Vendor satisfaction drops as AI forces channel reset

Vendor satisfaction among service providers has fallen sharply.

Indeed, the proportion of ITSPs describing themselves as “very satisfied” with vendor relationships dropped from 37% last year to just 19% this year, according to GTIA’s State of the Channel 2026 report.

However, Carolyn April, VP of research and market intelligence at GTIA, said the findings reflect broader disruption rather than straightforward vendor failure.

“This isn’t a case of vendors failing their partners,” she said. “It’s more of the market, the landscape, the technology has changed so quickly and in such a way that there’s a misalignment between what partners need right now and what they currently offer.”

A changing vendor landscape

GTIA’s April said that AI has triggered the biggest reassessment of vendor relationships the channel has seen in years.

Historically, many MSPs maintained relatively settled vendor portfolios, relying on familiar products and predictable commercial returns. AI has disrupted that stability by introducing new suppliers and entirely new categories of tools.

“There’s a lot of new vendors out there,” said April. “For the first time in a long time, you have a partner community and MSP community that has a whole host of newer products that are offering products that they want to look at, and so the vetting process has really ramped up.”

At the same time, some established vendors such as Microsoft and VMware have frustrated parts of the partner ecosystem through pricing changes and evolving licensing models. However, April argued the bigger issue is structural.

“What that does to business models, and what that does to the types of benefits the partners are going to be looking for, and what’s going to benefit them the most to help them drive growth for their own business – those things are misaligned with some of the older programmes partners currently have in place,” said April.

AI could reshape MSP pricing

One of the biggest unresolved questions emerging from the AI transition is pricing. Traditional MSP charging structures based on users, devices or labour are increasingly being questioned as automation and AI agents begin taking over operational tasks.

April said both vendors and partners are still trying to work out what sustainable pricing models will look like in an AI-driven services market.

“The pricing model or models that are going to work best are largely unknown, both on the vendor side and on the partner side. That’s going to be probably one of the biggest headaches that needs to be dealt with over the next couple of years,” she said.

Customers are also likely to question why pricing should remain unchanged if AI reduces the amount of human labour involved in delivering services.

“In the old way of doing things, the per-user, per-device model – I think that’s going to get blown up,” said April.

That may accelerate the move towards consumption-based or outcome-led pricing models, something the industry has discussed since the rise of cloud computing but never fully embraced.

Hybrid models remain dominant

Despite years of discussion around the move to pure-play managed services, GTIA’s findings show the UK and Ireland channel remains firmly hybrid.

Most providers still combine managed services, consulting, product sales, and project work. Rather than converging around a single model, MSPs appear to be diversifying revenue streams to manage uncertainty and changing customer demand.

Austen Clark, CEO at Jera IT, explained to ChannelPro that vendor relationships have shifted significantly over the past five years as suppliers matured and became increasingly investment-focused.

“One point of view is that this is very welcome; we have stable and reliable solutions that are deployed repeatedly at a competitive rate,” he said. “The other view is we have seen a decline in product innovation and advancement – more tinkering with updates to front interfaces than step change progress.”

Clark also pointed to growing frustration around cybersecurity tooling, where overlapping products and market saturation have made it harder for MSPs to differentiate.

MSPs rethink where they add value

The findings suggest the vendor satisfaction decline is less about individual suppliers and more about uncertainty over where MSPs fit in an AI-driven market.

Clark believes AI is already reshaping how MSPs engage with customers. “The MSP industry was born out of ‘solving’ problems,” he said. “There is evidence with the development of AI that this has changed; problems once again are being solved by MSP organizations through engaging with their clients.”

That may also explain why vendors are coming under greater scrutiny. MSPs are no longer just looking for reliable technology platforms or predictable partner margins. Increasingly, they are evaluating which suppliers can help them stay relevant as customer expectations evolve around AI adoption.

For Strahan, that uncertainty sits beneath much of the frustration reflected in the GTIA data, concluding: “AI is creating genuine opportunity, but it is also forcing many MSPs to ask some difficult questions about their own future business models,” he said.

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Christine has been a tech journalist for over 20 years, 10 of which she spent exclusively covering the IT Channel. From 2006-2009 she worked as the editor of Channel Business, before moving on to ChannelPro where she was editor and, latterly, senior editor.

Since 2016, she has been a freelance writer, editor, and copywriter and continues to cover the channel in addition to broader IT themes. Additionally, she provides media training explaining what the channel is and why it’s important to businesses.