ChannelBuzz.ca

Meredith Payne, TD SYNNNEX’s vice president of digital growth and customer success

For decades, the distributor portal has been a central part of how IT resellers do business. Partners log in to check inventory, retrieve pricing, build quotes and place orders.

But what happens when those capabilities become available directly within the applications partners already use, or through AI agents that can perform some of those tasks automatically?

That’s the direction TD SYNNEX is taking with PartnerFirst, its digital platform for channel partners. And according to Meredith Payne, TD SYNNNEX’s vice president of digital growth and customer success, the goal isn’t to force every partner into a new way of working, but to make the distributor’s capabilities available wherever they make the most sense.

Speaking with ChannelBuzz.ca at TD SYNNEX Inspire Canada in Toronto, Payne discussed the company’s evolving approach to digital commerce, the growing role of AI agents, and how partners can begin adopting automation without fundamentally changing their existing workflows.

TD SYNNEX says more than 4,000 Canadian partner organizations, representing more than 12,000 users, are using PartnerFirst each month. As adoption grows, the company is expanding the ways partners can interact with the platform.

For partners who prefer to work directly within PartnerFirst, the company is introducing AI agents that can help with tasks including product discovery, quoting and ordering.

Agent Bridge provides another option, allowing partners to configure predefined workflows that automate repetitive tasks. And for partners already building their own AI applications, TD SYNNEX’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration makes PartnerFirst capabilities accessible from those environments.

Payne said the company is seeing early success with relatively straightforward applications, particularly quoting and ordering workflows that previously required significant manual effort.

Rather than beginning with a fully autonomous process, she recommends that partners identify repetitive tasks consuming substantial staff time, automate one of them, evaluate the results and expand from there.

But the longer-term possibilities go considerably further.

Payne said some partners are already considering agentic commerce environments in which AI agents could handle purchasing transactions without routine human intervention. While she declined to offer a timeline, she suggested that such capabilities may be closer than some expect.

The conversation also explored how TD SYNNEX is incorporating partner feedback into development, including the needs of Canadian partners and the different industries they serve.

And Payne discussed the company’s own experience as what it calls “Customer Zero,” with employees building and experimenting with AI agents internally before lessons from that work inform partner-facing offerings.

Beyond AI, TD SYNNEX is also bringing MyShop, its reseller-branded e-commerce storefront offering, to Canada. Payne described a deliberately hands-on rollout, with participating partners receiving support to customize the experience for their businesses and customers.

As PartnerFirst evolves, Payne said its success ultimately comes down to whether the capabilities help partners grow their businesses, whether by improving productivity, expanding their services or reaching new customers.

In this edition of In the Channel, we discuss:

• Why TD SYNNEX is moving beyond the traditional distributor portal.
• How PartnerFirst, Agent Bridge and MCP integrations serve partners at different stages of AI adoption.
• Where partners are seeing early benefits from automating quoting and ordering.
• How close the channel may be to more autonomous, agent-driven commerce.
• Why repetitive, time-consuming tasks are a good starting point for AI.
• How TD SYNNEX incorporates Canadian partner feedback into its development process.
• What the company’s internal AI experimentation is teaching it.
• The Canadian rollout of MyShop and the broader business impact of PartnerFirst.

Listen to the full conversation below.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

For decades, one of the defining features of the relationship between IT distributors and their reseller partners has been the distributor portal. Need to check inventory, get pricing, build a quote, place an order? Log in, find what you need, get it done.

But what happens when partners no longer need to go to the distributor’s systems to do those things? What if they can bring those capabilities into the applications they already use, or even have AI agents handle some of the work on their behalf?

That’s a big part of the vision behind TD SYNNEX’s PartnerFirst platform, which was a major focus at the distributor’s Inspire Canada event in Toronto last week.

TD SYNNEX says more than 4,000 Canadian partner organizations are now using PartnerFirst every month, and it’s expanding the platform with AI agents, configurable automated workflows and integrations that allow partners to connect their own AI tools directly to the distributor’s systems.

And the company sees a future where more of the routine work of interacting with distribution, including quoting and ordering, can happen automatically, potentially without a human needing to intervene at every step.

I sat down with Meredith Payne at Inspire to discuss that evolution, how TD SYNNEX is accommodating partners at very different stages of AI adoption, and what the company is learning from putting AI to work within its own business.

We also discussed the arrival of MyShop in Canada, how PartnerFirst is being adapted to the needs of different partners, and what the company is seeing in terms of adoption and business impact.

Let’s get right into it. My conversation with Meredith Payne of TD SYNNEX.

Robert Dutt: Meredith, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Meredith Payne: Of course. Yeah, I’m happy to be here.

Robert Dutt: I wanted to start with MyShop, since that was sort of discussed off the top, and then we’ll get into the PartnerFirst strategy.

Jessica McDowell announced this morning it’s launching in Canada. Let’s start there. How does what you do with MyShop differ from the traditional distributor-backed partner web store? What’s the timing for the launch, and what will Canadian partners be able to do that wasn’t possible before?

Meredith Payne: Sure. With MyShop, our goal is really to help bring the technology to our partners so they can leverage the expertise and stand that up, and be able to seamlessly drive that digital-first experience for their customers.

So as she mentioned, this is something that we’ve seen a lot of success in when we look at North America as a whole.

And with Canada, we’re looking at a very thoughtful launch. And so each of the partners that are coming on and starting to deploy MyShop within their own business, we’re handholding them very much through that process, making sure that the experience is set up exactly how they’re looking for it to be.

We’ve got opportunities to customize based on how much they want to offer their customers, how much flexibility they want to allow for them to go in and do things on their own, versus where they need to set up guardrails.

And so we’re really excited about MyShop expanding because, again, it just gives more of that opportunity for our partners to leverage the technology, using the expertise that we have already and leveraging some of what we’re already seeing success around, to ultimately grow their business, both with their existing customer base, but also going out and finding new customers as well through that offering.

Robert Dutt: It sounds like it’s a fairly bespoke process. You’re going deliberately with select partners. Is that about Canada?

Meredith Payne: That’s right. Yep, that’s right. So certainly continuing to expand, but those partners that are leaning in with us with this launch are getting that full customized experience to make sure that it’s successful.

We’re getting lots of feedback from the partners that are already working with us, and it’s been great so far. So we’re looking forward to seeing that continue to expand.

Robert Dutt: Okay. More broadly with PartnerFirst, one of the most interesting things, I think, about the direction things seem to be going recently is the move towards agents, MCP integrations.

Traditionally, it was partners went to the distributor’s portal to get things done, and there are a variety of opinions in the partner community about that particular model.

Now it seems like we’re talking a lot more about bringing what you guys do and what you’re able to do into the applications, the agents, the systems that partners are already using.

Is that sort of ultimately, at least at this moment, the goal for where you’re taking PartnerFirst?

Meredith Payne: Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. I should be interviewing you.

Our approach with PartnerFirst, and specifically the way that we’re leveraging AI, is to meet partners where they are, the way that they work, right?

And what we have found is that it just looks different for everybody.

So we do still very much have those partners within our ecosystem who come into our system and they work that way, and it works well for them. And we’re not looking to disrupt those workflows.

Of course, we have ideas on how we can continue to improve there and work alongside them.

When we think about how AI is leveraged, Agent Bridge is a great way for them to kind of start entering into this game.

Okay, how do I leverage some of these predefined workflows that we’ve worked to build and implement those into my business, so we can start doing it in maybe a lower-risk, I guess, environment is how I would put it.

And then MCP. We do have partners who are a little bit more advanced, already been developing their own AI experiences.

And so with MCP, now they can connect those experiences directly into PartnerFirst.

And again, we’re not pushing them out of those workflows that work well for them and that they’ve spent time developing, but really meeting them where they are and helping to move forward together in that way.

So we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, I’d say, from the approach itself.

And our goal is, yeah, we’re not looking to push everybody down one single path, but very much meet them where they are and work in the way that fits their business.

Robert Dutt: Fifty-odd actions available today in Digital Bridge MCP. What are you hearing from partners are some of the most useful things, the places where folks get started and actually start getting things done in that mode?

Meredith Payne: Yeah. I’ll tell you, it’s the simple tasks.

It’s the things where you might say, “Oh, that sounds like something maybe quite easy,” but how do they start leveraging these AI agents for quoting, for ordering on their behalf?

It’s the things that they’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of hours with their people, and now they can take these workflows and really, truly put those folks within their business on higher-value work.

So that’s where we’re seeing the most success so far, is just taking those everyday repeatable tasks that very much took a lot of the time from their teams and moving that over.

And then as they see that working, then let’s adopt one more. Let’s continue to expand.

But again, it feels lower risk because they can monitor how this is working. Are there things that we need to tweak and to correct before expanding into that next workflow?

Robert Dutt: For that partner who’s at that other end, that far end of really having integrated AI into their own operations and a firm understanding of MCP and integrating that into their workflows, how far are we off, do you think, from a point where that kind of partner can realistically hand off as much as possible?

Obviously, there are going to be some things in a distributor-to-partner relationship that require human intervention.

But how far are we off from basically, I’m not going to have to log in to do this. I can do it all agentically to some degree?

Meredith Payne: I would say the answer is going to be different for everybody, right?

So based on the workflow that they have in place and what they’re truly doing in that, it’s going to look a little bit different for everybody.

But what we are seeing is that, as we’re looking ahead, partners are talking about having a true agentic commerce system in place.

And so they can truly hand over that ordering without having a human in the loop and feel confident about the results that they’re going to see.

So I don’t know that I could give you a timeframe on what that would look like for every single partner, but I think we’re a lot closer than maybe some would expect.

Robert Dutt: For the partner, you touched on kind of those early friction-removing integrations. For a smaller partner who’s just dipping their toe into it, are there any common or best first steps in terms of, this is what I should look at doing first?

Meredith Payne: Start with the task that you see your team spending the most time on, and the ones that are repeatable, right?

So it’s about asking that question: What are your teams spending their time on each and every day? What of that is repeatable?

And let’s take that and move it so they can focus on the higher-value work.

