With a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and noise about the channel’s role, it is interesting that HPE boss Antonio Neri recently claimed the company’s tie-up with Nvidia for HPE’s Private Cloud AI “makes the channel relevant in AI for the first time”.
It gave rise to the question of whether Neri was entirely accurate in what he said. How could it be accurate when there has been so much buzz about the channel’s involvement in AI from other vendors for so many months? Has it all been hype or does the channel already have relevance in AI? And if so, where and how?
A tool to help partners
Tom Henson, managing director at Emerge Digital, feels Neri’s comment is inaccurate for most channel companies. “The channel has been very proactive in promoting, educating on, and now utilising and advocating for the use of AI,” he says. “It is widely acknowledged within the channel that AI is still in the early stages, but its true potential is rapidly being unlocked.”
He cites Microsoft and Copilot as a prime example, with the adoption of Copilot “being strongly supported and encouraged by the channel, particularly by our own initiatives”.
Henson adds that, to remain relevant, the channel must continue to listen to client needs and challenge vendors to provide effective solutions that address business challenges. “AI represents a significant new technological frontier, yet the process of integrating and leveraging it remains consistent with traditional technological adoptions,” he says.
According to Sara Wilkes, chief operating officer at Agilitas, the channel is excited about AI because it will help partners find new ways to boost operational efficiency and analyse vast amounts of data, allowing businesses to effectively allocate resources towards key areas such as staff training and development.
However, she notes that despite its advantages, “there is nervousness surrounding security, data privacy, governance and the effect on workforces, not to mention the cost and resources required to evaluate and integrate AI solutions”, which “can make the reality of adopting AI in your own organisations seem distant”.
On the issue of whether channel businesses are relevant in AI, Wilkes replies: “There is relevance already, but it’s not widespread yet.” She accepts there’s an element of hype, but AI has proven that it’s here to stay.
“There is a risk that if you ignore AI altogether, you may find yourself at a competitive disadvantage both in terms of your customer experience and the ability to attract and retain great talent,” she adds.
Wilkes says that whether channel partners are specialising in AI services as a go-to-market strategy or adopting AI tools within their organisations to improve operational efficiency, employees must be prepared and supported. By establishing clear communication channels, addressing employee concerns, offering training programmes and developing awareness initiatives, partners can take effective steps towards bridging this confidence gap, she adds.
It is critical that the channel unlocks AI’s full potential to optimise its uses in the future
Ralf Jordan, Lenovo
Education programmes can help educate employees on the benefits, relevance, key uses and limitations of AI technologies, ensuring those at all levels understand AI’s role within the organisation. “Through continuous learning opportunities, channel leaders can equip their workforce with the necessary skills to leverage AI effectively to support key operations and processes, ultimately ensuring their business remains relevant in the new world of AI,” says Wilkes.
Ralf Jordan, vice-president of channel EMEA at Lenovo, stresses that AI is not new to the channel, but the opportunities for resellers and users are “just beginning”. Lenovo is collaborating with vendors such as Microsoft, Qualcomm and Nvidia to build next-generation product roadmaps and solution portfolios together. But, he adds: “It is critical that the channel unlocks AI’s full potential to optimise its uses in the future.”
Vendors such as Lenovo have vertical expertise in AI solutions, but “partners play a huge role in installing and managing these solutions, and getting customers to realise the potential of AI in their business”, according to Jordan.
In their role as trusted advisers, partners have a critical part to play in identifying and executing AI solutions to meet specific customer needs and helping scale the technology for businesses.
Extracting value
Francis O’Haire, chief technology officer (CTO) at DataSolutions, says a lot of the AI hype is around public, consumer-oriented, content-generating AI, such as ChatGPT, but there are valid privacy and security concerns around users possibly feeding AIs with confidential corporate data.
“There is a channel opportunity to help organisations protect themselves against such behaviour, whether through employee training and/or the use of appropriate security tools,” says O’Haire.
With a whole ecosystem of technology evolving around AI, she says: “Partners have an opportunity to source and curate a technology stack and the related skills and services to help customers gain rapid results from their AI projects, without going through the complex and lengthy process of evaluating and learning the tools themselves.”
The consensus appears to be that whatever the hype, there is a reality underneath it all. Eric Gourmelen, Arrow’s vice-president and CTO of Global ArrowSphere Cloud and AI, says: “The channel plays an important role in the potential to extract value from AI in terms of efficiencies, productivity and time to market.
“It’s one of the fastest ways to bring new technologies to market and plays a key role in the development of new AI products and solutions, provides additional go-to-market routes, enables and simplifies the sale and management of AI solutions, and can easily get those solutions into the hands of users and train them at scale.”
Ranjan Singh, chief product officer at Kaseya, observes that while AI-based tools are relatively new to the channel: “There are numerous use cases where both managed service providers [MSPs] and their customers could benefit.” MSPs are already using and implementing AI tools for their own benefit and that of their customers, and this will only increase.
He observes that the AI tools channel partners use today are hosted in the public cloud. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon, given that the economics of delivering AI need to continue to improve to drive adoption,” says Singh.
While HPE’s private cloud AI may make it possible to host AI tools in the private cloud, he says: “It’s far from the only deployment model in the MSP space. It doesn’t help drive down the cost of delivery and improve profitability, the number one driver in this channel.”
