has been a long-running point of contention, particularly with regard to the potential for bias or discrimination.

Workday, for example, is facing a class-action lawsuit amidst claims its AI software discriminated against job applicants. As ITPro reported in June, the company hit back at the claims, with a spokesperson insisting its AI solutions “don’t make hiring decisions”.

Ilia Kolochenko, founder of cybersecurity company ImmuniWeb and a lawyer practising in cybersecurity and data protection, noted that over-regulation of the use of AI in HR could cause long-term harm.

"With the current trend to restrict or even entirely ban AI in HR decision-making processes, most organizations will either conceal the use of AI or shift back to non-AI systems especially in those jurisdictions that have no GDPR-like protection against automated decision-making on human subjects," he said.

"Compared to AI-powered HR systems, their non-AI homologues are quite primitive, fail to consider the relevant context and often provide incorrect metrics or data,” Kolochenko added.

“For instance, a poor performance of a delivery truck driver will not be correlated with extreme summer heat or winter snowfalls, sudden family loss or simply a technical issue with the vehicle. Eventually, innocent persons are wrongly punished.”

ITPro approached Meta for comment, but did not receive a response by time of publication.

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British companies have doubled spending on AI, but they need to also invest in the basics to ensure real results.

That's according to research from ServiceNow, which ranked the UK 51/100 in terms of overall AI maturity despite companies spending 102% more than they did in the year prior.

ServiceNow pinned that on a failure to invest in the foundations needed for AI, including data management and governance processes, and updating legacy systems.

According to a service by the company, 73% of UK executives said they were finding inadequate data accuracy, access, and management a major barrier to rolling out and using AI.

Just 20% of UK businesses had implemented testing, auditing, and risk assessment for AI, for example. Under one-fifth (17%) of businesses surveyed in the UK had also replaced legacy systems with integrated platforms.

"UK organizations are investing heavily in AI, which tells us the challenge is not ambition," said Damian Stirrett, Group Vice President and General Manager for UK and Ireland at ServiceNow.

"It is connecting that commitment to the operational infrastructure that makes AI work across the enterprise."

The ServiceNow results follow similar research from Cisco earlier this year that found nearly all companies are expanding privacy and governance work in response to AI adoption.

Not ready for AI

While two-thirds of UK companies polled had used agentic AI, just 6% did so to create autonomous workflows, highlighting a lack of maturity in AI roll-outs.

That was echoed by findings showing that 15% of UK organizations have streamlined or integrated workflows using AI, which ServiceNow said showed a gap between AI investment and operational readiness

"Too many businesses are bolting AI onto fragmented systems, disconnected assistants and workflows that have not yet been reimagined," said Stirrett. "The next phase is about moving from isolated pilots to trusted, end-to-end workflows that can deliver at scale."

ServiceNow said improvements will require getting the right data, governance, and workflow foundations in place to scale AI.

You can't spend your way out of trouble

Despite the challenges, UK spending is largely on par with that across EMEA, which saw AI budgets leap by 113% over the last year. By 2027, AI spend will make up 20% of IT budgets, ServiceNow predicted.

However, the company noted that organizations that are succeeding with AI aren't necessarily spending more, pointing to 21% that are seeing strong returns.

Instead, they have the "most mature governance", including data management and risk controls, and that's helping to deliver a 164% return on investment now. The company predicts this could climb to a 199% return on investment within two years.

Governance, the company argued, doesn't slow innovation but is "operating discipline" that enables it, in particular when it comes to scaling quickly and ensuring systems are trusted and auditable.

That echoes comments earlier this year from Tenable co-CEO Stephen Vintz, who said enterprises need to consider the "responsibility gap" with regard to AI governance.

Speaking at RSAC Conference 2026, Vintz pointed to the fact that 90% of organizations had adopted AI and half have already had a related cyber incident.

"There is a fundamental mismatch between the exponential speed of AI adoption and the linear speed of traditional corporate governance, and things will only move faster and things will only become more complex," he said at the time

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European small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are bullish on generative AI, according to new research from SAS and IDC, and some are setting an example in how to nail adoption.

Analysis conducted by IDC on behalf of the data management firm shows SMBs across the region are executing AI deployments in a far more efficient manner to global counterparts.

In North America, for example, SMBs scored strongest in terms of planning and building, but many aren’t reaching full deployment.

This contrast suggests European organizations are making “stronger progress in operationalizing AI and embedding it into day-to-day operations”.

A key factor in European SMB successes lies in readiness, according to the report. IT leaders across the region are prioritizing areas such as governance before diving head long into adoption projects.

“Organizations treating governance as a foundation rather than an obstacle are often the ones best positioned to execute,” said John Carey, Senior Vice President of Global Channels at SAS.

“The findings suggest European SMBs are taking a more operational approach to AI adoption – focusing not just on experimentation, but on putting the right structures in place to scale AI effectively.”

Notably, Carey suggested that “stronger execution performance” among European SMBs may be due to regulatory considerations such as the EU AI Act.

Simply put, IT leaders at small businesses across the region are accelerating preparation to ensure compliance with the legislation.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that governance, risk, and compliance for AI has emerged as the top priority for SMB leaders, cited by 26%.

Progress on this front is easier said than done, however. The study noted that uncertainty is rife with regard to compliance, risk management, and security.

Nearly one-quarter (24%) identified this as their biggest execution barrier with AI adoption.

Still a long way to go

Despite positive signs for European SMBs, on a global scale the pace of AI adoption is still slow. SAS noted that many are “still struggling to move from experimentation to meaningful business impact”.

Nearly three-quarters (70%) of SMBs worldwide either remain in ‘experimental’ or ‘opportunistic’ stages of AI maturity, for example. Similarly, only 9% have fully embedded AI into daily operations or decision making.

Slow progress in AI maturity is, at least in part, due to traditional data-related problems such as silos and visibility. Nearly half (45%) of SMB leaders said their data remains “scattered across systems with no clear ownership”.

A similar number (46%) said AI tools are often still used in isolated environments across the business, preventing teams from aligning workflows.

Notably, 90% of those in experimental phases report having no formal AI strategy in place, which is impeding progress for IT leaders.

“To actually make something of their AI strategy, SMBs need to move from disconnected pilots to true alignments of their data, people, and resources,” said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, VP of research at IDC.

“Experimenting with the technology is one thing. Deploying it strategically and sustainably is quite another.”

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The memory market continues to reel from shortages created by the diversion of resources to the manufacture of higher-margin AI infrastructure memory. DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory) and NAND flash memory used in mainstream devices are now in such short supply that prices have been pushed up by 130% leading to PCs increasing by an average 21%.

While device shortages were also apparent during the COVID pandemic, prices then remained stable. Instead, today’s situation is more akin to the shortages in new car production which saw a spike in demand for second-hand cars with prices rising accordingly. OEMs are experiencing similar issues with respect to stock availability which means they are struggling to fulfil contracts, with shipments expected be down by between 6.6% to 23%, resulting in lead time slipping.

To make matters worse, geopolitical events are further compounding matters. The war in Iran is now disrupting the production of helium, which is essential for chip manufacturing, for example, with around a third of the world’s supply of helium comes from Qatar. The war is also seeing the oil needed by chipmaking nations such as South Korea and Taiwan delayed or rerouted. Consequently, there’s no real way of knowing when production might normalize.

Lack of supply chain resilience

What the shortages have revealed is a considerable lack of resiliency in the supply chain. Rigid procurement and device refresh strategies now seem woefully out of step and stockpiling inventory is not a viable option because it risks purchasing at the peak and saddling the organisation with too much stock. Instead, we need to look at how we can plan, buy and manage technology to accommodate these kinds of events.

Some organizations are playing for time by delaying device refreshes. They’re moving from a proactive three-year cycle to a “replace on failure” approach, with average life cycles then stretching to 4.3 years. But this can have a knock-on effect on efficiency and productivity, not to mention higher break-fix support costs. Others are considering second-hand devices or switching to vendors with more available stock, but they don’t necessarily have the market knowledge or the capability to put those devices through their paces.