Robert Dutt: Okay. You guys have a huge scale across North America and globally, but we’ve heard throughout the day that the Canadian market has its own requirements, whether that’s regionally, linguistically, et cetera. And Canadian partners can sometimes operate differently.

As PartnerFirst becomes more embedded in partners’ workflows, how do you make sure it reflects that reality, kind of finding that balance between a global platform and local relevance?

Meredith Payne: Sure. That’s a great question.

And I would just say everything that we’re doing is done very thoughtfully, right?

So one piece of the approach that we’ve taken is by listening.

We’ve got a really great community of partners across both the U.S. and Canada who lean in and they give us a lot of feedback.

And oftentimes we’re building these capabilities together, truly, right? So they’re involved from the beginning. They’re part of the POC. We’re getting that feedback real time.

So when you see something announced, maybe on the stage at a big event like this, many partners in the room, they’ve been part of the process, right? We’ve done it together.

And so that’s no different for Canada.

And if there’s nuances that come up and things of, have we thought about this, or is that something that we’re building into the process, we can get it early, not having to fix it after we’ve already deployed that capability.

Robert Dutt: Beyond language and local currency, what have you found have been some of the things that the Canadian team are asking for, thinking about, that maybe hadn’t been on the map beforehand?

Meredith Payne: You know, it certainly varies by partner.

I don’t know if it’s as much a difference to the Canadian team from the U.S. as it is what type of customer are they supporting.

Because that’s where we kind of see some of those differences, is what you see from a healthcare customer might look a little bit different from somebody that’s over on the SMB side.

And so that’s really where we’re leaning in and saying, let’s make sure we’re being thoughtful about the needs of these different end customers that our partners are supporting as we build these capabilities.

Robert Dutt: We heard the idea of Customer Zero today, and that’s, I think, common throughout the industry, the idea of drinking your own champagne or eating your own dog food, whichever analogy you prefer.

Including Chris talking about building, down to the level of building his own AI agent to help run the Canadian business.

How much of what you’re bringing to partners comes from the internal TD SYNNEX experience of deploying AI and learning how that works internally?

And what’s something that you learned in the TD SYNNEX journey that’s kind of changed how you bring partner-facing things to market?

Meredith Payne: I’ll answer the first question, and it’s just about everything.

I love when we share that because it’s so true, and I can say for myself, for my team, we’re living that every single day.

We’re trying something new that we haven’t done before. Sometimes it’s a huge success. Sometimes we’re like, okay, we tried that, didn’t work. Let’s pivot quickly.

And so we do very much try and fail forward, I’d say, and learn from those things that don’t work so we can pivot, we can get it right, and we can make sure that end product is something that we believe in, that we stand behind and that we have lived ourselves.

But I mean, some of the examples are when we talk about even how agents are being used. I know we’ve shared some of this, but our coworkers are building their own agents.

And we have a lot of agents out there right now.

And so it’s not this approach of, “Hey, here’s a few that you can use.” No, there’s thousands, right, that are being built.

And so then we can look and see what can we learn from these.

It’s our coworkers that are really inventing and helping us move in that direction.

Robert Dutt: Do you find a lot of that kind of personal-level, “Oh, hey, this is what I’ve been able to do. How can this help you in your business?” kind of learning?

As much as it’s great to have the on-high education and all that, that kind of peer-to-peer, “This is what’s worked for my business. This is how it could work for you.”

Meredith Payne: Absolutely.

And speaking of peer-to-peer, we work in a hybrid environment. And so we’re thankful that we get a lot of time in the office sitting next to somebody who maybe is solving a slightly different problem than what you are.

But I love that because when we walk through these spaces, you truly do see coworkers collaborating and sharing ideas.

And then ultimately, that gets shared with our customers, and it’s part of what we’re developing together.

So I think it’s very much a part of our culture and how we’re going about the work that I get to be a part of.

Robert Dutt: Jessica talked this morning about more than 75,000 partners, I think it was, or 75,000 users across partners, have been using PartnerFirst in the last five or six months or something along those lines.

And the partners who engage more deeply with digital are growing faster.

What are you seeing in terms of adoption, and especially the measurable business impact of being involved in PartnerFirst more deeply?

Meredith Payne: Sure. So one thing that we’ve seen over the last year — so we announced PartnerFirst about a year ago at this event — and at that time, there were still a good bit of partners who were logging in and just the basics.

Like, we’re coming here to place an order, to order a laptop, and then I’m on to my next thing.

And so the most exciting thing that I’ve gotten to see over this last year is that that’s no longer the case.

And the reason that you see a user count that’s so much higher than the unique customers that are leveraging PartnerFirst is because now you’ve got maybe a business owner who’s coming in and they’re really leaning into those insights.

They’re not placing orders necessarily. That’s somebody else’s role. But they’re leaning into these other value-added features that are available within our digital experience.

And so that’s been fun to see, is that there’s a little bit of something for everybody based on the user, based on how we can really equip you to do your job better.

Robert Dutt: What do you find are the common threads for partners who get the most out of it? Is it kind of willingness to engage, curiosity? What drives the value?

Meredith Payne: It’s the features, yeah.

So the ones who are engaging across multiple different functionalities and capabilities, those are the ones that are getting the most.

So it’s not just we’re coming in and leveraging your commerce system, but we’re actually logging in and taking advantage of the enablement offerings that you have within PartnerFirst.

We’re coming in, we’re connecting into these agents.

So that’s where I see the biggest differentiation, is the partners who have multiple different features that are intertwined within their business.

Robert Dutt: What’s your, internally, what’s your biggest measure for the success of PartnerFirst? What’s the thing that you look at that determines, yeah, we’re knocking this out of the park?

Meredith Payne: Yeah. We want to see our partners leveraging our digital experience to grow their business.

At the highest level, that’s what we want to see.

So if they’re growing their business by doing more within their existing customer base, great, we want to see that.

If they’re growing their business because now they have things like MyShop in place and they can go out and attract more customers, and they’ve got a wider stack of customers, or they’re leveraging AI Practice Builder, right, to go out and get into a new practice that maybe they haven’t felt as confident about before, ultimately that’s a win for us.

They’re using these capabilities that we’re offering through PartnerFirst to ultimately grow their business, and that’s what we want to see.

Robert Dutt: All right. Without asking you to pre-announce anything, although if you want to, I’m not going to argue with you.

If we’re sitting here next year at Inspire, what do you expect PartnerFirst is going to look like directionally, strategically, compared to where we’re at today?

Basically, what can partners expect over the near future from PartnerFirst?

Meredith Payne: I certainly won’t pre-announce anything.

But what I will say is I think that you’ll just see more confidence from the partners that are leveraging it.

You’ll continue to see us doing more with AI. So that’ll continue to grow, of course.

But at the end of the day, none of us know what a year looks like from now.

But what I am confident in is that we’ve got just a fabulous group of coworkers that are working on this every single day, and we’re set up in a way where we can act really fast.

We’re testing so many things right now. And so when we see those signals in the market, we’re equipped to move quickly and to do that alongside our partners in a way that’s meaningful and impactful for them.

Robert Dutt: Wild times and fascinating stuff.

Meredith Payne: Oh, yeah.

Robert Dutt: Thanks so much for taking the time.

Meredith Payne: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Meredith Payne of TD SYNNEX speaking with me at Inspire Canada in Toronto.

What I found particularly interesting about this conversation was the idea that the future of the distributor portal might not really be a portal at all.

TD SYNNEX isn’t abandoning PartnerFirst as a destination for partners who prefer to work that way, but it’s increasingly making the capabilities behind the platform available through AI agents and integrations with partners’ own systems.

That could change quite significantly how partners interact with distribution, particularly as those agents move beyond finding information and preparing quotes towards actually completing transactions.

As Meredith pointed out, partners don’t necessarily need to start with something that ambitious.

Automating a single repetitive task can be a useful first step, freeing up time for the work that creates more value for customers.

My thanks to Meredith and the TD SYNNEX team for making the conversation possible.

And thanks to you for listening. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll talk to you next time on In the Channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

North American IT distribution revenue surges 29 percent to record $28.9 billion

North American IT distribution revenue reached a record $28.9 billion in the third quarter of 2026, an increase of 29.2 percent year over year, according to new research from IDC.

The November 2 findings come from IDC’s North America Monthly Distribution Tracker, powered by the Global Technology Distribution Council.

AI infrastructure was the primary growth driver.

Enterprise infrastructure revenue increased 140.1 percent, components and semiconductors grew 79.4 percent, and network infrastructure rose 63.7 percent.

Together, those three categories accounted for $4.3 billion of the market’s $6.5 billion year-over-year increase.

The growth wasn’t limited to hardware. Software revenue increased 12.5 percent, while services grew 19.6 percent, with both categories reaching record levels.

IDC says AI infrastructure demand is increasingly extending beyond hyperscalers to enterprise customers and specialized cloud providers building their own AI capacity.

But there are complications behind the headline numbers.

Rising memory and storage prices contributed to revenue growth, while tight DRAM and NAND supplies continue to create constraints. IDC expects those supply pressures to persist into 2027.

For Canadian solution providers, the report offers another indication of the scale of the AI infrastructure opportunity, while reinforcing the importance of supply-chain planning, pricing and services.

The figures cover the United States and Canada together; IDC did not provide a separate Canadian growth rate.

Guardz adds Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Browser to its MSP security platform

Guardz has integrated Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Browser for Business into its security platform for managed service providers, extending its coverage into an increasingly important part of the small-business attack surface.

Announced Monday, the integration connects browser security events with information from email, identity and endpoint systems.

For example, if an employee follows a phishing link, Prisma Browser can block the malicious page while Guardz connects the browser event with the original email, related Microsoft 365 activity and endpoint information.

That gives an MSP and Guardz’s managed detection and response team a more complete view of the incident.

The integration also includes protection against malicious downloads, risky browser extensions and attempts to steal authenticated sessions.

Guardz is positioning the offering as a way for MSPs to add enterprise-grade browser security without creating another disconnected security workflow.

The company is also expanding its controls around employee use of AI applications, including policies governing copying, pasting and transferring information through browser-based services.

For MSPs, the opportunity is to bring browser activity into the broader security services they already manage for customers.

Canadian availability remains to be confirmed, as Guardz’s documentation describes regional restrictions on the Prisma Browser integration.

