If you polled people for the two words that best summarised 2025, the vast majority would be very likely to reply, “Trump” and “AI”. It’s hard to believe anything else would come anywhere close to those two, and judging by the first couple of months of 2026, it might prove very difficult for anything else to dislodge them in the next 12 months.
In the tech industry, artificial intelligence (AI) has subsumed everything else. No wonder, given the eye-watering sums being pledged to AI investment. Gartner recently forecast that worldwide spending on AI would hit $1.5tn by the end of 2025 and surpass $2tn in 2026.
Nevertheless, the consensus seems to be that while AI will continue to dominate, there may be a change in emphasis in 2026.
According to Christian Nagele, chief strategy officer at Inforcer, the channel “has a very different mindset” going into 2026 compared with 2025, which was “dominated by noise and hype, particularly around AI, and while there is still certainly excitement, the tone has already shifted”.
He notes that vendors and partners “are looking less at hypothetical possibilities, and more at how technology can deliver clear, useful business results”. While AI will continue to dominate the headlines, “businesses in the channel are already becoming far more selective about what they take seriously”, he claims – a trend that Inforcer expects to see grow in 2026. “Futuristic claims and ‘too good to be true’ promises are no longer enough to spark real interest,” adds Nagele.
Organisations want tools and technology that make everyday work a little easier, he adds, reducing admin, improving communication and taking irritating tasks off people’s plates to increase efficiencies. “In other words, the managed service provider [MSP] channel will start to focus on what it does best again. Small gains repeated often will be the theme of early 2026.”
Become a trusted AI adviser
Dean Watson, lead solutions expert for secure networking at Infinigate UK & Ireland, believes 2026 will provide “a key opportunity for channel partners to position themselves as trusted AI advisers”. He argues that AI, including agentic AI, will reshape business operations over the next 12 months, creating new opportunities for efficiency and data-driven decision-making. “However, as with all disruptive technologies, adoption must be carefully managed to balance opportunity with responsibility,” he adds.
Watson agrees that AI is at the apex of the hype cycle, “generating inflated expectations across the market”. Usage models are evolving rapidly, and it’s likely there will be consolidation next year, along with clearer licensing frameworks and stronger regulatory governance. “This will allow organisations to adopt AI with greater confidence while mitigating risks related to bias, security and black-box decision-making,” he claims.
Watson suggests channel partners could play a role in helping businesses integrate AI safely and effectively into their operations. “In doing so, the role of the channel will shift from simply supplying technology to delivering strategic insight, compliance support, and risk management services that maximise AI’s potential while safeguarding business operations,” he adds.
According to Aron Brand, chief technology officer (CTO) at Ctera, the defining story of 2026 won’t be whether there’s life beyond AI, but the urgent need to address the fragile foundations upon which we’ve built our digital world. “The blind rush to adopt AI has exposed a massive governance crisis, revealing that our data is neither as resilient nor as private as we believed,” he says.
The most immediate threat, he says, is shadow AI. Employees have poured sensitive corporate knowledge into public AI tools in the name of productivity, “creating an ungoverned, discoverable copy of their company’s intellectual property on third-party servers. This quiet data bleed has become an enormous legal and security liability”.
That internal risk, says Brand, “is compounded by an external one: the single cloud of failure”.
“We traded the internet’s decentralised design for a few centralised hyperscalers, leaving our digital infrastructure dangerously brittle. As recent major outages proved, a minor error can now trigger a global shutdown,” he says.
Brand believes these two issues will converge in 2026. “The smart response will be a strategic reclamation of control,” he argues. “We will see a decisive shift toward hybrid resilience, with organisations replicating data across on-premises and multicloud environments to survive inevitable failures. Simultaneously, enterprises will pull AI workloads back inside their own security perimeters, creating private, governed spaces for AI interaction.”
Simplification [of AI] will be the defining opportunity, as partners help customers reduce risk, improve efficiency and enable secure remote work in increasingly distributed environments
Antoine Jebara, JumpCloud
Antoine Jebara, co-founder and general manager of channel and alliances at JumpCloud, accepts that AI will remain central to the conversation in 2026, but says “it won’t be the whole story”. The channel is evolving beyond break-fix and reselling models. “A sharper distinction will emerge between partners focused on identity-centric, AI-driven security, and those harnessing AI-agentic workflows to drive operational productivity,” he says.
At the same time, complexity will continue to be one of the biggest challenges for channel companies. The shift from a device-centric to an identity-centric security model will accelerate, he predicts, with organisations demanding more centralised, seamless control across cloud applications, networks and endpoints. “Simplification will be the defining opportunity, as partners help customers reduce risk, improve efficiency and enable secure remote work in increasingly distributed environments,” he adds.