Then there’s the software issue. The memory shortages are also forcing organizations to look at how and where they run their software and whether they can make changes to compensate for hardware shortages. For example, some are looking to load-balance servers to use capacity more effectively.

It’s these kinds of issues that Channel partners are ideally placed to help with. Their knowledge of the market can prove indispensable, as they can draw on their relationships with manufacturers to lock down shipment schedules and pricing. They can also provide flexible financing to ease budget constraints and source or even road-test equipment from alternative suppliers on behalf of their customers. That makes it more likely that organisations will end up with a ‘mixed estate’ of devices that those partners can then help to manage.

How the channel needs to adapt

But to fulfil those roles, the channel must adapt. Rather than continuing to focus on the same sourcing strategies, partners need to begin looking at where they can create efficiencies by offering advice, lifecycle management and ‘intelligent refresh’ strategies. The latter is particularly interesting because it steps away from the cyclical nature of the traditional refresh approach. Instead, it seeks to stagger and prioritise deployments by assessing device health, performance and user requirements.

Intelligent refresh uses a data-driven approach to lifecycle management. Tools such as benchmarking and Digital End User (DEX) solutions are used to assess device utilization and map personas and workloads, for example. Potential devices from different OEMs can then be tested to see if they will align with the performance requirements of the organization, and financial options explored such as CAPEX, leasing or DaaS. Once selected, the devices can be configured according to those personas, secured and asset tagged. Then DEX tools can be used to track health, usage and UX, ensuring high uptime and devices remain matched to the needs of the employees.

Taking a data-driven approach enables partners to utilize real-time performance data, which can then be used to help with planning for refresh. Because this forecasting is based on utilization, it sees blanket refresh cycles replaced with smaller strategic waves, making it easier to fulfil those orders and maintain a consistent inventory.

In addition to assisting with the sourcing of hardware, partners can also offer device lifecycle management. They can provide a range of support, from security covering patching, policy enforcement and endpoint analytics, through to rapid break-fix support such as field-based repair to keep employees productive, and device management by tracking warranties, managing spare or loaned devices and extending asset value. They can even help claw back revenue by assisting with the resale of second-hand components.

In this way, partners can step up to help their customers adapt to this new normal. The memory shortages, initially expected to last into 2027, could now last years, according to Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, which means organizations will have to become more strategic in how they manage, maintain, and replace their end-user devices. That will drive an uptick in demand for partners who can advise on the optimization of hardware and software to improve utilization and longevity, who can manage a mixed estate, and draw upon data to devise intelligent refresh programmes that then forecast exactly where and when new devices are needed.

Cyber resilience firm Rubrik is set to invest more than £375 million in the UK over the next five years, which will include opening a new EMEA headquarters in London.

According to Rubrik, the plans for the new HQ reflect the country’s role as one of its fastest-growing and “most strategically important markets”.

The site will act as a springboard to scale regional operations and access the country’s “deep technology talent pool”, the company said.

“The UK is one of the world’s leading technology markets, and has become increasingly important to Rubrik’s long-term growth,” said Bipul Sinha, CEO, chairman, and co-founder of Rubrik .

“As organizations accelerate AI adoption, cyber resilience is now an urgent business imperative. This investment strengthens our UK ecosystem, helping EMEA customers address the critical need for European data sovereignty, quickly recover from cyber attacks, and safely scale AI.”

Rubrik’s new London office will provide a “collaborative workspace” for staff, including an ‘executive briefing center’ designed to support engagement with customers and partners, the firm said.

Kanishka Narayan, minister for AI and Online Safety, said the move by Rubrik is a “vote of confidence” in the UK’s technology sector, with the country establishing itself as a prime destination to “invest, hire, and grow”.

"It will create high-skilled jobs and deepen our strengths in the fast-growing fields of cyber and AI, another sign that the UK is where the world's leading tech companies are choosing to build their future,” Narayan said.

Rubrik eyes EMEA expansion

The company has secured several large customers for its cyber resilience platform in recent years, including Manchester City Council, Harbour Energy, and the Scottish Government.

Across the EMEA region as a whole, Rubrik now serves roughly 2,000 customers and has launched a series of EMEA-focused product ranges, including Rubrik Security Cloud on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

To meet growing demand, the company said it plans to accelerate hiring in the region for roles such as sales, marketing, and customer support.

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Ten years ago, a server outage might have affected a single office or application. IT was simpler, stakes were lower and customers were willing, and able to accept a reactive relationship. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) built their value on ticket closure rates, uptime stats, and how quickly they could put out fires. It worked. But that era is over.

Today, a single point of failure can ripple across hybrid cloud environments, disrupt customer experiences globally and trigger regulatory risk. Businesses aren’t looking for faster helpdesks anymore; they’re demanding strategic IT partners that can provide true visibility into their environments and clear guidance on how to use technology to drive business outcomes. And they want all of this while budgets tighten and risk intensifies.

IT leaders are also operating under financial pressures. They’re no longer judged solely on system stability, but are expected to help drive revenue, support innovation and manage risk.

At the same time, many IT leaders are being asked to deliver AI projects, strengthen cybersecurity and drive digital transformation projects, without proportional increases in IT budgets. This is resulting in a more detailed examination of infrastructure spending, particularly around refresh cycles and long-term support strategies.

In this landscape, MSPs that still rely on a break-fix model aren’t just behind the curve; they’re becoming irrelevant. Support capabilities are still important, but the real difference now is made by those who go beyond fixing issues to become more of a strategic partner to their clients.

From visibility to insight

Today’s enterprise estates are fragmented by design, spanning on-premises infrastructure, colocation, multiple public clouds and an expanding edge. Layer in legacy systems, cloud-native applications and a patchwork of vendors and operating models, and the result is an environment that isn’t just complex; it’s opaque.

It is that opacity that’s the real challenge.

It’s no longer sufficient to detect when something breaks. By the time an alert triggers, the damage is often already underway. What IT leaders need now isn’t more monitoring noise; it’s clarity. They need partners who can cut through the sprawl to reveal how infrastructure is actually performing, where risk is accumulating and where inefficiency is quietly draining value.

This is where infrastructure intelligence comes in. Infrastructure intelligence goes beyond traditional monitoring tools to bring together data from across hybrid environments and layers in analytics, automation and contextual awareness. Rather than generating more noise, infrastructure intelligence is about filtering, correlating and interpreting signals in real time.

This enables MSPs to understand not just that something is happening, but why it’s happening and what the downstream impact will be. For example, instead of flagging a spike in CPU usage as an isolated event, it can tie that signal to broader workload behaviour, capacity trends or emerging resource constraints across environments.

This shift allows MSPs to move away from reactive incident management and towards predictive and preventative operations. Patterns can be identified before they escalate into outages, capacity can be optimised ahead of demand, and risks can be surfaced long before they impact users. In this model, insight replaces hindsight, giving both the MSP and the customer far greater control over performance, cost and resilience.

Redefining infrastructure lifecycle strategy

Traditional OEM-led refresh cycles are also coming under scrutiny. It no longer makes financial sense to replace hardware on a fixed timeline when it’s still running effectively. As a result, organizations are more likely to extend infrastructure lifecycles, provided they have the expertise to manage risk and performance. For MSPs, this creates an opportunity.

Partners that can help customers balance performance, reliability and cost optimization are playing a far more strategic role in IT decision-making. Third-party maintenance (TPM), once seen as purely a cost-cutting tactic, is now playing a key part in broader infrastructure optimisation. In hybrid environments, it gives organizations the flexibility to keep reliable systems in place longer, while putting their investment into the areas that really need it.

This allows MSPs to go beyond service delivery and play a more strategic advisory role, helping customers understand what to replace, what to keep and how to align support with what the customer actually needs. By combining lifecycle data, performance insights and support histories, MSPs can make far more informed recommendations about when to extend, when to replace and where to optimize.