More information is available from Guardz’s Prisma Browser integration page.

Microsoft and Lumen expand collaboration around AI-ready enterprise networks

Microsoft and Lumen Technologies have expanded their collaboration to jointly pursue enterprise networking opportunities tied to cloud modernization and artificial intelligence.

The companies announced Monday that they will work more closely on helping customers connect applications, data and infrastructure distributed across cloud platforms, private data centres and enterprise locations.

The expanded relationship combines Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AI capabilities with Lumen’s network infrastructure and cloud-native networking services.

A central part of the effort is joint account planning and co-selling around opportunities where Azure modernization, network transformation and AI deployment intersect.

The companies also intend to explore making more Lumen networking and application connectivity capabilities available through Azure and Microsoft Marketplace.

Lumen’s Alkira cloud networking solution is already available through Microsoft Marketplace.

For solution providers and systems integrators, the development reflects a growing reality of enterprise AI projects: deploying AI infrastructure and applications also requires work on connectivity, security, data movement and hybrid-cloud architecture.

Those requirements create potential services opportunities, although the companies have not announced a new channel program or specific partner incentives as part of this collaboration.

Read Lumen’s November 2 announcement.

Read Full Transcript

Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, and today is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

We’ve got some remarkable numbers from the North American IT distribution market today, along with a new security integration aimed at managed service providers, and an expanded partnership between Microsoft and Lumen focused on the networking requirements of enterprise AI.

First up, new research from IDC shows just how dramatically AI infrastructure demand is changing the technology distribution business.

According to figures released yesterday, North American IT distribution revenue reached a record twenty-eight point nine billion dollars in the third quarter of twenty twenty-six.

That’s an increase of twenty-nine point two percent from the same period last year.

And while that’s an impressive headline number, the breakdown of where that growth came from is even more interesting.

IDC says enterprise infrastructure revenue increased by a remarkable one hundred and forty percent.

Components and semiconductors grew nearly eighty percent, while network infrastructure revenue increased almost sixty-four percent.

Together, those three categories accounted for four point three billion dollars of the market’s six point five billion dollars in additional revenue.

In other words, about two-thirds of the entire increase came from the product categories most closely associated with building AI infrastructure.

And the growth wasn’t limited to hardware.

Software revenue increased twelve and a half percent, while services grew nearly twenty percent. Both categories also reached record levels.

IDC says AI infrastructure demand is increasingly moving beyond the hyperscalers, with enterprise customers and specialized cloud providers building more of their own capacity.

That’s particularly interesting for the channel, because distribution is one of the ways those customers get access to the servers, storage, networking and other technologies required for those projects.

But there are a couple of important qualifications to these numbers.

First, this is a North American report covering both the United States and Canada. IDC hasn’t provided a separate Canadian growth figure.

And second, not all of that revenue growth necessarily represents more equipment being sold.

IDC says rising memory and storage prices have contributed to the increase, and tight supplies of DRAM and NAND are expected to remain a challenge into twenty twenty-seven.

So we’re looking at a combination of very strong demand, rising prices and ongoing supply constraints.

For solution providers, that creates both opportunity and complexity.

There’s clearly substantial spending on AI infrastructure, but customers also need help navigating product availability, pricing, architecture and deployment.

And as we’ve discussed before, the opportunity doesn’t end with supplying the hardware.

Designing, securing, integrating and managing these increasingly complex environments is where partners can potentially build additional value.

Next, Guardz is bringing a new layer of browser security into its platform for managed service providers.

The company announced yesterday that it’s integrating Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Browser for Business into its broader security offering.

The idea is to bring browser activity into the same security picture as email, identity and endpoint information.

And that matters because so much of what employees do now happens inside a browser.

They access business applications, work with customer information, use cloud services and increasingly interact with AI tools.

That also makes the browser an attractive target for attackers.

Think about a phishing email that sends someone to a fake login page.

Prisma Browser can help block that malicious page, while Guardz can connect the browser event with the original email, the user’s Microsoft three sixty-five activity and information from the affected endpoint.

Instead of treating those as separate alerts from separate systems, the MSP and Guardz’s managed detection and response team can investigate the activity as a connected incident.

The integration also brings protection against malicious downloads, risky browser extensions and attacks designed to steal authenticated sessions.

Guardz is also expanding its controls around how employees use browser-based AI applications, including restrictions on moving sensitive information into services that an organization hasn’t approved.

For MSPs, the interesting part is the potential to add browser security to the services they’re already delivering, rather than creating another disconnected product to deploy and manage.

There is one important question for Canadian partners.

Guardz’s documentation describes regional restrictions on the Prisma Browser integration, and we haven’t confirmed its availability for Canadian customer environments.

So that’s something partners would need to clarify before making commitments to customers here.

But the larger direction is worth watching.

As more business activity moves into browsers and AI-powered applications, browser security is becoming a more important part of the overall managed security conversation.

And finally today, Microsoft and Lumen Technologies are expanding their collaboration around enterprise networking and artificial intelligence.

The companies announced yesterday that they’ll work more closely together to help customers connect the data, applications and infrastructure supporting AI workloads.

That may sound fairly straightforward, but it’s an increasingly important challenge.

Enterprise data and applications are often spread across public clouds, private data centres, branch offices and other environments.

And as companies begin deploying more sophisticated AI applications, those systems need to communicate reliably and securely.

Microsoft and Lumen want to bring networking decisions into the conversation earlier, alongside Azure modernization and AI infrastructure planning.

The expanded relationship includes joint account planning and co-selling, particularly where network transformation, cloud migration and AI deployment overlap.

Lumen also intends to bring more of its cloud networking and application connectivity capabilities into Microsoft’s Azure and Marketplace ecosystem over time.

Its Alkira cloud networking solution is already available through Microsoft Marketplace.

Now, this isn’t a new channel program announcement, and the companies haven’t outlined specific new partner incentives.

But it does point toward an important services opportunity.

Customers may be excited about AI models, applications and agents, but making those systems work across a real enterprise environment requires considerably more than buying computing capacity.

There are networking, security, data movement and integration challenges to solve.

And those are areas where experienced solution providers and systems integrators can play an important role.

It’s another reminder that the AI opportunity extends well beyond the AI technology itself.

You can find more details on all three stories at ChannelBuzz.ca.

And before we go, a couple of notes on In The Channel.

Later today on In The Channel, we’ve got my conversation with Meredith Payne of TD SYNNEX, recorded at last week’s Inspire Canada conference in Toronto.

We talk about how the distributor’s PartnerFirst strategy is evolving beyond the traditional partner portal, what the Canadian rollout of MyShop looks like, and how agentic commerce could change the way partners interact with distributors.

It’s an interesting look at how AI could reshape not just the products partners sell, but the processes they use to run their businesses.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel featured my conversation with Chris Fabes, president of TD SYNNEX Canada.

We discussed where he sees the strongest near-term opportunities for Canadian partners, including cloud, cybersecurity and the changing economics of AI.

Both conversations are available through ChannelBuzz.ca and wherever you get your podcasts.

That’s The Buzz for Tuesday, November 3. I’m Robert Dutt. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.

Chris Fabes, president of TD SYNNEX Canada, at Inspire 2026

Three months into his tenure as president of TD SYNNEX Canada, Chris Fabes has spent considerable time travelling across the country, meeting with partners and getting a better understanding of the distributor’s capabilities and opportunities.

And while the company is looking at emerging markets ranging from robotics and space technology to physical AI, Fabes sees more immediate growth opportunities for Canadian partners in familiar areas that are undergoing significant change: cloud, cybersecurity, software and the economics of artificial intelligence.

Speaking with ChannelBuzz.ca at TD SYNNEX Inspire Canada in Toronto, Fabes said his first few months have reinforced his confidence in the company’s foundation, while opening his eyes to capabilities that extend well beyond traditional technology distribution.

One of the distributor’s priorities is expanding the amount of business flowing through the channel, including by bringing vendors into its ecosystem that have traditionally sold directly to customers.

That increasingly means helping partners assemble complete solutions rather than simply source individual products. Fabes described TD SYNNEX’s evolving role as an orchestrator, connecting technology, expertise and services to help partners address customers’ business requirements.

AI adds another layer of complexity, particularly when it comes to choosing the right models, managing consumption and ensuring that technology decisions fit customers’ budgets. Fabes said partners need to be able to have those conversations without exposing themselves or their customers to unexpected costs.

The conversation also touched on two significant developments for TD SYNNEX’s Canadian business.

The recently announced acquisition of BlueStar brings complementary capabilities in areas including mobility, identification and point-of-sale technology, along with access to specialized partners and markets. Fabes said the businesses will continue operating separately while decisions about their future integration are made.

Meanwhile, TD SYNNEX is investing in a new 850,000-square-foot distribution facility in Caledon, Ontario. Fabes said the company expects the facility to come online around mid-2028, expanding its Canadian logistics capabilities and creating opportunities to introduce more advanced technology.

And in a more personal example of TD SYNNEX’s internal AI adoption, Fabes described building his own AI-powered briefing agent to help him track business performance, outstanding decisions and priorities across the organization.

In this edition of In the Channel, we discuss:

• What Fabes has learned during his first three months leading TD SYNNEX Canada.
• Where he sees the strongest near-term growth opportunities for Canadian partners.
• How TD SYNNEX is expanding its role beyond traditional distribution.
• Why AI economics, governance and cost predictability are becoming important partner conversations.
• What BlueStar could add to the Canadian business.
• The company’s planned Caledon distribution facility.
• How Fabes is using an AI agent to help manage the business.

Listen to the full conversation below.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.When I last spoke to Chris Fabes back in August, he was just getting settled into his new role as president of TD SYNNEX Canada. At the time, he was embarking on a listening tour, getting to know the business, its partners, and the opportunities and challenges facing the Canadian channel.

Fast forward about three months, and Fabes has had a chance to put some miles on the odometer, meet with partners across the country, and get a much clearer picture of where the business stands and where he wants to take it.

I caught up with him this week at TD SYNNEX Inspire Canada in Toronto, where the distributor is laying out its vision for helping partners navigate a technology market increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, new consumption models, and the growing importance of delivering business outcomes rather than simply selling products.