Geoff Greenlaw, vice-president of EMEA and LatAm channel at Pure Storage, describes the suggestion that the channel is only recently relevant for AI as “a stretch”, adding: “While there’s some hype, many partners have long been successfully using AI both for themselves and to advise customers on implementations.”
The channel plays an important role in the potential to extract value from AI in terms of efficiencies, productivity and time to market
Eric Gourmelen, Arrow
Pure Storage already works with partners that have taken advantage of AI, using it to drive business efficiencies, create recurring revenue streams through predictive analytics that highlight the most profitable accounts, and gain unique insights into customers’ environments to identify growth areas.
Like others, Greenlaw cites the channel’s potential as a trusted adviser to help customers implement the right technology to support successful AI projects. For example, some are helping customers navigate different vendor offerings in flexible consumption models.
“AI is such a fast-moving issue that no customer should be tied down or locked into a tech stack for an AI project. What delivers value in month one might be irrelevant by month three, and partners can help customers work through this,” he says.
Emily Fallon, vice-president of international channel marketing at RingCentral, doesn’t beat around the bush. “Absolutely AI has relevance with the channel,” she says. Any new technology goes through a hype cycle and IT leaders are navigating whether AI “is something worth investing in or a passing fad. With AI, we’re starting to see tangible benefits, especially for the channel.”
Generative AI (GenAI) is helping to streamline channel operations by automating time-consuming administrative tasks and generating high-quality content. Fallon agrees with Greenlaw that partners are using AI-driven insights into customer behaviours to optimise performance and deliver different personalised experiences.
“One way I see the channel being able to reap the benefits of AI evolution and adoption is through strategic partnerships,” she adds. “Establishing strong relationships with AI technology vendors early on allows channel leaders to have access to new innovations and provide a broader range of AI products and services.”
Channel businesses can also build credibility by establishing thought leadership in the AI space. “Building a thought leadership platform also provides an opportunity to showcase success stories and return on investment examples from AI implementations, demonstrating tangible benefits and building customer confidence,” says Fallon.
AI for AI’s sake?
Nicole Reineke, product manager and director of AI strategy at N-able, cites research by the company that found 75% of MSPs are already integrating AI to help with tasks, including customer service and assisting engineering in code generation. But she stresses that “it’s not a case of including AI for AI’s sake”, pointing out that 81% of MSPs believe incorporating AI can improve enhanced monitoring and anomaly detection in their practice.
The top AI opportunities are seen as streamlining processes, improving cost and efficiency, reducing human error and improving security. It was also clear that while MSPs are adopting AI, they are generally applying it to internal processes, rather than direct customer interaction.
There’s pressure on MSPs to remain relevant in the new world of AI because many understand that “missing out on AI adoption could mean losing out to competitors that are getting it right”, says Reineke. But there are several challenges they could face in adopting AI, including its complexity, a lack of expertise, investment, regulation, and data privacy issues.
“[Juggling concerns] can be overwhelming, so vendors need to be able to support MSPs to help identify the most appropriate places to integrate AI into their business,” says Reineke. This helps to provide a clear, tailored experience for each partner, recognising their unique challenges and goals. “Implementing AI can help businesses in the channel stay competitive by unlocking new efficiencies, enhancing security and delivering a superior service to their customers,” she concludes.
Mountaha Ndiaye, director of EMEA programmes at Hyland, says most of the recent market buzz has been around the likes of HPE, Nvidia, Dell and Apple. But he notes that over the past few months, various corporate strategies have been presented to the ecosystem of partners. “[This indicates] a clear lack of agreement, or at least confidence, in where the market is heading for many providers,” he adds.
Ndiaye believes it’s important to shift emphasis from workplace/desktop AI to back-end system AI: “This transition highlights the importance of integrating AI into business data, private cloud environments and real-world applications. Ensuring that AI solutions are effectively integrated with business data, and so able to provide tangible insight for users, is fundamental to any sort of meaningful success.”
Implementing AI can help businesses in the channel stay competitive
Nicole Reineke, N-able
He warns that the speed and breadth at which AI functionality is developing means channel partners can’t try to be all things to everyone. “They need to focus on the AI-driven elements that are most relevant to them and their target audience,” he says.
Jay Snyder, senior vice-president of partners and alliances at Dynatrace, disagrees with Neri’s suggestion that it is only now that the channel has become relevant in AI, saying that while the release of ChatGPT triggered a hype cycle around GenAI, it’s important to remember that AI is not a new technology, and it has long held relevance for the channel. Snyder points to customers turning to channel partners for more than a decade to help implement AI and embrace capabilities such as robotic process automation and DevOps automation through their business.
ChatGPT has encouraged customers to look at the potential of GenAI in multiple IT use cases, saying it can reduce operational costs and accelerate digital transformation. But they are “also alert to the risks, and understand the need to establish guardrails to ensure GenAI can be adopted securely, efficiently and strategically”.
That’s where channel partners can play a crucial role in helping customers to understand how they can use AI in its various forms, such as predictive and causal, to “enrich prompts with detailed context and precision about the current state of their IT environment, and instantly validate the outputs produced by GenAI”, according to ChatGPT.
The channel can also help customers conduct risk assessments and establish internal usage policies to ensure workforces can use GenAI safely and securely.
“If they get their offering right,” Snyder adds, “channel partners will be poised to maximise the revenue opportunity of AI and deliver lasting value for their customers.”