On the downside, Jebara believes consolidation across the MSP landscape could put a dampener on early-2026 optimism. “While some mergers will strengthen capabilities, others risk creating disruption if not carefully managed. The partners that thrive will be those that move beyond transactional relationships, maintain trust and consistency, and act as trusted advisers, guiding customers through AI adoption while ensuring strong, resilient security foundations,” he says.
That viewpoint is slightly at odds with the one put forward by Greg Jones, senior vice-president of enablement for EMEA and North America at Kaseya, who believes consolidation due to mergers and acquisitions “will create a landscape dominated by powerful hyperscaler MSPs and agile, highly specialised firms that deliver real, bespoke value to their clients”.
Opportunities and challenges
He says the channel can be optimistic about where the MSP industry is heading in 2026: “We are entering a new era of opportunity. For the first time, IT spend in the SME market is outpacing enterprise investment. This is an incredible opportunity for MSPs that are ready to innovate and grow.”
Nevertheless, there are a couple of factors that could take the shine off 2026 if MSPs are not prepared.
Skills shortages continue to be an issue, and finding and retaining talent remains challenging. More vendor consolidation will also mean more disruption. Tool pricing, integrations and support could all be affected.
As enterprise buyers grow sharper and demand measurable ROI and transparency in their AI tools, survival won’t come down to hype, it will come down to relevance
Adam Markowitz, Drata
“Commoditisation in the MSP market is real, with margins being eroded,” he adds. “MSPs that fail to shift toward outcome-based services will see their profitability squeezed. At the same time, MSPs are facing rising costs as everything is getting more expensive. This is a particular issue for those without strong margins or clear value in their offerings.”
Adam Markowitz, co-founder and CEO of Drata, predicts “a reckoning” for a flood of AI vendors in 2026. “The market is oversaturated, with too many players claiming to be the future foundation of AI. But as enterprise buyers grow sharper and demand measurable ROI [return on investment] and transparency in their AI tools, survival won’t come down to hype, it will come down to relevance,” he says.
The winners, according to Markowitz, will be those solving distinct, high-value problems that their competitors overlook. “Just as automation transformed compliance from a legacy GRC [governance, risk and compliance] pain point into a growth engine, the next wave of AI leaders will emerge from applying models in novel ways that actually move the needle for businesses. The rest will consolidate, be acquired, or vanish altogether,” he adds.
Paul Jackson, director of channel sales at Foxit, believes the salient issue will be “whether partners can turn AI from a promise into something operational and measurable”. He notes that AI initiatives are already stalling at the document layer because data is locked in formats that aren’t ready for automation. The opportunity for the channel is “shifting away from selling standalone tools towards positioning document platforms as critical infrastructure for AI-driven workflows”.
Aside from AI, he predicts that security, compliance and data sovereignty will be front and centre. “Customers want guarantees on where their data lives, how it’s governed, and how solutions fit into existing compliance frameworks. In Europe especially, those questions will shape buying decisions far more than flashy AI features,” says Jackson.
Asked if there could be any potential dampener in the first quarter, he cites uncertainty around return on investment. Businesses want clear evidence that generative AI and agentic AI will remove manual work, reduce risk and fund itself. “The partners that succeed in 2026 will be those that lead with real-world use cases, cost displacement and compliance confidence, not just AI capability,” says Jackson. “If they get that right, the mood should be cautiously optimistic rather than overhyped.”
Will the AI bubble burst?
For Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti Data Centres, early 2026 feels like we are living through a rerun of the dot com boom – only this time all we can hear is “AI”.
“There is no doubt that AI-powered applications are really powerful, but there is also clear overinvestment in AI infrastructure, inflated valuations and a lot of projects chasing headlines rather than hard outcomes,” he says.
Laing warns that the channel “should learn from the early 2000s”, in that “sustainable value comes from solving business problems, not simply rebadging everything as AI-powered”.
Anshuman Singh, CEO of HGS UK, believes a correction is imminent for AI. “If 2023-2025 were ‘the years AI rose’, 2026 will be ‘the year AI discovered gravity’. This doesn’t mean that AI will crash and fail – rather, it highlights that 2026 will bring a degree of realism and stability to the AI market,” he says.
“Contrary to popular belief,” he remarks, “the AI market follows the same trends as all other products and services, albeit on a much larger scale than most. There are already market indicators that AI investment is likely to reduce. In fact, some key players in the AI space are offering free AI services in tandem with bundles from organisations in other industries, such as mobile phones, a sign that there’s a race for customer acquisitions.”
Brandon Thomas, vice-president and head of channel at RingCentral, takes a more optimistic view of AI, arguing it will remain front and centre in 2026, but the channel will face a challenge to ensure “we don’t create a two-speed economy whereby AI-mature organisations accelerate ahead in productivity and customer experience, while smaller and less digitally mature businesses fall behind”.