We discussed what Fabes has learned during his first few months, where he sees the most immediate growth opportunities for Canadian partners, and how TD SYNNEX is looking to expand its reach into new technologies and markets.

We also talked about what the recently announced acquisition of BlueStar could mean for the Canadian business, the company’s significant investment in a new distribution facility in Caledon, Ontario, and the economics of AI.

And we wrapped up with a look at how Fabes is putting AI to work in his own role, including an agent he built to keep him on top of the business.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Fabes.

Robert Dutt: Chris, thanks for taking the time. I know it’s obviously a busy day here, but your first Inspire running the show here.

Chris Fabes: Yeah, thanks for being here. It’s been a big couple of days between today and yesterday. Well received, exciting, definitely a different position for me to be in, standing on the stage versus looking at the stage.

Robert Dutt: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was really good.

When we spoke back in August, you were just getting started in the role. You were really fresh into what you talked about: listening, learning, understanding the business, understanding what partners want.

You’ve now spent about 90 days, I’m sure, travelling across Canada a whole lot, talking to partners, talking to your teammates. What have you learned that you didn’t know coming into the job? And has anything surprised you enough to change your thinking about where things are at, or where they’re going, for TD SYNNEX Canada or for the Canadian channel at large?

Chris Fabes: So you’re right. I’ve travelled quite a bit, and I did say I wanted to listen. And when we first spoke, it was, I guess, 30 days after. Very, very fresh. I still didn’t know what I didn’t know.

So it’s helped me shape the expectations, the excitement, the angst maybe that some have in terms of everything coming out of the channel expectations. So by having those conversations internally, as well as with our partners and vendors, it’s been great to shape where we’re going.

In terms of things that I would not have known or hadn’t expected, it’s been a pleasant — I’m cautious when I say the word surprise, but I’ll say that — because I’m coming in and I’m learning a lot about what our capabilities are.

And a lot of the conversations or the comments that were being generated from our customers, we’re actually able to fill a lot of those gaps with what we’ve built or what we’re building.

So coming into a business that my engagements in the past were a little bit more traditional in nature, but now seeing how TD SYNNEX is evolving the way that we approach the channel as an orchestrator, there’s so much more outside of the core distribution capabilities that we can offer.

So that has been a very, very pleasant, I guess, enhancement is the best way of saying it, to my view.

Robert Dutt: I guess playing into that, the state of the Canadian business. It’s a strong organization, clearly, but there’s economic uncertainty. We’re in the midst of some significant technology transformations, if you hadn’t noticed.

Chris Fabes: Sure. I don’t know if it would come up.

Robert Dutt: Basically, now that you’ve got a chance to look at things and have those conversations, how would you characterize the state of the business today? Where are you seeing momentum, and where are you hearing from partners that things are a little more challenging?

Chris Fabes: The foundation is absolutely solid. And that has been wonderful to see. Not only foundationally at our core, what we’ve been offering to our partners for decades, but also the plans in place to be able to grow where the market is going.

We talk about the distribution TAM expansion, because there’s a portion of the business in Canada that goes through the channel and there’s a portion that doesn’t.

We have plans to be able to continue to attract additional vendors into the ecosystem, make sure that, as you said, the chaos or the complexity of what’s happening right now — it could be as simple as we understand that these are the technology drivers that our customers are demanding. We need to ensure that we’re ready as a partner, we’ve got those capabilities being built or already built, and we’re having those conversations.

But also, the things that are a little bit more challenging for any one partner to understand, maybe collectively we can figure out together.

So helping our partners understand how to have AI practices built out that focus on outcomes, help them answer their customer questions around sovereignty of data, sovereignty of access, capabilities to expand province through province.

You heard Minister Evan Solomon spoke to us earlier this morning. Just engaging with understanding how we’re building our capabilities and then bringing that to the channel ecosystem, I think that’s going to be so important.

Robert Dutt: There was a lot of focus this morning on some interesting new opportunities, areas that maybe haven‘t traditionally been channel space.

Between you and your team, you talked about defence, robotics, space, energy, agriculture and AI infrastructure, which of course has been the focus for a while for this group.

But that’s a pretty broad range. I’m curious about your thoughts on which of those new growth areas represent the biggest tangible near-term opportunity for Canadian partners, and how you guys see yourselves helping the partners reach that.

Chris Fabes: So in part, some of what you mentioned — space, robotics — those are a little bit more future-leaning.

In the near term, when you look at the spend and the needs of our Canadian customers, you’re looking at more of that software space, the cybersecurity wrap in terms of making sure that our data and our access and our individuals have a fully protected ecosystem.

So software, including cybersecurity, including cloud, and being able to navigate the tokenomics of that conversation, I think is going to be more of that near term.

It doesn’t change the way we look at our core. So we look at our core being endpoint solutions, advanced solutions. But really where we’re seeing the greatest growth happening is within that advanced solutions division.

And that’s where you see cloud. That’s where you see cyber. That’s where you see the advancements in physical AI, more than just the software application, but the combination of the two worlds.

And that’s what requires us to build, sign new contracts, be able to engage and enable our partners to be able to categorize or catalogue those offerings for their customers.

And it becomes very unique and niche based on those verticals. And that’s why I mentioned it. Agriculture needs different technology than a manufacturing sales floor does.

An AI infrastructure buildout that is focused on power and data flow is going to be different than what a retailer might need.

So we’re really trying to get closer to what the end customer requires, align with the partners that serve those end-customer verticals, and then be able to create those threads that our partners can then pull.

So they’re creating those outcomes through a more robust technology stack, which is, I think, what you were asking in terms of where we’re going near term and long term.

Robert Dutt: And I guess that’s where some of the new vendors potentially come in, in terms of folks who round out that story.

Chris Fabes: Absolutely. And there’s viable products coming from vendors that may be a little bit new to the ecosystem every day.

So we need to make sure that we’re looking at what are the products that may be of interest to our partners and customers. How do we bring that into the ecosystem, onboard, enable, activate?

And there’s many, many that are looking for knowledge of how to use the channel. How do I bring my product, instead of talking to every individual end customer, how do I then go and talk to thousands of business partners that we know really, really well, and then scale that model very, very efficiently?

And that’s where that orchestration comes into place that we’ve been talking about.

Robert Dutt: Shawn Ardiel made a point this morning that really connected with me, resonated and made me snicker a little bit: that in the AI era, the unit of value isn’t the product, it’s the outcome, and no single product delivers that whole solution.

Especially coming from distribution, where the language spoken has traditionally been SKUs, that’s a pretty broad change.

I think it’s played into some of your answers already so far. How does that mindset change the role that TD SYNNEX plays in the channel? I suspect it goes back to that orchestrator role that you’ve touched on.

Chris Fabes: It does. It goes to, in part, the budgeting conversation.

So how do I build technology that fits the budget, that’s consistent and predictable? Because you can provide AI solutions and you can overengineer and underestimate the budget very quickly.

But we believe we have visibility across that ecosystem where we can talk to our customers around when does it make sense to have a frontier model or a no-code or a low-code model?

How do we help you build your governance so that your users are applying the right applications and using the right models that effectively meet your budget aspirations?

Part of it is just understanding that complexity, simplifying it.

And as we say, we want to meet our partners where they are. Some are very advanced and some are just getting started. So we have to have that flexibility to go up, down, depending on the conversation and situation.

And that’s where many, many of our customers, to your question, when they hear about Destination AI or they hear about Launchpad, when they can start putting pen to paper, they start saying, “Aha, you’re helping me run my business, you’re helping me bring a full-scale solution to my customers, and you’re showing confidence in the partnership.”

Robert Dutt: Around that whole AI tokenomics and overall economics of AI discussion, you guys have recently launched FinOps Fusion.

Can you share a little bit of what you see the opportunity around that kind of business? It seems to play nicely into what you’re talking about around helping partners understand what model for what solution and getting a grip on the ongoing cost of those on behalf of customers.

Chris Fabes: So FinOps Fusion is a recent announcement for Canada. So I’m not fully read into the exact impacts or how it lands to our customers. So I would suggest that there’s an alternative individual that you’d want to speak to on that.

But what I will say is we have highlighted the promise to many of our partners, and we’ve suggested that they go have conversations with the dedicated teams, because that’s a real critical problem that they’re seeing.

They do not want to overpromise or underpromise and be caught with the gotcha of the budget overages.

So I believe that as we work with our partners, we will provide them with that predictability, the visibility and the management that’s required to have strong conversations.

Robert Dutt: Speaking of new areas of business, the acquisition of BlueStar is interesting because it brings a whole different set of capabilities in mobility, identification, point of sale, the intersection of physical and digital, and a big Canadian presence historically.

What does that acquisition mean to the business here for TD SYNNEX?

Chris Fabes: So the acquisition, it’s only been recently announced. So we’re working through what the next steps might look like. We’ll continue to operate as separate businesses until future decisions are made.

But to your point, there really isn’t much overlap. It really does provide a lot of complementarity.

In talking to some of our partners, when you start looking at the optimization of the technology stacks, the optimization of capital, the optimization of stocking and logistics and the associated services, there’s definitely been early excitement to say, “This is a value-add to our business.”

But it also provides us additional potential access to very specialized markets that, again, are complementary to us.

And to your point, the Canadian individuals with BlueStar, the Canadian locations and their ability to reach those markets, it’s absolutely exciting. And it’s been perceived by our partners very positively, and we’re looking forward to continuing to work with the team.

Robert Dutt: I know it’s early days. Not much overlap in terms of technology and vendor lineup, I’d imagine, and probably not as much as one might expect on the partner side.

It potentially brings a new variety of partners, or a new import to a variety of partners, to TD SYNNEX.

Chris Fabes: That’s what we believe.

So it’s been an exciting conversation in terms of not just the product sets or the specialized services, but also the partners in which they would engage with.

There are a lot of — I mentioned complementarity, but there’s also adjacencies and incremental opportunities to be talking with partners, but also specific markets that we may not have otherwise been engaged with.

So as we unwrap this or tease on that thread a little bit more, I can only expect exciting things to come.