This evolution doesn’t diminish the role of OEMs or traditional managed services. It reflects a shift towards the idea that customers now expect flexibility. In multi-vendor, hybrid environments, MSPs are increasingly judged not by vendor alignment, but by their ability to deliver outcome-driven, objective guidance.

The future of the MSP

The definition of value in managed services is being fundamentally rewritten. Closed ticket metrics still matter, but they no longer define the leaders in the market. Value is now measured by what doesn’t happen - outages avoided, inefficiencies eliminated, and unnecessary spend reduced. It’s reflected in better utilization, longer asset lifecycles and infrastructure that performs predictably under pressure.

To meet these expectations, MSPs need to evolve both what they offer and how they deliver it. They also need a mindset shift away from simply managing infrastructure and towards making sense of the data it generates and turning it into meaningful business insight.

This shift is changing the growth trajectory of the channel. MSPs that stick to a break-fix model risk being reduced to a commodity, competing primarily on price as margins continue to shrink.

The next phase of growth belongs to MSPs that can move upstream, translating data into insight, insight into action, and action into measurable outcomes. That requires building infrastructure intelligence capabilities that go beyond visibility, integrating optimisation and lifecycle management into a continuous, insight-driven model of service delivery.

As IT estates continue to expand and fragment, success will depend on the ability to provide direction as much as delivery. MSPs that can simplify complexity and help organisations make better decisions will move beyond day-to-day operational support to become true strategic partners, trusted not just to run infrastructure, but to help shape how it develops over time.

Accenture and Google Cloud have announced a new partnership aimed at driving AI adoption rates for mid-market firms amid sluggish deployment progress.

As part of the scheme, the duo will provide firms with a suite of six industry-specific agentic AI solutions designed to help push projects from pilot to production.

These solutions cover intelligence and growth, customer experience, cybersecurity, business operations, industry solutions, and workforce enablement.

"The companies that will define the next decade aren't waiting — they're building,” said Rajendra Prasad, technology reinvention engine lead at Accenture.

“Accenture Edge offerings built with Google Cloud technology help mid-market organizations do exactly that. They can deploy solutions in weeks and get measurable outcomes at the scale, budget and speed that they need to grow."

The collaboration will see Google Cloud provide the underpinning infrastructure and AI solutions to support organizations, including the Gemini Enterprise app, Gemini Enterprise Agent platform, and Agentic Data Cloud.

Accenture, meanwhile, is set to provide forward deployed engineers (FDEs) to offer guidance and technical support for participating firms.

Forward deployed engineers are in vogue

The move by the duo comes amidst a sharpened focus on driving enterprise adoption of AI and agents. The use of FDEs, in particular, has taken off as providers look to embed specialists within customer teams to support projects.

Last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft both announced plans to invest heavily in FDE-related efforts, with the aim of hiring thousands of engineers in the coming years.

As ITPro reported, FDEs could become a key growth area for the industry moving forward, with big tech providers providing more bespoke support for customers.

Kevin Ichhpurani, president of Google Cloud’s global partner ecosystem, said the scheme will provide businesses with the “full power” of the hyperscaler’s product portfolio.

“We’re seeing tremendous demand as mid-market enterprises adopt AI agents to fundamentally reinvent their business workflows," Ichhpurani said.

"The launch of Accenture Edge brings the full power of Google Cloud’s entire portfolio including enterprise AI, our Agentic Data Cloud and AI Threat Defense directly to this sector. Together, we’re enabling mid-market companies to confidently scale AI across their organizations for growth.”

Driving mid-market adoption

According to Accenture, mid-market firms – or those with revenues of between $300 million and $3 billion – have largely been locked out of large-scale AI transformation due to complexity and integration barriers.

A recent study from Klarus highlighted the significant challenges faced by mid-market enterprises on this front. While nearly three-quarters (73%) have deployed AI solutions, around 90% of projects remain stuck or stalled in the pilot stage.

Although up to 94% of leaders feel confident about AI deployment, lack of expertise and governance concerns are causing projects to fail.

Mid-market firms aren’t alone in AI deployment challenges, however. Research from MIT last year found around 90% of all generative AI pilots fail, while similar research from Gartner warned up to 40% of agentic AI adoption programs are expected to fail.

These organizations are in a prime position to fully capitalize on the technology, however. Klarus CTO Alper Gunaydin said mid-market firms have the advantage of agility compared to larger competitors.

“Mid-market companies have a real advantage because they can often move fast, particularly when it comes to technology transformation. We see this agility in action when companies are turning to AI and automation to address productivity and accelerate growth," Gunaydin commented.

"However, our research shows that too many pilots stall because companies lack AI expertise, quality data and effective governance. Making that agility count requires clear priorities, strong foundations and access to senior expertise, all of which will help translate investment into tangible business outcomes and unlock growth without increasing the cost base.”

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Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) is using AI agents to help reduce admin and improve customer service – and the high street lender said it's recording solid results so far.

Three AI agents named Penelope, Sam, and Alf are supporting customer service teams by summarizing complex complaints, searching policies and past cases, and drafting member communications, all with human oversight.

Penelope helps draft final responses for complaints, while Alf supports this process by searching policies, procedures, and past cases. Sam, meanwhile, summarizes long or detailed complaints.

According to the building society, Sam is saving an estimated seven minutes per use, with Penelope saving up to 26 minutes when supporting more complex complaint responses.

“That time really adds up,” said Polly Conner, senior manager of customer relations at YBS. “We’re able to minimize the amount of time staff are spending on admin tasks and actually spend that time talking to our customers, helping them resolve the challenges they’ve faced.”

The high level of regulation around financial services means that handling complaints from the building society's three million members and customers requires a lot of admin.

That can mean switching between multiple systems, searching for policies, summarizing long histories, and drafting detailed responses in advance of any conversation.

"This technology is going to give our members more choice and better access to information when they need it most,” said Simone Fox, director of customer support at YBS. “But there will always be a human available to speak to them when they need it.”

AI in banking

The results highlighted by YBS come amidst a sharpened focus on AI in the financial services sector, with a host of major providers ramping up adoption of the technology.

In January this year, Nationwide announced a partnership with Moneyhub to launch an AI-powered transaction analytics platform for customers across the UK.

Lloyds Banking Group, meanwhile, is also accelerating AI innovation internally in a bid to drive customer support capabilities. The bank unveiled plans to launch a new AI Academy earlier this year, with the aim of providing 67,000 staff with practical skills.

Building the foundations for AI

Before rolling out new tools, YBS built a cloud native data platform with Microsoft Fabric and strengthened data governance through Microsoft Purview.

It also enhanced its security with Microsoft Sentinel, expanded infrastructure foundations in Azure, and introduced Windows 365 remote desktops to enable secure, flexible working.

“Our ambition with data and AI is to improve our organization, help our colleagues be more efficient, make better decisions, and ultimately, serve our members better,” said Rebecca Fitzgerald, YBS director of data and AI. “All built on trust, with responsibility built in.”

Elsewhere, YBS is piloting AI agents to support internal risk and control testing, with early results suggesting efficiency savings of around 40%.

The high street lender is also rolling out a new customer service platform built using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact-Centre-As-A-Service. This brings customer history, previous self-service activity, and relevant guidance into one place for colleagues.

An AI assistant can summarize cases, highlight relevant knowledge and help draft responses, reducing the need to search across multiple systems.

“The platform is really going to help our colleagues better serve our members,” Fox commented. “It’s going to enable them to have a 360‑degree view of our members, so they’re not having to move between various platforms.”

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Arrow Electronics has signed a new pan-EMEA distribution agreement with ABB Electrification that will see the distributor add ABB’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS) portfolio to its enterprise computing offering.

The agreement builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies and will enable Arrow to distribute the vendor’s critical power technologies to channel partners across key European markets – including the UK and Ireland.