He adds: “Today, only 16% of UK organisations are using AI in day-to-day operations, while a third are still stuck in pilots.”
Thomas argues there is “a clear opportunity for channel partners to position themselves as AI transformation guides, helping customers prioritise use cases, address governance and skills gaps, and move from experimentation to real outcomes”, and by doing so, “partners can differentiate themselves and build deeper, longer-term value with their clients”.
Ian Kilpatrick, non-executive director at Northamber, says there’s nothing novel in something in “the corporate hype zone” getting most of the marketing focus and visibility. But he adds that, as is usual, different market sectors follow different dynamics. Enterprise, mid-enterprise and SME follow different budget and purchasing cycles.
He identifies cyber security and the development and deployment of solutions to support remote and hybrid work, particularly in the areas of unified communications and audiovisual implementation and integration, as areas that continue to grow.
Nevertheless, he acknowledges that some significant commentators have predicted the potential collapse of the AI bubble. “If that does occur, as previous collapses have shown, that could cause major shock waves,” he says.
Enough of the empty promises
While Jon Lingard, global head of alliances and channels at New Relic, accepts that AI “will be the dominant gravitational force” in 2026, the game will change from adoption to autonomy. “Customers are now moving beyond simple chatbots and ‘agents for anything’ to operationalising outcomes, where AI doesn’t just chat, it acts. Partners who can agentically connect systems of action, increase the value from those existing investments (rather than ripping and replacing) and show meaningful business impact will get a seat at the table for AI standardisation.”
But there is a requirement for the wider AI ecosystem to stand up and satisfy concerns around governance, risk, compliance and cost control. “The complexity of governing non-deterministic AI agents – where you don’t know why an agent made a decision – is a massive risk, so expect an increase in focus here,” he adds. “The winners will emerge with strong credibility to observe, connect and govern AI in this space.”
He agrees with Jackson at Foxit that the biggest dampener in 2026 “will be the inevitable ‘ROI reckoning’ that is coming”. After two years of experimentation, chief financial officers are demanding proof of value. He points to the “concerning gap” between consumer AI success and the low ROI of business AI implementations. “If partners cannot demonstrate tangible business value, budgets will freeze and even lead to cuts going into 2027,” Lingard warns.
Those still selling ‘magic AI’ will find themselves exposed and locked out of serious enterprise conversations. Transparency sells AI, not hype
Kit Cox, Enate
He cites predictions from Forrester that 2026 is the year AI “trades its tiara for a hard hat”, adding: “The dampener will be felt by those still selling hype rather than operational reality.”
Paul Flannery, vice-president of international channel sales at Epicor, agrees that this year will see the focus turn from experimentation to execution. “2025 saw partners navigating AI-enabled workflows and cloud-first strategies,” he observes. “Now, customers expect these AI initiatives to deliver measurable outcomes. In Q1 of 2026, vendors and partners will focus on accelerating time-to-value, helping customers to embed technology deeply into their operations.”
While AI “will remain the headline act”, it won’t be the only story. “As AI adoption increases, so do the risks. For that reason, I expect to see cyber security and compliance become a key priority in 2026. Partners that can integrate security and governance into their offerings will build trust with customers and effectively differentiate themselves within the sector,” says Flannery.
That point is echoed by Bettina Vahl, vice-president of the global channel at Yubico, who says AI will be a major discussion point for cyber security resellers and distributors because it presents significant risks to data security globally. “The cyber security landscape is inherently volatile, exacerbated by geopolitical uncertainties – and this dynamic environment sees new threat actors emerging daily. Malicious actors remain a constant concern, and AI has dramatically simplified their operations,” says Vahl.
In the past, complex skills were required to execute cyber attacks, but AI has lowered the barrier to entry, resulting in a multiplication of attack volume and frequency. Additionally, a substantial amount of sensitive data is being fed into AI platforms, without adequate protection.
“This lack of security means that employees leveraging AI for work purposes could unintentionally expose valuable and confidential information to third parties, including bad actors,” she notes. “In response, enterprises are increasingly focusing on securing their data and system access, turning to their trusted cyber security channel advisers for solutions to meet growing regulatory compliance demands.”
Kit Cox, CTO and founder of Enate, predicts that “after years of being dazzled by ‘AI-powered’ promises, many businesses are wary of technology that promises the world but fails to deliver on expectations”. The mantra for 2026 will be, “Don’t buy promises, buy proof.”
He expects service and operations teams to swap glossy requests for proposals for trials, demanding clear ROI metrics that justify the investment. “Technologies that can genuinely cut manual work, reduce exceptions or speed up approvals, must also show their impact with hard numbers and, most importantly, real-life cost savings.”
Cox warns that those “still selling ‘magic AI’ will find themselves exposed and locked out of serious enterprise conversations”, adding: “Transparency sells AI, not hype.”