Robert Dutt: You talked today about the new 850,000-square-foot facility in Caledon and described Canada as getting some of the most advanced logistics technology first, I imagine by virtue of being the new facility on the block.

I understand that’s not coming online for a year or more yet, but what does the investment say about, A, the commitment to Canada, and what does it change for your partners when it does come online?

Chris Fabes: So it’s early days. We expect this to come online mid-2028.

We’re definitely excited in terms of size, capabilities of the technology that we’ll be applying.

It provides us with expanded capabilities nationwide. And I think there’s an excitement around scale, cost to serve, and looking at just leaning into the Canadian economy.

I think it’s a meaningful investment that we’re making. I think it gives us an edge in terms of what we do, but also more specifically what we’ve been discussing.

It provides us the ability to look forward and ask ourselves the questions: what can this provide us the capability of doing in the future?

So it’s exciting, but I can tell you that as we come back together in the future, we’ll have more details in terms of exactly how it’s going to land, what it’s going to mean for our partners and our customers in Canada.

But I’m hoping that it’s very exciting to hear that we are investing and we’re looking to lean in in a very passionate way.

Robert Dutt: Yeah, I imagine not too much can be completely locked in well over a year out, especially in this industry and the pace at which things change around here.

Chris Fabes: Exactly.

Robert Dutt: You talked a little bit about the journey internally for TD SYNNEX Canada with AI, and you shared that you had built out your own agent and it was helping.

Without giving away too much of the secret sauce, what does the agent really do? What does it do for you? What does it help you do better? And what did you learn from the experience?

Chris Fabes: It’s a good question.

So what I could say is, and back to some of the other conversations we had in terms of coming into this business, it’s a big, complex business, right?

We have many partners. We have many lines of orders that come in every single day. We have various systems that need to connect the dots around what matters to drive our business. What does success look like?

So what I was looking for is, how do I get meaningful information for me as needed every single day so I understand what needs to be decided, what is still pending, showing me what might be a hot button over others, and how are we producing year on year versus against plan?

So it allows me to have immediate conversations with various divisions so that we can close on open actions. I can see what’s going well on a daily basis.

So for me, it’s really a briefing agent, a presidential briefing agent, and I was able to code it very much curated for what I needed.

And what it showed me or what it proved to me was a lot less time searching, having conversations, and meaningful action right away.

So I start my day already going into conversations about what’s next, versus asking the questions of, “What have we done? What else is needed? Who’s involved?”

So yes, time savings. It was a nice experience for me, but I also know that this is probably even junior coding.

But I’m still happy that I was able to do it myself, and I trust the rest of my team that are much smarter around agent creation to build some more relevant, bigger, impactful agents in the future.

And I’ll just use those.

Robert Dutt: It’ll be interesting to see where it goes. Once again, I want to thank you for taking the time.

Chris Fabes: Absolutely. Happy to be here. Thanks for your time.

Robert Dutt: Chris Fabes, president of TD SYNNEX Canada, speaking with me at TD SYNNEX Inspire Canada in Toronto.

One of the interesting takeaways for me was the distinction between some of the emerging opportunities TD SYNNEX is exploring, including robotics, space and physical AI, and the more immediate opportunities Fabes sees for Canadian partners in areas like cloud, cybersecurity and helping customers manage the economics of AI.

There’s also an interesting longer-term story developing around how TD SYNNEX is expanding its role beyond traditional distribution, bringing new vendors and capabilities into the channel and helping partners put together more complete solutions for their customers.

My thanks to Chris and to the TD SYNNEX team for making the conversation possible.

And thank you for listening today. If you’re enjoying the show, please do subscribe to or follow the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the usual places.

And if you feel so inclined, please do a rating and a review.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

Ottawa commits up to $1.6 billion to Canadian AI developer Cohere

The federal government is taking an equity stake in Toronto-founded artificial intelligence company Cohere, committing up to $1.6 billion as part of a major new funding round.

Announced Thursday, the investment will be made in stages and comes alongside private investors including NVIDIA, Bell and Germany’s Schwarz Group.

Cohere has committed to maintaining its Canadian headquarters and incorporation, creating at least 1,000 Canadian technical jobs, and investing at least $1.7 billion in additional Canadian computing infrastructure by 2030.

The company also announced the initial close of a Series E funding round targeting up to $7 billion.

Unlike a conventional government grant, Ottawa’s investment gives Canada an ownership stake in the company.

For the Canadian IT industry, the announcement is another significant development in the effort to build domestic AI capabilities. It also raises questions about how Canada’s growing sovereign AI infrastructure will be deployed, integrated and managed for enterprise and government customers.

The immediate announcement is about investment rather than a new channel program. But the growth of Canadian AI infrastructure and enterprise AI platforms could create opportunities for solution providers with expertise in infrastructure, integration, security and managed services.

Arrow introduces managed storage services for NetApp Keystone

Arrow Electronics has introduced managed storage services for NetApp Keystone, giving channel partners another way to deliver consumption-based storage offerings without building all the underlying operational capabilities themselves.

Announced Thursday, the new service builds on Arrow’s existing Partner XaaS with NetApp Keystone offering.

It adds lifecycle management, proactive monitoring, performance and capacity optimization, cyber resilience, data protection and ongoing service reviews.

Arrow says it is the first distributor to offer this type of managed storage service.

The development illustrates an evolving role for distribution in the managed-services market.

Rather than simply providing products or financing for consumption-based infrastructure, distributors are increasingly looking to supply the operational capabilities partners need to deliver ongoing services.

For MSPs and solution providers, that could mean expanding recurring-revenue offerings while reducing the need to develop every supporting capability internally.

Arrow describes the offering as global. Specific Canadian availability and commercial terms have not yet been confirmed.

7AI expands partner security ecosystem to 200 integrations

Agentic security company 7AI says its Technology Alliance Program has reached 200 integrations, expanding the range of security tools, data sources and workflows that partners can connect to its platform.

The October 29 announcement covers integrations spanning endpoint security, identity, email, cloud, SIEM, SOAR, ticketing, threat intelligence, vulnerability management and other security operations technologies.

The company’s approach is designed to let AI agents investigate and respond to security events using data from systems customers already operate.

For solution providers, systems integrators and managed security service providers, the opportunity is to modernize security operations without necessarily replacing a customer’s entire existing security stack.

7AI says nearly 45 percent of its sales pipeline now originates through partners, reflecting the importance it places on its broader alliance ecosystem.

The integration milestone also illustrates a larger challenge for agentic security: AI-driven operations depend not just on the capabilities of the AI platform, but on its ability to work across the many systems already deployed in customer environments.

Read Full Transcript

Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, and today is Monday, November 2, 2026.

We’re starting the week with a major investment in Canada’s AI industry, a new managed storage offering from Arrow and NetApp, and an expansion of the partner ecosystem around agentic security company 7AI.

First up, the federal government is making a substantial investment in Canadian artificial intelligence developer Cohere.

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday that Ottawa will take an equity stake in the Toronto-founded company, committing up to one point six billion Canadian dollars.

The investment is part of a much larger financing effort by Cohere, which has announced the initial close of a Series E funding round targeting up to seven billion dollars.

Other investors include NVIDIA, Bell and Germany’s Schwarz Group.

And there are some significant commitments attached to the federal investment.

Cohere has agreed to maintain its Canadian headquarters and incorporation, create at least one thousand Canadian technical jobs, and invest at least one point seven billion dollars in additional Canadian computing infrastructure by twenty thirty.

The government’s investment will be made in stages, with reporting requirements tied to those commitments.

And there’s an important distinction here: this is an equity investment, not simply another government grant for AI development.

Ottawa is taking an ownership stake in Cohere, meaning Canadians would participate in the company’s financial success if that investment pays off.

For the Canadian technology industry, it’s another indication of how important sovereign AI infrastructure has become.

Cohere is positioning itself around secure enterprise AI, particularly for organizations that need greater control over their data, infrastructure and the way AI systems are deployed.

And those requirements are especially relevant in areas like government, financial services and other regulated industries.

Now, this isn’t a channel program announcement, and Cohere hasn’t laid out a new set of partner opportunities as part of the investment.

But there’s a broader question here for Canadian solution providers.

As more investment flows into Canadian AI infrastructure and platforms, who’s going to help customers deploy those technologies, integrate them with existing systems, secure them and manage them over time?

That’s where this development becomes interesting for the channel.

The investment is about building Canadian AI capacity. Turning that capacity into useful enterprise deployments will require considerably more than the models and infrastructure themselves.

Next, Arrow Electronics is expanding its role in managed services with a new offering built around NetApp Keystone.

Arrow announced Thursday that it’s introducing managed storage services for NetApp Keystone, building on its existing Partner XaaS offering.

The new service adds a layer of operational support around consumption-based storage.

That includes lifecycle management, proactive monitoring, capacity and performance optimization, cyber resilience, data protection and ongoing service reviews.

Arrow says it’s the first distributor to offer this kind of managed storage service.

And the interesting part of the announcement is what it says about the changing role of distribution.

For years, distributors have helped partners with financing, logistics, procurement and, increasingly, cloud marketplaces and subscription management.

But as more infrastructure moves toward consumption-based models, partners also need help with the ongoing work of operating and supporting those services.

That’s where Arrow is looking to play a larger role.

The idea is that a solution provider or MSP can expand its managed storage business without having to build every operational capability from scratch.

And that could make it easier for more partners to participate in storage-as-a-service opportunities.

There are still some details we’d want to clarify for Canadian partners, particularly around local availability and commercial terms.

But the broader trend is clear: distribution is increasingly moving beyond enabling the transaction and into enabling the service itself.

And finally today, agentic security company 7AI says its Technology Alliance Program has reached two hundred integrations.

The company announced the milestone Thursday, describing it as an important expansion of the ecosystem supporting its AI-driven security operations platform.

Those integrations span a wide range of technologies, including endpoint security, identity, email, cloud platforms, SIEM and SOAR systems, ticketing tools, threat intelligence and vulnerability management.

And the idea is to allow 7AI’s agents to investigate and respond to security events using information from the tools customers already have in place.

That’s an important point, because most enterprise security environments are anything but simple.

Customers have accumulated years of investments in different security products, data sources and operational processes.