Arrow said the deal will help partners deliver more comprehensive IT infrastructure projects by combining ABB’s power resilience capabilities with its existing portfolio of compute, management, and security solutions.

Initially, the deal covers ABB’s UPS portfolio, although the companies said the range is expected to expand over time to include additional electrification technologies designed for demanding enterprise and data center environments.

In an announcement, Mike Worby, head of strategic alliances at Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in EMEA, said the move opens up a range of “important new capabilities” for channel partners.

“Power protection is a vital part of any modern IT design and the addition of ABB uninterruptible power supplies means our customers can work with a broader and more complete set of solutions,” he explained.

“It is a strong addition to our existing portfolio and creates new opportunities for channel partners to support their customers’ evolving needs.”

Arrow provides technology distribution, integration, and supply chain services for channel partners across areas including enterprise computing, networking, cybersecurity, cloud, and data center infrastructure.

The firm said that adding ABB’s critical power portfolio will enable its partners to source technologies designed to support secure uptime and energy efficiency, while helping customers improve operational continuity and meet sustainability goals.

The agreement will initially be available across the Benelux region, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Ireland, with additional countries expected to be added over time.

“Working with Arrow enables us to reach a wider IT channel audience and support channel partners with high-quality electrification and critical power solutions suited to modern digital infrastructure,” commented Sebastien Surply, head of ABB Electrification’s Critical Power business line.

“Our technology is trusted by tech giants and data center operators worldwide, and we are seeing strong demand across a range of critical environments.”

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Workday has appointed HR Path as an authorized value-added reseller (VAR) partner for the UK and Ireland, as part of the vendor’s ongoing ecosystem expansion across EMEA.

The agreement will see HR Path directly sell Workday’s HR and finance platform to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Ireland and Scotland, as well as provide consulting, implementation, and operational support.

According to Workday, its expanded VAR strategy aims to help growing organizations adopt enterprise-grade HR, finance, and AI capabilities, while simplifying complex digital transformation projects through a single partner relationship.

As an authorized VAR, HR Path will act as a single point of contact for clients and will manage the full customer lifecycle – including strategic advisory, software procurement, implementation, and long-term optimization.

In an announcement, Daniel Pell, Workday’s vice president and country manager for the UK and Ireland, said the partnership is intended to accelerate time to value for businesses’ digital transformation initiatives.

“HR Path brings deep local experience and hands-on delivery, Workday brings a secure, AI-powered platform, and together, we can give customers one trusted route to modernising their HR and finance functions,” he commented.

Workday’s hybrid go-to-market strategy

The announcement marks the latest stage of Workday’s shift away from a purely direct sales model to a hybrid go-to-market approach, at a time when demand for advanced AI capabilities continues to grow.

The vendor said regional VAR partners will combine localized implementation expertise with its own AI-powered enterprise platform, enabling organizations to deploy advanced AI capabilities while ensuring compliance with local regulatory and market requirements.

The model is also designed to provide customers with continuous support as business requirements evolve, rather than focusing solely on initial software deployment.

To support the expansion, HR Path said it is investing in consultant training, Workday certifications, as well as joint enablement programs to provide earlier access to new AI capabilities and product developments.

Commenting on the expanded partnership, Angelo Gallo, partner at HR Path, described Workday’s VAR model as “the next logical step” in being able to provide more comprehensive support to SMBs in Ireland and Scotland.

“Our strength lies in combining world-class technology with local market knowledge and hands-on execution,” he explained.

“Together with Workday, we are creating an offering that delivers greater guidance, security, and trust throughout the entire transformation process.”

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ITPro is 20 this month. To celebrate, we've taken a look back at the team's favorite stories from the beginning to now.

2008: Science fiction's influence on technology: ideas made real

"The influence of Sci-Fi on technology has become increasingly apparent in the years since Simon Bisson wrote this piece from CES 2008 – just 12 months after the launch of the iPhone. In 2026, futuristic technology like wrist-worn devices and voice activated computers from Star Trek, the IoT and generative AI from the novels of Philip K Dick have evolved into the mundane: smart watches, home assistants, white goods, and chatbots.

"Perhaps the biggest change, though, is not the influence of sci-fi on hardware development but on tech leaders themselves. Mark Zuckerberg has spoken of his love for Snowcrash, which in part influenced the Metaverse. The influence of The Morning Rocket on Elon Musk was even documented in a BBC podcast series."

Jane McCallion, managing editor

2019: Is AMD finally winning the chip wars?

"Tim saw what was coming with AMD and Intel really early on. This article is a fantastic showcase of the subject matter expertise our team and extended team have. We not only report on what's happening, but also use our real-world experience to anticipate what may come next."

Bobby Hellard, reviews editor

2016: Why are women such a problem?

"I wrote this piece a few months after ITPro's 10th birthday. While much has changed for the better since publication, we still have a long way to go when it comes to being able to say the IT industry really embraces diversity.

"Sure there are some organizations leading the way and the fact more conversations are happening can only be a good thing. However, we need action not just talk. And we ALL need to be part of the discussion and the doing."

Maggie Holland, global content director

2023: Hybrid cloud comes into its own with GenAI

This was an exclusive interview with NetApp CEO George Kurian at the company's annual Insight event in 2023. Less than a year after the launch of ChatGPT, the fledgling GenAI industry was well and truly booming. After several years of gradual shifts toward hybrid cloud approaches, Kurian argued that this strategy was ideal for generative AI due to security and flexibility capabilities.

Ross Kelly, news & analysis editor

Most UK business leaders have a “limited understanding” of their AI budgets, and they're struggling to turn AI investment into measurable business outcomes.

KPMG’s latest Global AI Pulse report found that 26% of UK companies are now using AI as part of everyday work, up from 18% in the first quarter of this year.

This increased adoption means that managing usage costs is becoming both more complex and more critical to realizing value.

Three-in-ten UK leaders told the firm that they struggle with usage-based costs, while 42% have only partial visibility into AI spending. One-third, meanwhile, cited “limited understanding” of AI cost structures, including tokens, as a challenge to deploying AI agents.

“AI is moving rapidly into everyday work, but scaling it responsibly brings a new set of challenges," said Dr Leanne Allen, head of AI at KPMG UK.

"Leaders now need to show not just that AI can be deployed, but that it can be trusted, financially controlled and clearly linked to value. Cost visibility is central to that."

Enterprises need a clear path with AI

According to KPMG, companies where CEOs are accountable for AI decisions often report higher confidence in their AI strategy, and are more likely to unlock meaningful business value and stronger returns on investment.

"As organizations use more AI tools and agentic systems, they need to understand how costs build, where value is being created and where governance controls are needed. Without that clarity, it becomes harder to make confident investment decisions or demonstrate returns," said Allen.

“Clear accountability, practical governance, and workforce adoption must move together if businesses are to turn AI momentum into sustained value.”

To help manage AI costs, the survey found organizations are implementing stronger governance controls, including monitoring and spending controls.

More than half (57%) of UK leaders report having AI cost monitoring dashboards, with 61% embedding cost reviews as part of AI approval processes to enable stronger control and decision-making.

Notably, organizations with stronger cost visibility are four-times more likely to report established ROI, at 25% versus 6%.

“AI cost management cannot sit as an afterthought. If businesses want to scale AI responsibly, they need to build financial discipline into the way AI is approved, monitored and governed from the start," said Allen.

"The organizations that can see their AI costs clearly are better placed to understand what is working, what is not and where to keep investing.”

AI costs are spiralling

Surging AI costs have become a recurring pain point for enterprises across a range of industries in recent months. As ITPro reported in June, these surging costs are the result of AI provider shifts toward consumption-based billing combined with increased usage rates.

The ‘tokenmaxxing’ trend, whereby users are encouraged to ramp up their use of AI tools, has already caused serious issues for some major companies, such as Uber.