And introducing agentic security doesn’t necessarily mean they want to replace all of that infrastructure.

For partners, that creates an opportunity around integration and modernization.

Instead of approaching every customer with a complete replacement project, solution providers and managed security service providers can look at how AI-driven security operations might work across an existing environment.

7AI says nearly forty-five percent of its sales pipeline now originates through partners.

That’s a company-reported figure, but it helps explain why 7AI is investing so heavily in its partner and technology alliance ecosystem.

The larger lesson is that agentic security is becoming as much an integration and services challenge as a technology challenge.

And that’s a potentially interesting place for the channel to build value.

You can find more details on all three stories at ChannelBuzz.ca.

And before we go, a couple of notes on In The Channel.

Later today on In The Channel, we’ve got my conversation with Chris Fabes, president of TD SYNNEX Canada, recorded at last week’s Inspire Canada conference in Toronto.

We discuss where Chris sees the strongest near-term opportunities for Canadian partners, including cloud, cybersecurity and the changing economics of AI.

It’s an interesting look at the Canadian market from the perspective of one of the country’s largest technology distributors.

And if you haven‘t heard it yet, Friday’s In The Channel featured my conversation with Glenn Kaul of CDW Canada, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit in Vancouver.

Glenn offers a solution-provider perspective on how AI is changing infrastructure demand, how security threats are reshaping customer requirements, and what AI could mean for the economics of professional services.

Both conversations are available through ChannelBuzz.ca and wherever you get your podcasts.

That’s The Buzz for Monday, November 2. I’m Robert Dutt. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.

Glenn Kaul, vice president of sales and solutions at CDW Canada

Artificial intelligence is creating significant new opportunities for IT solution providers, but it’s also changing the way they operate, the services they deliver, and even the technology investments their customers are making.

At Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, much of the discussion focused on how Cisco is helping partners capitalize on AI, security, and the shift toward a more integrated technology platform. But those changes are already having practical consequences for solution providers and their customers.

In this edition of In the Channel, ChannelBuzz.ca sits down with Glenn Kaul, vice president of sales and solutions at CDW Canada for a look at how those trends are playing out in the Canadian market.

One of the more unexpected developments has been the impact of AI infrastructure demand on traditional IT spending. Kaul describes how rising memory prices and concerns about hardware availability forced customers to reconsider their purchasing priorities, accelerating some infrastructure investments while delaying other projects. More recently, he says, customers have begun returning to longer-term planning discussions.

AI is also changing the cybersecurity business. As AI-powered tools accelerate the discovery and potential exploitation of vulnerabilities, Kaul argues that security services need to become more continuous and responsive. The traditional model of periodic assessments and updates is giving way to an environment where monitoring, remediation, and resilience must be ongoing priorities.

At the same time, AI could change the economics of professional and managed services. Some routine tasks that previously required specialized expertise may become increasingly automated, potentially reducing the value of certain traditional services while increasing demand for architecture, consulting, and more sophisticated capabilities.

Kaul also sees emerging opportunities for partners to help customers understand and manage the cost of AI consumption. Much as cloud computing introduced new challenges around consumption-based pricing, AI is creating a need for guidance on token usage, budgeting, and choosing the right technologies for different workloads.

The conversation also explores the growing importance of data sovereignty in Canada, including how customer expectations are expanding beyond where data is physically stored to questions of access, control, and service provider ownership.

And Kaul shares his perspective on Cisco’s integration of Splunk, including the progress being made in bringing the two companies’ technologies and customer-facing organizations together, and the opportunities that could emerge as Splunk becomes a more seamless part of Cisco’s broader portfolio.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How AI infrastructure demand has disrupted customer technology purchasing decisions.
• Why AI-driven threats are accelerating the shift toward continuous security services.
• How automation could reshape the economics of professional and managed services.
• The emerging opportunity for partners to help customers manage AI consumption and token costs.
• Why data sovereignty is becoming a more complicated requirement for Canadian organizations.
• How CDW Canada is developing its own AI capabilities and preparing employees for changing customer needs.
• What Cisco’s ongoing integration of Splunk means for partners and enterprise customers.

Listen to the full conversation with Glenn Kaul of CDW Canada, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, in this edition of In the Channel.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

Over the last week, we’ve been bringing you conversations from Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, where Cisco laid out its vision for how artificial intelligence, security, and an increasingly connected technology platform will reshape the opportunities available to its partners.

What does that vision look like from the perspective of a major solution provider? And how are the changes being driven by AI already affecting the way partners work with their customers and build their businesses?

Those are some of the questions I explored with Glenn Kaul at CDW Canada when we sat down at Partner Summit.

Glenn has a particularly interesting perspective on how AI is changing the market, and not always in the ways you might expect.

We discuss how demand for AI infrastructure has disrupted traditional IT purchasing patterns, how increasingly sophisticated security threats are forcing solution providers to rethink the way they deliver their services, and how AI itself could change the economics of professional services.

We also get into some of the emerging opportunities around managing AI consumption costs, the growing importance of data sovereignty for Canadian customers, and what Cisco’s ongoing integration of Splunk means for partners and their customers.

It’s a conversation that goes beyond the announcements of Partner Summit to explore what these changes actually mean for the business of a solution provider.

Let’s get right into it. My chat with Glenn Kaul from CDW Canada.

Robert Dutt: Glenn, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Glenn Kaul: Glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Robert Dutt: Let’s start big picture. You’ve been here at Partner Summit the last couple of days, hearing the announcements, talking with Cisco leadership.

What’s standing out to you? What are the things you’re taking away from Vancouver that will matter the most to CDW going forward?

Glenn Kaul: Well, there’s a couple of things.

One is that our customers’ need for having access to a platform and not just a number of point solutions, that’s not news. That’s been a trend that’s been going on for a few years, particularly in the security space, but in general.

I’d say that’s accelerating now.

And it’s accelerating for lots of reasons, including pressures that our clients have with budgets, managing price increases because of some of the component prices.

Their budgets have stayed the same, having some of the needs they have to have all the skills they need to go and run multiple platforms and systems, having visibility.

So I think that’s accelerating, number one.

And number two, I think the importance of networking, network refresh, and secure networks for AI defence as a general statement, but as a broader statement, just to have resilience and sovereignty in a secure network, that’s more important now than it was a year ago.

And it’s dramatic.

Robert Dutt: Is that accelerating too, especially the sovereignty side of things?

Glenn Kaul: The conversations are accelerating.

I think defining what sovereignty means — is it physical sovereignty? What does it mean in Canada? What does it mean elsewhere? Is it access? Is it controls?

People say, “Well, it’s all of the above.”

And so, well, how do you solve for that?

It’s an important conversation. The exact meaning of it and the implications for each customer are going to be, I think, segment- and use-case-specific.

Robert Dutt: And that’s where you guys get to have fun defining and scoping all that and making it stand up and real.

Glenn Kaul: Right.

And asking our customers, interviewing them and doing assessments, understanding what’s important to them.

For some customers, if it’s healthcare, it’s going to be different.

But look, we had a small regional public school system — or a midsize regional public school system — recently that we were responding to an RFP on, and they said, “This has to be sovereign.”

And we said, “Well, what does that mean?”

“The provider has to be sovereign. It has to prove to us that everything’s in Canada and it’s never going to leave Canada.”

We said, “Well, hang on a second. That’s about eight conversations in one.”

They wouldn’t have even asked that before.

And this isn’t the federal government asking. This is a small school system.

Robert Dutt: Yeah, yeah.

The three big messages that I keep taking away from this week are the push around AI, security, and the evolution of the partner ecosystem and partner program.

When you look at those priorities through CDW’s lens, where do you see the biggest opportunities to grow the business right now?

Glenn Kaul: It’s secure networking and AI defence.

And these are related items.

The new partner program has been announced for some time.

We’re very fortunate, and I think the scale partners are fortunate, in that we have the resources and more specializations and master specializations than anyone in the country.

And so we have the breadth and depth of the resources we need.

It’s a question of, within that very broad portfolio, making sure we focus on the right things that are important to our customers and that fuel our growth.

Robert Dutt: One of the things that I keep hearing is that AI is changing what customers need from you guys in the partner base.

Jeetu Patel talked about the need to rethink business processes rather than just layering AI onto existing workflows, for example.

Is that consistent with what you’re seeing and what customers are either looking for or ultimately needing, whether they’re looking for it or not?

And how does what you’ve learned and heard here change the conversations you’re having with customers around that?

Glenn Kaul: Well, first of all, I’d say every time somebody says AI, which we hear frequently, I always ask, “What’s the word before or the word after AI?”

Because what are we talking about?

Are we talking about how we use AI internally? How Cisco uses AI internally? How the tools, and particularly the network and security tools, have AI embedded in them to make our lives easier and our customers’ lives easier?

Or are we talking about defence against AI threats?

Are we talking about their automation and their productivity?

And the answer is it’s all of the above.

So I think every time we get into one of these conversations, I always want to start to decompose it a little bit to understand what about AI we’re talking about.

At CDW, we think about AI in four different ways.

We think about it internally. We think about it for our customers. We think about it for our partners. And we think about it for our coworkers in terms of their own personal productivity.

We have four executive leaders with four different streams that are well coordinated as we move that forward.

The same thing applies to our customers, and the same thing applies to the partner quadrant of that.

And I’d also say it’s different by segment.

Our small business and smaller commercial customers are just exploring very basic AI productivity tool uses.

Whether they’re using Microsoft Copilot in many cases or, in the smallest businesses, using Google Gemini, they’re starting with the very basics of productivity.

And then some of our larger clients are doing more inference-style work and modelling.

And some of our really large clients are contributing to frontier AI models, but are probably more concerned in Canada about AI defence and sovereignty.

So the conversation is different depending not just on the size of the organization, but what kind of organization it is.

If it’s critical infrastructure or if it’s a high-privacy or high-security environment, the conversation changes a little bit.

And so that means our team needs to be really well educated and have enough expertise across the board to be able to engage in the initial conversation, but then to be able to very quickly bring in the deep subject-matter experts, depending on what the need is, to go and take it five levels deeper.

Robert Dutt: And I imagine in some cases, probably not the folks who are contributing to the frontier-level models, but for some of those customers, that’s going to be a matter of education too.