Uber revealed that it used its entire annual AI budget in just four months after encouraging staff to use the technology, prompting a rethink of how AI is used internally. This included the introduction of a $1,500 monthly cap per employee, which is tracked through an internal dashboard.

Accenture has also urged staff to stop using AI for needless tasks in a bid to tackle mounting costs.

Last week, analysts at Gartner told ITPro that tackling this problem will require a concerted focus on cost optimization practices, including the use of context engineering techniques to maximize the use of the technology.

This call to action by Gartner came after research found AI token costs could exceed developer salaries by 2028.

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‘Always on’ culture is placing significant pressure on workers across the UK, according to new research, with nearly half (42%) considering quitting roles due to stress.

A study from HR platform HiBob suggests the trend is “becoming the norm” for many employees, with workplace intensity building significantly in recent years.

More than half (58%) of respondents revealed pressure in their role has increased compared to two years ago, while 49% feel “expected to always be available”.

The result is that around one-third (36%) now work late on a regular basis, with 50% checking work messages while on holiday. Notably, the grind starts almost immediately on a daily basis for many, with 55% of respondents revealing they check work messages within just minutes of waking up.

Toby Hough, VP of people & culture for EMEA at HiBob, said the study highlights a concerning “structural shift in how work happens”.

“Many workers no longer feel there is a natural point where pressure eases or where they can properly switch off, while managers increasingly find themselves balancing rising performance expectations with protecting employee wellbeing,” he said.

“Left unaddressed, this shift poses a significant long-term risk to businesses.”

Workers can’t switch off

The study from HiBob suggests that mounting workplace intensity means workers are finding it “harder than ever” to switch off after their day is finished.

Around two-in-five (42%), for example, admitted checking work messages in the middle of conversations, while 29% do so on dates.

Managerial expectations are fanning the flames on this front, according to the survey, with nearly half (49%) highlighting a demand to always be available.

For some, these activities are warranted. More than one-quarter (27%) said they believe that failing to respond to work-related messages after hours could harm their career opportunities.

The source of this pressure often comes from senior leadership, however. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of managers said they’re now expected to maintain consistent high-performance levels, and many are absorbing this pressure.

HiBob noted that this spill over between work and personal life is having a serious negative impact on employee wellbeing. Nearly half (47%) feel mentally exhausted at the end of their working day while stress negatively affects sleep among 41%.

Managers are at breaking point

The top-down pressure at many organizations is causing significant stress across all seniority levels, according to the study. Around half (51%) of managers said they feel underprepared and out of their depth when it comes to dealing with heightened expectations.

Hough warned organizations that fail to tackle the issue could create huge downstream problems, particularly in terms of retaining talent.

“Companies therefore need to recognize that people-first cultures are performance-first cultures. Sustainable high performance cannot exist without the right support, recovery, and trust within teams,” he commented.

“Businesses now need to equip managers with the training, guidance, and tools needed to lead through this new era of constant pressure and help teams perform consistently over time.”

Crucially, around half (47%) of respondents noted there are no longer clear quiet periods at work, with employees locked in a state of constant activity. This tracks closely with a study from Twilio last year, which revealed that workers are calling for periods of ‘digital silence’.

That study found roughly half (47%) of workers are now prioritizing periods in their daily workflow that are free from distractions, email chains, and calls.

Twilio said the pushback comes largely due to the increasing array of communication platforms used by workers on a daily basis.

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Dropzone AI has announced an exclusive EMEA distribution partnership with QBS Software, in a move the company said will expand the availability of its AI-powered security operations platform to MSSPs and VARs across the region.

The agreement will see QBS distribute Dropzone AI’s Agentic SOC platform, which uses a team of AI agents to automate security alert investigations across existing security environments.

According to the vendor, the partnership aims to help channel partners address the growing demand for security operations capabilities as organizations contend with rising alert volumes, increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, as well as an ongoing shortage of skilled SOC analysts.

For MSSPs, Dropzone said the platform can help scale managed SOC services without requiring a proportional increase in analyst headcount, while VARs will be able to offer the technology to customers operating in-house security operations centers.

"Security teams are under immense pressure to scale operations, meet increasingly stringent SLAs, and ensure regulatory compliance while maintaining resilience against rising alert volumes,” said Brett Candon, Dropzone AI’s vice president of international, in an announcement.

“Through this partnership with QBS, Dropzone AI will extend its reach to both MSSPs and VARs across EMEA. MSSP partners can scale service delivery and improve profitability, while VAR partners can help customers with in-house SOCs move from alert chaos to incident focus."

Dropzone’s Agentic SOC solution is built around its AI SOC Analyst, which investigates security alerts from across an organization’s existing security stack before escalating confirmed threats to human analysts for response.

The technology integrates with existing SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and case management platforms, allowing organizations to augment existing security operations without replacing current infrastructure.

Benefits for MSSPs and VARs

Dropzone said its platform will help MSSPs improve SLA performance, onboard customers faster, increase SOC capacity, and free up analysts to focus on high-value tasks while building higher-margin managed security services.

Meanwhile, VARs will be able to support customers operating their own SOCs by leveraging the offering to accelerate investigations, reduce false positives, ease alert fatigue, and address temporary cyber security skills shortages.

The companies said the agreement expands the channel opportunity across EMEA by enabling partners to support customers with managed, co-managed, and in-house security operations models while helping address the ongoing shortage of skilled SOC analysts.

"Our partnership with Dropzone AI strengthens QBS' security portfolio with advanced autonomous AI SOC capabilities that addresses a real challenge across the channel,” commented Tom Corrigan, chief revenue officer at QBS Software.

“By bringing category-defining AI SOC capabilities to our partner ecosystem, we're supporting growth, improving service delivery, and helping partners deliver stronger customer outcomes.”

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One Identity has announced plans to become an independent company, with the identity security specialist’s Cork office to become its new headquarters.

The company previously operated as part of Quest Software, which was acquired by Clearlake Capital in 2021.

By going solo, the vendor said it is looking to capitalize on growing demand for identity governance technologies as enterprise environments continue to grow in complexity due to increasing SaaS adoption, stricter regulatory requirements, and the rapid growth of both human and non-human identities.

According to the company, operating independently will provide greater focus and investment as it targets opportunities across identity governance and administration (IGA) and privileged access management (PAM) – with the combined market estimated to be worth $10 billion.

In an announcement, One Identity CEO Praerit Garg said identity has become the “control plane” for enterprise security as IT environments continue to grow in complexity.

“Almost all security breaches can be traced back to identity compromises,” he explained. “Most organizations are still governing it with tools that were built for a different era. AI is accelerating the problem faster than most organizations realize: every agent and every automated workflow are identities that need to be governed.”

As a result, Garg said that One Identity’s customers are now managing more distributed environments that are harder to govern using legacy frameworks.

“Operating as a standalone company gives us the focus this problem requires and the speed our customers demand,” he added.

European focus

As part of the transition, One Identity will designate its Cork office as its global headquarters as the firm looks to build on long-standing investment across Ireland, the UK, Germany, and the wider European continent.

The move highlights the increasing importance of the vendor’s European operations, with more than 80% of its engineering organization and a number of key leadership roles now based in the region.

The firm said that growing regulatory requirements, such as NIS2 and DORA, have also increased demand for identity governance capabilities across Europe.

“As a long-time regional office, Cork has been an important part of One Identity operations for many years,” commented Brid Doyle, One Identity’s Cork office leader and director of global sales operations. “This decision reflects the reality of how the company operates today and how we believe we can best serve our customers all over the world.”

As part of its ongoing evolution, One Identity recently strengthened its executive team with the appointments of chief financial and operating officer Mike Henricks, chief product and marketing officer Randy Menon, and chief technology officer Gihan Munasinghe.

The company said its transition to an independent company will continue throughout 2026, with further milestones to be shared in due course.

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Commvault has announced a new multi-year strategic partnership with Microsoft that will see its cyber resilience platform offered as a native independent software vendor (ISV) service on Microsoft Azure.

The agreement builds on a collaboration spanning more than 25 years and aims to simplify how Azure customers deploy and manage Commvault’s data protection and recovery capabilities.

The partnership will see Commvault Cloud become available directly through Azure, allowing customers to discover, provision, and integrate resilience services from within the cloud platform.

According to the software vendor, the move addresses growing demand for cyber resilience as organizations expand their cloud deployments, ramp up AI adoption, and contend with an increasingly complex security landscape.

Slated for public preview this summer, the native service will provide customers with a more unified experience across procurement, onboarding, and management – ultimately reducing the need for separate infrastructure, external tools, and manual integrations.

In an announcement, Commvault president and CEO Sanjay Mirchandani said the agreement will take the company’s long-standing relationship with Microsoft “to the next level.”

“Many of our customers rely on Microsoft Azure to scale their business in the cloud, use AI, optimise operations, and bring ideas to life,” he commented. “With this joint commitment, we can also make best-in-class resilience plug-and-play for Microsoft customers.”

Native Azure integration

Commvault said the native Azure service will introduce a number of operational benefits, including automatic resource discovery, faster deployment, simplified management, and reduced operational complexity.

The offering is also expected to help organizations improve their ability to recover data, applications, and identities in the event of cyber attacks, outages, or incidents of human error.

Additionally, customers will be able to purchase Commvault Cloud through the Microsoft Marketplace and apply spending towards their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), helping to align resilience investments with existing cloud expenditure.

“Customers rely on Azure as a resilient foundation for their cloud and AI workloads,” said Girish Bablani, president of Azure Core at Microsoft. “Supporting Commvault natively gives them more choice in how they protect and recover their data, with a more seamless experience inside Azure.”

Alongside the technical integration, Commvault and Microsoft said they will collaborate on joint go-to-market initiatives, including co-selling activities, solution development, and integrated sales efforts geared toward accelerating customers’ cloud journeys and cyber resilience initiatives.

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UK Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have embraced flat-rate support because it’s made delivery scalable: standardize the stack, package the service, and give customers a predictable monthly cost.

However, support has expanded faster than fixed fees can keep up with. Users expect instant fixes, boards expect resilience, and compliance teams, insurers, and auditors increasingly expect proof.

At the same time, the modern customer estate - SaaS, cloud, remote endpoints, third parties, and integrations - creates more noise, more incidents, and more out-of-hours work.

The somewhat predictable result is margin erosion: more tickets, more tools, more engineer time, and the same recurring revenue.

That’s why, for MSPs, observability needs to become a clearly defined, billable capability focused on outcomes customers recognize - fewer avoidable incidents, faster resolution, better user experience, and evidence that stands up in audits and insurance questionnaires.

Flat-rate contracts stay profitable when demand is reduced, not just responded to, and managed observability is one of the most practical levers MSPs have to do that.

Support is scalable when demand is predictable

Flat-rate support only works when MSPs can predict and reduce demand. But customer estates keep getting more complex while contract values stay flat, so every extra ticket and escalation eats margin.The usual culprits are ticket volatility, tool sprawl that slows triage and drives up costs, and escalation creep that pushes routine issues onto senior engineers. When resolution slips, SLA penalties and reputational damage follow.

That’s exactly what observability should fix, preventing avoidable incidents and cutting time-to-resolution, but too often it’s treated as “free”, and the service desk absorbs the cost.

Observability becomes billable when it’s auditable

In the channel, monitoring can sound like a checkbox. Customers assume it’s already included, like antivirus used to be, until you translate it into outcomes they care about:

• Less downtime (and fewer productivity losses)
• Faster incident resolution (and fewer escalations)
• Better user experience (especially for SaaS and remote work)
• Evidence for audits, regulators, and cyber insurers (not just “we think it’s fine)
• Capacity and cost control (no surprise renewals, no shadow IT growth)

For many organizations, that evidence now affects audit outcomes and cyber insurance terms, including whether cover is available and how premiums are priced. That shift in language matters because it changes observability from a feature to a service line: something with a scope, deliverables, and a price.

Tier it: response vs assurance

MSPs don’t need to rip up contracts to monetise observability; they can add outcome-based tiers that make proactive work visible and separate reactive support from assurance.

A simple model:

• Baseline covers availability checks, basic alerting, and standard response
• Managed Observability is a paid add-on: alert tuning, SLOs, dependency mapping, service reviews, proactive fixes, plus monthly reporting that supports audits and insurer questionnaires
• Service Assurance is the premium layer for customers who need stronger governance: continuous optimisation, capacity planning, change-impact analysis, and board-ready resilience reporting

The key differentiator isn’t more alerts, it’s less noise and more action. Fewer false positives, faster diagnosis, and a credible narrative of what you prevented, not just what you fixed after the damage was done.

Packaging that doesn’t feel like platform marketing

The fastest way to make observability feel promotional is to centre it on a platform. The fastest way to make it feel valuable is to centre it on operations.

Three practical packaging moves MSPs are using:

1. Define the observable estate: Be explicit about what’s covered (networks, cloud, critical SaaS, key user journeys, core systems) so the scope is clear.
2. Make proactive work visible: A monthly assurance summary showing issues removed, top drivers, automation time saved, and early risks - reusable for audits and insurance.
3. Tie it to business-critical moments: Position it as risk control during migrations, site moA simple model: ves, mergers, major upgrades, and security hardening, not just BAU monitoring.

SLOs, not uptime: measure what users feel

Packaging won’t protect margins if the NOC is already drowning. Observability only becomes a revenue engine when it’s operationally credible, and that starts with alert quality. Duplicate, low-value alerts create noise, slow triage, and trigger unnecessary escalations, inflating delivery costs. Good alert hygiene means de-duplicating, setting thresholds that reflect real user experience, and tuning continuously based on what actually drives incidents.

Consistency matters, too: standard runbooks keep first-line triage predictable and reduce senior-engineer drag. Measure what customers feel with SLOs (latency, transaction time, failed logins, API errors), not uptime alone, and “single pane of glass” should mean one accountable operational picture, not one tool.

The unglamorous truth is that MSPs protect margin not by collecting more telemetry, but by turning telemetry into fewer tickets.

Compliance pressure is rewriting the value conversation

Budgets are tight, suppliers are being rationalised, and procurement is increasingly asking why they are paying if things still break.

Cyber insurance and regulation are sharpening that pressure. Insurers want evidence of monitoring and operational oversight, and frameworks like FCA operational resilience, DORA, and NIS2 are raising expectations for mapping and proof. In many cases, observability is moving from nice to have to a commercial or contractual requirement.

That’s why monetising observability works now: it shifts the conversation from reactive support to measurable assurance, differentiates you from low-cost providers, and protects margin without adding headcount by preventing failures from becoming tickets in the first place.

Westcon-Comstor has announced a new strategic investment and financing agreement with General Atlantic, as the global technology distributor targets its next phase of growth.

The move will see General Atlantic become a minority equity investor and long-term financing partner, while the distributor’s majority owner, Datatec, will retain control of the business.

Westcon-Comstor said the investment reflects confidence in its recent performance and growth trajectory.

The distributor has recorded seven consecutive years of growth and recently announced record annual gross sales of $5.74 billion alongside increased profitability, driven by its continued shift towards software, services, and subscription-based recurring revenue.

In an announcement, Westcon-Comstor CEO David Grant described the investment agreement as an “important milestone” in the company’s evolution.

“We are looking to the future from a position of strength, with strong fundamentals, a differentiated market proposition and consistent financial performance,” he said. “The introduction of General Atlantic as both a financing partner and minority investor provides us with greater flexibility to accelerate our growth strategy, including expanding our portfolio and further strengthening our digital and AI capabilities.”