Glenn Kaul: It is.

It’s funny, people talk about Mythos still.

And I say, look, stop talking about Mythos, because it just leads to the possible retort or conversation about, “Well, there hasn’t been that massive breach because of Mythos.”

And that’s not the point.

The point is two or three things.

One is the ability to find vulnerabilities quickly.

And the cycle time to find them is — look at PHP last week.

That was discovered by friendly AI tools because they were able to scan environments and code quickly to understand what the vulnerability was.

So we’ll see more of them, and they’ll be found faster.

Secondly, they can be propagated more widely and quickly because they’ll be well known.

And PHP is another good example of that.

And third, the defences aren’t so obvious in every case.

And finally, I think maybe one of the more significant pieces is that you don’t have to be a super-engineer expert anymore to be a threat actor.

My technical skills are pretty limited, but I have enough information now to be able to ask a model for instructions to do something that might be nefarious.

And that wasn’t the case even a year ago.

Robert Dutt: Right. Especially the pace part of that.

The bad news is that these exploits are coming around faster or being discovered much faster. The good news is the defences are also coming online faster.

How is that changing how you guys think about your security business and the pace at which it has to iterate, respond, and meet customer needs?

Glenn Kaul: There’s a great quote in one of the sessions today that said, “We used to do annual system health checkups.”

And it’s like, well, annual is no longer, because now it’s daily, now it’s automated, now it’s ongoing.

If you think about that, again, in the last few months or year, we’ve gone from “Let’s do an annual assessment of our environments to see what the vulnerabilities might be,” or quarterly patching updates.

This is now a daily and hourly activity.

It has to be quite agile to respond to fast-moving new threat vectors.

Think about how fast that’s changed in just a few months.

So the way we approach things is less about designing things up front and long implementations.

We have to rapidly transform to being as agile as the threat landscape is.

Robert Dutt: And resilient, I would imagine. Or the customers have to be as resilient.

Glenn Kaul: Absolutely.

We talk about secure networking as being one of the big, significant opportunities for us, but defences for our customers and where we can bring some expertise to our clients.

Data resilience is a big part of that too.

And we’re seeing a significant increase in dialogue and demand around just the data resilience portion of it.

And even microsegmentation.

Just assuming somebody gets into somebody’s environment. We used to spend so much time making sure they didn’t.

Now we have to assume they’re going to.

Robert Dutt: That’s right.

Glenn Kaul: And now we say, when they do, how can we protect against lateral movement and east-west traffic?

How do we protect the data and make sure that we can be up and running quickly, even if we’ve isolated the environment?

Again, these are all important security principles, but it’s a significant departure in terms of importance and emphasis from what we had just a few months ago.

Robert Dutt: In conversations about partner economics, we’re hearing a lot about the emphasis on lifecycle services, customer experience, recurring revenue.

How do you see the balance between the traditional infrastructure sales business and ongoing services evolving at CDW, as everyone’s on this journey to find the right balance or the right business model around the combination of the two?

Glenn Kaul: Well, services have always been an important part of our business.

Six years ago, we acquired Scalar Decisions specifically because they had, in part, a very significant services business as well as a SOC and a NOC.

It’s been part of our strategy at CDW globally, and particularly in Canada, for seven or eight years.

It’s increasing in importance, although the services landscape is also changing.

Do we need to hire a solution integrator or technical experts to do firewall rule changes as much anymore? And how much of that’s going to be AI-driven?

So it will increase the reliance on companies like us for more of the design and the expert services than the basic services.

So it changes as well.

But it’s for us to provide value to our customers and help them with outcomes.

I would say we don’t sell technology at customers. We create buyers, and we create demand with our customers because they trust us.

And that doesn’t happen because we are selling products.

It happens because we’re involved in the ideation, the solution architecture, and the services implementation, and in many cases, the operations.

Robert Dutt: So back to your point about what do you mean when you say AI, this is one of those things that covers a couple of those aspects.

Do you find that AI is changing how you price and deliver services, or is it primarily creating new services to offer in different ways?

Glenn Kaul: It’s creating new services to offer.

We might retire some of our services if we decide that they are effectively commoditized.

We’re not at that point yet, but I could see that coming.

I think we need to be prepared for the fact that it’s changing.

At the moment, most of the services that we’re providing around AI are either enablement conversations for some of the smaller customers, or it’s data analysis, data reconciliation, and hygiene conversations to get data right to be able to do AI.

And increasingly, it’s about privacy, security, and sovereignty.

And I think the next one is going to be tokenomics.

It’s going to be: How do we help our clients understand and manage, as part of their data operating model, the token costs and when to use which technology environments for which purposes?

Because all of a sudden, just like a lot of consumption-based models, including cloud, you could wind up with a big bill at the end of six months or the end of three months and not realize how much it was costing versus your budget.

And for small organizations, that’s going to be hard.

We can get ahead of it with our customers by showing them, “This is how you’re going to consume these.”

I heard a great quote, and I have to credit it to one of our esteemed competitors, who said, “I’ve learned there’s a big difference between a free beer and a free puppy.”

Robert Dutt: That’s fair.

In terms of internally, I think you touched on this a little bit in terms of what services are going to be things that you offer versus what’s going to become a baked-in part.

For example, you gave firewall updates. That can be increasingly baked in.

How do you think about AI internally represented in the services that you bring to market?

Glenn Kaul: That’s something we’re exploring every day.

Our first act is to make sure we have all the right tools and training that our technical experts need to be able to explore it themselves.

And the second piece is where we are now.

We have 100 percent of our 1,100 Canadian coworkers, sales or technical or administrative, with at least some foundational training in the AI productivity tool suites.

Sometimes they’re very basic ones.

But we have 100 percent compliance in that, and that took some effort.

The next step now is how do we use it in our everyday work?

And for our service delivery professionals, who are naturally curious, and especially the security ones are particularly curious — that’s part of the hiring credentials, curiosity — they have been given great latitude to figure out, in the course of doing work as opposed to in a lab, how they can use the AI tools available to us to have either higher-quality or more efficient service delivery outcomes for our customers.

And we’re right in the middle of that.

There’s no destination to that. That’s going to be an ongoing evolution.

We have to make sure that every one of our coworkers, particularly in the service delivery part of the organization, is making that evolution and the constant modernization of workflows part of everyday life.

It’s not like, “Here’s a new way of doing things.”

It’s, “Here’s a new way of thinking about things.”

Robert Dutt: You touched on tokenomics a little earlier.

I’m curious where the customer conversation is at with that, particularly how it’s coming to you.

How often is it coming to you in the form of a customer saying, “We have a problem here,” versus you being in front of it and being able to guide expectations around token costs and managing that?

Glenn Kaul: It comes two or three different ways.

There is no question that there’s the, “I just started this, I got these bills, I need to figure out how to rationalize this.”

Robert Dutt: Suddenly Claude owns my house.

Glenn Kaul: Exactly.

And the CFO has a little chat with me about the budget depletion.

That’s one avenue.

A second one is, “I’m about to deploy these things. I’ve now got my licences, or I’ve now got the sandbox environment we’ve set up to do some of this experimentation. What do I need to think about?”

And so that’s part of the collaborative, proactive approach.

And the third is just general education as we’re educating them about the art of the possible with AI-enabled tool suites.

Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about what customers are actually spending money on right now.

There’s obviously enormous interest in AI, whatever that may mean to them, depending on where they’re at and what they’re doing.

But there’s a lot of pressure around budgets, security, and demonstrating ROI.

Where are you seeing customers move most from experimentation, dipping their toe in the water, into meaningful investments right now?

Glenn Kaul: I’d say what’s really interesting is that the year was not what we expected in terms of our calendar 2026 year.

A year ago, we knew that AI was an incoming trend.

What we didn’t know, even 10 months ago, was the impact it was going to have.

Looking back now, we could have predicted it, but the impact it was going to have on customers’ budgets.

It actually has nothing to do with AI directly, necessarily.

It was the unintended consequence of the huge demand from the large AI factories that were being built by the hyperscalers and neoclouds and others that drove DRAM prices up.

So what happened, starting in late December last year, but really early to mid-January, was that we started seeing the price increases coming in.

Eight percent here, 10 percent there, on every laptop, on every desktop, on every server.

And of course, anything that has a chip or memory in it was impacted, just not as much or as fast.

People always ask, “Well, did customers just go and pre-buy and buy in advance?”

Some of them did.

More importantly, I think customers changed their buying priorities in terms of the critical things they’re going to need over the next year or two, in part because of price increases and in part because of the subsequent concern about availability.

“If I need this capacity in storage, I need this capacity for compute, AI or not, AI-related or not, I had better get my orders in.”

And so some of the longer-range planning and outcome-based investments that our clients wanted to make were really put on hold a little bit because they had to repurpose not only the dollars, but also their time and the things they needed to make sure they could operate later in the year.

We saw six or seven months of rapidly shifting customer priorities.

Sometimes big projects that were for 2028 or 2029 needs got put on hold a little bit or deprioritized.

In some cases, some of their 2027 needs became a higher priority, in significant part because of prices, but also because of concerns about availability.

“If I just can’t operate unless I have this much storage available to me in December of the year, and we think there’s going to be supply chain constraints…”

Which haven’t materialized as much as people may have feared, but they’re still there.

The ETAs, the elapsed time from ordering even a custom-configured laptop, used to be two weeks. Now it’s 16 in some cases.

They had to be prioritized because of concerns about operational demands first.

And now we’re back into the conversation around what do you need to secure and harden, or to enable your business for future growth.

It was interesting how fast that changed over the last few months.

Robert Dutt: Has that pressure moderated in a way to a point where customers are taking stock of where they’re at and reprioritizing some of those things that got backburnered back when RAMageddon was really running wild?

Glenn Kaul: Well, RAMageddon, yes.

I think that’s true.

I think we’re in a place now where there are more thoughtful conversations and planned conversations.

We do a lot of executive briefings with our customers, where we bring in our customers from all across the country and sometimes internationally.

We’ll spend a day or two with them on whatever the agenda item is for them and bring in all of our experts.

Those are back on and have been rescheduled, and we’re doing three times as many now as we were doing a year ago.