Westcon-Comstor said its growth has been driven by sustained demand from IT channel partners and technology vendors for its value-added distribution services across its three operating regions – Europe, the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Asia-Pacific (APAC).

Several long-term market trends have also helped drive this expansion, including investment in AI-enabled infrastructure, rising cyber security spending, as well as expanding cloud and edge environments.

Following its latest investment agreement, existing leadership structures will remain in place – a factor Grant said will ensure continuity as the business looks to build on this recent momentum.

“We retain the leadership stability and long-term strategic focus that have underpinned our success to date, while adding a partner with the scale and expertise to help us maintain our growth trajectory,” he added.

Investment for future expansion

Datatec CEO Jens Montanana said the new investment agreement preserves Westcon-Comstor’s successful operating model while providing additional capital to drive future opportunities.

“This partnership will provide capital as required to support exciting opportunities for expansion in our sector,” he explained. “The structure further embeds senior management in the business as shareholders.”

The partnership will also provide Westcon-Comstor with access to General Atlantic’s global network and capital expertise as it looks to expand both its portfolio and global reach.

“We are delighted to partner with Jens and the Westcon-Comstor team in pursuit of the company’s next phase of growth,” commented Leo Wouters, managing director at General Atlantic.

“We believe our capital and strategic support can help to unlock compelling opportunities as Westcon-Comstor continues to build out its product portfolio and international presence.”

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This week's episode comes to you live from Las Vegas, where we link up with Jane McCallion at HPE Discover and also ITPro's news editor, Ross Kelly, at Pure Accelerate.

Jane talks us through all the major announcements at HPE, with a heavy focus on how its Juniper Networks acquisition is impacting its new products and services. She also gives her thoughts on CEO Antonio Neri and the company's approach to agents.

Across the Las Vegas Strip at Resorts World, Ross gives us his insight into Everpure, the impact of rising hardware costs on its business, and how organizations can get their data AI-ready.

Highlights

"Despite the fact that Juniper has been part of HPE for nearly a year now, this has been the first chance, really, to celebrate it ... [so] the focus has been solidly on networking, and it's slightly hard to say whether this is because this is the first time they've really got to talk about the acquisition that they've really fully integrated everything."

"This idea of cross-pollination has come to fruition. There are parts of Mist, which was a Juniper offering that are now available on Aruba Central and ditto, parts of the Aruba offering that are now available through Mist. So the idea is to give everybody the opportunity to use the full product portfolio without having to move from the platform that they're already using. That's got to change at some point, but there has to be some kind of integration of the two platforms at some point, but I think you know there's a slow and steady let's not upset anybody type approach, which is fair enough."

"[Everpure has] been on a big pivot over the last 18 months. This time last year, Pure announced the launch of their Enterprise Data Cloud, which was part of this sort of pivot towards more of a data management approach. And then they've definitely continued on that vein this year. A couple of big product announcements all focused on this area, it's something that they're really, really moving towards, pushing towards, hard."

"I think on a broader sense, with all of these announcements, Everpure is going into not uncharted territory, but they are to some extent on a collision course, I think, with a lot of other organizations in the industry ... you know, your Snowflakes, Data Bricks, even, like I said, Salesforce."

Links

• Everpure CEO Charlie Giancarlo says firm will share the burden with customers amid rising hardware costs
• Forget tokenomics – agents are a personnel cost
• HPE unveils a raft of new networking products for AI workloads at Discover 2026

Analysts and Managed Service Provider (MSP) leaders have warned that the industry must evolve beyond traditional support services if it is to remain competitive in the AI era.

Speaking at Kaseya Connect Europe in Prague, Omdia principal analyst Maxine Holt described a move from “MSP 2.0” to “MSP 3.0” – a model built around platforms, automation, compliance, and business outcomes rather than reactive IT support.

“MSP 3.0 isn’t just about doing what you’ve always done, but with better tools,” explained Holt.

Instead, she argued, MSPs need to rethink how they create value for customers, moving from technology operators to strategic advisors.

The end of the traditional MSP?

Jack Peploe, founder of MSP Veterinary IT Services, agrees with the need to overhaul the services offered to customers.

“The world of an MSP is dying. I genuinely believe that,” he told Channel Pro.

Peploe points to how the traditional MSP model built around monitoring, patching, and first-line support is becoming increasingly automated - and MSPs are being pushed higher up the value chain. His own company has already removed its traditional first-line support team.

“We haven’t lost anyone, we’ve upskilled them,” he told ChannelPro.

For Peploe, success increasingly depends on understanding customer industries, workflows, and business challenges rather than simply managing technology.

“What [customers] want is someone that really understands them, gets them, understands what they can do, understands their processes, their flows, the inefficiencies,” he said.

AI adoption remains slow

While AI dominated discussions at the event, there were warnings that adoption remains slower than many organisations would like.

Omdia research presented at the event found that fewer than one in five AI proof-of-concept projects ultimately make it into production, highlighting the gap between experimentation and deployment. The biggest barriers include integrating AI with existing infrastructure, a lack of in-house expertise, and difficulties defining clear business outcomes.

Kaseya CEO Rania Succar argued that partners have an important role to play in helping customers bridge the gap between experimentation and deployment.

“The adoption of agentic solutions to date has been too slow,” she told ChannelPro.

Similarly, Holt suggested that customers need practical guidance rather than more hype around AI.

“SMBs don’t need more AI hype,” she said. “They need practical guidance on how to actually implement AI in ways that integrate with existing systems, deliver measurable value, and don’t require them to become AI experts overnight.”

Platforms become the foundation

Underlying many of these changes is the growing importance of platform integration. As MSPs adopt more automation and AI capabilities, fragmented toolsets are becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

“It’s not about the best tool for each of the areas operating independently,” said Holt, who said MSP 3.0 will be built on “fewer platforms with much better integration”.

She added, “MSP 3.0 providers don’t just respond to problems, they anticipate them. They don’t just implement solutions; they recommend strategies. And they don’t just manage technology; they enable business outcomes.”

If an organization is surprised to see IT costs explode when it starts running agents at scale, the problem might not be in the IT budget – it might be a category error. At least in the opinion of HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

“I don’t think of [AI agents] as an IT cost,” Neri tells ITPro at HPE Discover 2026. “I think about the cost of the workforce because, to me, an agent is no different than any other employee I have to hire.”

“So if I hire [a person], there is a cost to onboard him and make sure that he's productive by giving him the tools and everything else,” he says. “When I train an agent, it's going to cost me a number of tokens to train it to drive the best productivity. If I'm going to spend a million dollars to train an agent, it has to be way more productive than [the person]. Otherwise, why am I doing that?”

This turns on its head much of the conversation around agents, tokenmaxxing, and costs as agentic AI starts to eclipse generative in organizational use.

AI sticker shock

ITPro wrote in May about “tokenomics” and so-called sticker-shock when the AI bill finally came due for many businesses. Famously, Uber used up its entire annual AI budget in four months and has now capped the amount each employee can spend on agents per month.

One answer that’s been given to the problem is a shift to on-premises IT rather than ‘cloud-based’ AI like Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex, and moving agent costs from OpEx back to CapEx. For an enterprise hardware company like HPE, surely this should be an opportunity to increase hardware sales?

“Sure,” says Neri. “But we think about it as a total cost of [the] workforce, not as an IT expense.”

And is this something that he’s educating his customers about, or do they see it another way?

“Yes, I am,” he says. “I’m spending more than 50% of my time with our customers, and when I bring that concept to life for them, they say ‘ok, ok!’”

“I’d rather give a little bit more budget to IT to reduce my entire cost of the workforce, which is – depending on what you do – probably one of the biggest cost levers,” he continues. “I have only two large cost drivers: people and materials. The materials, in networking, we have a lot of that under control because we have the IP, but a lot of servers, obviously, CPUs, and GPUs I don’t control.

“[The people] I have 65,000 employees. It’s not about reducing employees, which in some cases will happen, but it’s about making those 65,000 employees way more productive with the aid of AI by freeing up capacity for the humans to do more value-added [work] while the agentic models do more work at much bigger scale. I think about that, the total cost of [the] workforce”.

Human / AI interaction

This is an idea that’s been seeded here and there throughout the conference. In Rami Rahim’s keynote, which took place just a couple of hours after Neri’s, one of the demonstrations floated the idea of taking humans out of the loop once a process has been approved.

Katrina Pickett, senior product manager, Juniper Networks, showed how HPE Marvis might help detect and remediate a problem with a sluggish network. The conversation between person and machine was in natural language, but the fixing was agentic. At the point that the fix was applied, Marvis asked if Pickett wanted to have an agent apply the same fix automatically in the future, without human intervention, which would present a time saving.

Human-in-the-loop (HTL), however, has been a key mantra of not just AI but automation more generally. Is it time to take another look at this attitude?

“Well, once you’re confident about [what’s happening], then you can remove the human from the loop and just put on the loop,” says Neri. “I think there needs to be some sort of oversight, but not doing the actual work.”

“In the case of networking, a lot of things were done manually through [the] command line interface, by logging in the console, and putting hands on a keyboard,” Neri continues.

“The scale is now so big that humans cannot possibly manage that scale. Therefore, there is no other choice than to automate things and use artificial intelligence to manage massive amounts of data.”

Naturally, there are caveats. The story of the company that had its entire codebase and all backups erased by a rogue agent is quickly passing from fact into legend; a cautionary tale for any business thinking of letting agents roam free in their network.

“I always say, you don’t get what you expect, only what you inspect [so] I think there needs to be some sort of oversight,” Neri says. “Human beings make mistakes, agents may make the same mistake, right? But as you’re doing it at a bigger scale, it may have a huge impact.”

Mistakes happening are “inevitable”, says Neri. Ultimately, though, there has to be an element of trust that the technology will work as intended. Guardrails can help with this, and, from Neri’s perspective, what HPE is doing with GreenLake Intelligence and Marvis Actions means customers can deploy agents with greater confidence to whatever extent they wish.

HPE still makes everything it always did – it has storage appliances, and it has servers a-plenty, and they’re popular too. According to the company’s most recent earnings call, traditional server orders are booming, growing triple digits year-on-year, while Alletra Storage MP orders also increased triple digits.

The conversation, however, will always revert to networking when it comes to visions of and for the future.

“There was a question in a previous session [that was posed] to Rami (Rahim), which said how far are we to really being fully autonomous, and we believe it’s within the next 12 months,” says Neri.

“It’ s not going to be everywhere across the network, but there are many aspects of the network just running itself.”

“Our opportunities are in the three domains: networking, cloud, and AI. Networking is a huge opportunity; we see it is. And it’s driven both at the edge to the campus and branch, the on ramp into the AI. You need that connectivity.”

At some point, every software company reaches the same crossroads. Integrating a capability that the product doesn’t yet have can be time-consuming and costly.

In many cases, it can take between 12 and 18 months to build (depending on the product), while somewhere else in the market, a competitor is already offering it.

This is the point at which product development leads need to decide whether they build it themselves or find a partner who has already developed it.

At first glance, it seems like a straightforward trade-off between control and speed. In practice, however, it’s more complicated than that.

Building in-house is expensive

For product teams, the instinct is to build. If you own the capability, you have full control over how it works, how it’s scaled, and how it integrates into your central solution.

That logic is sound for core capabilities that sit at the heart of what makes the product valuable. However, customers often require capabilities that depend on new features outside of the team’s specialization. That’s where the instinct to build starts to cost more than it delivers.

Take cybersecurity as an example. If a company in an adjacent market wants to offer dark web monitoring, stealer log detection, or credentials exposure alerts on its platform, the underlying data infrastructure is enormously complex to build. It takes years to develop reliable sources, significant investment to maintain them at scale, and dedicated teams to keep pace with criminal ecosystems that constantly evolve.

That’s all before a single line of product code is even written.

The same challenge shows up in other sectors. Fintech teams address it through fraud detection and identity verification; compliance platforms address it through data sourcing. The specifics differ, but the shape of the problem is similar.

The full cost of building is rarely visible initially. Hiring specialists with the right expertise, building and maintaining the infrastructure, discovering (often after launch) that there are sources not being monitored or threats not being caught, and managing the ongoing operational work that follows every proprietary capability indefinitely.

When those costs are added up, it becomes clear that building these capabilities in-house often makes far less financial sense than it first appeared.

What an integrated partnership looks like

With an integrated product partnership, instead of building a capability completely from scratch, the partner’s technology is connected to the product via an API. From the customer’s perspective, it looks and feels like a native feature. There’s no separate login, no new vendor to onboard, and no visible complexity. The plugin simply enables them to gain a new capability inside of a product they already use.

This brings with it the opportunity for premium pricing tiers and natural upselling, giving sales teams something differentiated to talk about. And because customers are getting more value from the product over time, they’re less likely to move to a competitor.

But it’s the speed to market that makes the biggest difference. Delivering new capability in weeks rather than months or years means revenue starts flowing in faster, and along with it, customer feedback that can start informing the roadmap. A customer who starts using a feature this quarter rather than in a year’s time compounds positively across the whole customer base by accelerating revenue, customer feedback, retention, and competitive advantage simultaneously.

Five areas to examine before committing to a partner

Collaborations only deliver on these areas if the right partner is chosen. These five areas are well worth examining carefully:

1. Is the data proprietary? If the partner’s value comes from data (e.g., threat intelligence, dark web content, identity exposure signals, etc.) the key question is whether that data is unique to them, or whether it’s data that is available from multiple vendors. Shared sources create parity with competitors, not an advantage over them. If there’s no clear difference between this partner and a cheaper alternative, customers will eventually reach the same conclusion.
2. Is the integration genuinely well built? A working API isn’t quite the same as a well-designed one. Good partners invest in consistent data structures and engineering teams who are genuinely available when something doesn’t work. Poor integration experiences only serve to slow down launches and create ongoing maintenance burdens.
3. Do the economies scale? Pricing models that make sense at current volumes can become a problem as the customer base grows. Volume-based pricing (where costs scale proportionally with growth) indicates a partner who is aligned with the business’s success. Fixed-fee or rigid per-seat models can start to squeeze margins precisely when the product is performing well. Before signing, forecast what the partnership would cost if adoption grew by 10x.
4. Does the partnership preserve roadmap freedom? A partner who solves a major setback should not create a dependency that limits what the product can do moving forward. It’s worth understanding what would happen if the partner’s technology changed, degraded, or a key integration point was deprecated. Contracts should include service level protections, and the product architecture should not rely entirely on one partner’s continued performance.
5. Will customers notice? Within a few months of launching a new integrated capability, there should be clear evidence that it’s delivering value. Therefore, it’s critical to track security outcomes (e.g., how many exposures were identified, how many credentials were addressed, etc.) alongside business outcomes like adoption rates, revenue generated, and customer retention. If the numbers aren’t adding up, the capability hasn’t earned its place. Set the success criteria before launch, not at the point of renewal.

Regular evaluation

Partnerships require regular and honest evaluation. If data quality has declined, integration support has become more difficult to access, or customer adoption has stalled despite genuine effort, those are all signals worth acting on. The cybersecurity landscape moves quickly, and a partnership that was delivering strong results in its first year may need significant re-evaluation by year three, particularly if the threat environment has evolved and neither side has kept pace.

The best approach is to treat an integrated partnership the same way any feature is treated on the product roadmap, by acting on what the data shows, and being willing to make changes when it stops delivering.

Integrated product partnerships, done well, are one of the most effective ways to accelerate a product roadmap without overextending an engineering team.

The decision to partner rather than build is often the sharper strategic choice. The real key is to be rigorous about selecting who you partner with, being honest about whether it’s working, and being willing to act if the situation changes.