So you can see us being back in the planning cycles with customers, whereas it was reaction and response in that February to probably May timeframe.

Robert Dutt: Kind of like COVID, but in a different way.

Glenn Kaul: Exactly, right?

And COVID was different. Everybody had to figure out how to work from home.

And then once we figured out how to get everybody working from home, we took the opportunity — our clients took the opportunity — to refresh the networks in their offices because nobody was there.

Those things happened within weeks of each other.

So we’re in the same kind of rapid-response and agility place now, but just for different reasons.

Robert Dutt: You’re in an interesting place in that you’re part of an international organization.

Obviously, CDW is active around the world in many different markets.

I’m curious if there are any specific-to-Canada peculiarities, opportunities, or challenges that you’re seeing in the Canadian market that are different from what you’re hearing from your peers around the world.

Glenn Kaul: I meet with my counterparts in both the U.S. and in the U.K., where our international operations outside of North America are managed.

We were all in Chicago last week doing 2027 planning, and we had a lot of conversations around this.

It was interesting.

As every segment of the company around the world started to present their 2027 plans, we saw the similarities all across the world.

Now, there are nuances in federal government in the U.S. versus federal government in Canada. There’s no question there’s nuance.

But there’s much more consistency.

I would say that security is important globally.

The sovereignty conversation, even though sovereignty is just as important in the U.S., is not as much part of the first conversation as it is in Europe and in Canada.

Robert Dutt: With Cisco bringing Splunk more deeply into its security and observability strategy, how do you guys think about Splunk and that business?

Are you very active there?

And do you see that creating new opportunities for CDW to bring together capabilities that customers have traditionally bought and managed separately?

Glenn Kaul: Absolutely.

Splunk is a fantastic technology.

It has expanded rapidly over the years through both development and acquisition and tucking in new capabilities.

And it was a material acquisition, both monetarily and strategically, for Cisco.

It’s complicated technology. It’s complicated licensing models.

And it doesn’t just tuck right into Cisco.

It’s taken them some time, but it’s been time well spent, and they’re being thoughtful about how they integrate it.

How do we get the customer-facing experts for both Splunk and Cisco to connect better so we’re not having, to your point, two different conversations? You’re having one related conversation.

And we’re at that juncture point now.

They still have some work to do, but you can see even in the product development, which is probably a little bit ahead of the field integration, there are more Splunk conversations happening as part of a Cisco conversation.

Whereas before, it was either a Cisco or Splunk, or a Cisco and Splunk conversation.

You can see it happening right now.

It’ll still take some time, but the product development is probably ahead of the field implementation on that.

Robert Dutt: What’s driving the unity of that conversation right now?

Is that a function of the integration being more mature? Is that a function of you guys getting out ahead of it, Cisco messaging, customer awareness?

Glenn Kaul: I think it’s all of the above.

But I’d say from a pure financial point of view for Cisco, making a massive investment in Splunk, there’s no point in doing that and having it as a separate operating entity or software stack or anything else.

Because as Cisco’s ecosystem turns increasingly into software and centrally managed and controlled and visible capabilities like Cloud Control and IQ and other things, data is a huge part of that, and Splunk is a huge part of data.

So commercially, it makes sense for them.

Logically, it makes sense for our customers, and therefore it makes sense to us.

Robert Dutt: From CDW’s point of view, what would be the next step that would unlock the most value for both Cisco and yourselves in bringing Splunk to market and making it a bigger part of the overall business?

Glenn Kaul: I’d say for our largest and medium-sized customers, including a lot of public sector customers, the enterprise agreements.

It’s been possible for the last year or so to include Splunk in an enterprise agreement, but it’s been manual work and not easy, understandably, because they’re very different licensing models.

But that’s now a matter of course, and our largest client is about to include Splunk in their enterprise agreement in the next few months.

I’d say that’s going to be the number-one piece of it: making sure that the enterprise agreement really means enterprise agreement, and it is the entire portfolio, including Splunk.

Robert Dutt: Yeah, that would make sense. That’s a big unlock.

Last one for me.

If we’re having this conversation again next year in Las Vegas at Partner Summit 2027, what do you hope to have accomplished over the next year?

What would tell you that CDW’s Cisco business has successfully capitalized on the opportunities Cisco’s talking about this week, and that Cisco has made them real for you guys as well, looking at both lenses?

Glenn Kaul: I think in the broadest sense, it’s the increased understanding by all of our professionals about the platform, and the truly connected platform.

Not just the lowercase-p platform, where it says we have, under the same brand, a number of different integratable capabilities.

To show that it really is a single pane of glass, and the visibility, and how all these technologies interoperate.

I think in general, we’ll see massive progress on that.

But I’ll be most pleased to see that we’ve helped our clients with Cisco harden their environments, have better visibility, and really have realized the first important next step in secure networking and all their related capabilities.

Robert Dutt: All right. Once again, thanks for taking the time, and I hope the rest of the stay in Vancouver is a good one for you.

Glenn Kaul: My pleasure. Thank you.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Glenn Kaul from CDW Canada, speaking with me at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver.

I’d like to thank Glenn for his time, and thank you for listening today.

One of the things that stood out for me from this conversation is just how many different ways AI is already changing the solution provider business.

It’s creating new opportunities, certainly, but it’s also changing customer priorities, putting pressure on existing service models, and introducing new challenges around everything from security to consumption costs.

And as Glenn points out, those changes aren’t happening in isolation.

They’re playing out against a backdrop of evolving customer expectations around resilience, sovereignty, and the need to get more value from increasingly complex technology environments.

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I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

HP Canada leadership changes put John Cammalleri in charge

HP Canada is undergoing a leadership transition, with president and managing director Michelle Biase moving to a new role as vice president of U.S. Corporate Sales.

Longtime Canadian channel chief John Cammalleri will step into the top Canadian position on an interim basis, while April Marshall assumes the role of vice president of Canada Commercial Channel Sales.

The changes continue an interesting pattern: HP Canada’s last three leaders have all come from channel backgrounds. Cammalleri has led the company’s Canadian channel organization for years; Biase returned to HP after a stint at distributor D&H; and her predecessor, Mary Ann Yule, joined HP from CDW Canada.

HP confirmed the latest leadership changes directly to ChannelBuzz.ca.

TD SYNNEX highlights Caledon investment and MyShop at Inspire Canada

TD SYNNEX held its Inspire Canada conference in Toronto Thursday, highlighting investments in its Canadian distribution infrastructure and new digital tools for partners.

Among the developments discussed was its planned 850,000-square-foot distribution facility in Caledon, Ontario. The facility, which has room to expand by approximately 40 percent, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2028.

TD SYNNEX also discussed the Canadian rollout of MyShop, its partner e-commerce offering. The initial approach involves working with selected Canadian partners on customized implementations rather than launching the same experience across the entire partner base at once.

The discussions fit into TD SYNNEX’s broader PartnerFirst strategy, which includes expanded AI-powered capabilities intended to simplify partner transactions and workflows.

We’ll have more from Inspire Canada next week on In The Channel, including conversations with TD SYNNEX Canada president Chris Fabes about the company’s Canadian strategy and Meredith Payne about PartnerFirst, MyShop and agentic commerce.

Ingram Micro reports strong Q3 as AI infrastructure drives growth

Ingram Micro reported $15.2 billion in third-quarter net sales, an increase of 20.8 percent year over year, as demand for AI infrastructure and cloud solutions helped drive growth.

The distributor also reported adjusted earnings of 91 cents per share, up 26.4 percent from a year earlier. Both sales and adjusted earnings exceeded analyst expectations, and Ingram raised its financial outlook.

Growth was particularly strong in its Advanced Solutions business, including GPU and AI infrastructure, and in cloud-based solutions.

But the results also illustrate an important trade-off in the current AI infrastructure market.

Ingram reported pressure on its gross margin as lower-margin GPU and AI infrastructure products accounted for a greater proportion of its sales.

For channel partners, it’s a reminder that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure spending doesn’t necessarily translate into equally rapid margin growth. The opportunity extends beyond supplying hardware to the higher-value services, integration and ongoing management that customers need around those investments.

Source: Ingram Micro investor relations

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, and today is Friday, October 30, 2026.

We’ve got a particularly Canadian edition to wrap up the week, with a leadership shakeup at HP Canada, a look at TD SYNNEX’s Inspire Canada conference in Toronto, and strong quarterly results from Ingram Micro, driven in part by demand for AI infrastructure.

First up, some significant leadership changes at HP Canada, affecting both the company’s top Canadian position and its channel organization.

Michelle Biase, HP Canada’s president and managing director, is moving into a new role as vice president of U.S. Corporate Sales.

Taking over HP Canada’s leadership on an interim basis is John Cammalleri, who has been the company’s Canadian channel chief for years.

And with John moving into that position, April Marshall will assume responsibility for Canada Commercial Channel Sales.

HP confirmed those changes to ChannelBuzz.ca this week.

There’s an interesting bit of history here, because HP Canada’s last three leaders have all come from channel backgrounds.

John, of course, has spent years leading HP’s Canadian channel business. Michelle returned to HP after spending time at distributor D&H. And before Michelle, Mary Ann Yule came to HP from CDW Canada.

So while there’s a leadership transition underway, there’s also considerable continuity in the kind of experience HP is putting at the top of its Canadian organization.

We’ll be interested to see what that means for Canadian partners as the new leadership team settles in.

Next, TD SYNNEX held its Inspire Canada conference in Toronto yesterday, and there were a couple of interesting developments worth highlighting.

One is a substantial investment in the company’s Canadian distribution infrastructure.

TD SYNNEX is planning a new distribution facility in Caledon, Ontario, measuring approximately eight hundred and fifty thousand square feet, with room to expand by another forty percent.

The company expects the facility to be completed in the first half of twenty twenty-eight.

It’s a significant investment in TD SYNNEX’s Canadian operations, and one that should give the distributor additional capacity as its business evolves.

The other development is the Canadian rollout of MyShop, TD SYNNEX’s e-commerce offering for partners.

I spoke with Meredith Payne about the rollout, and she explained that the company is working with selected Canadian partners on customized implementations.

So this isn’t a broad launch where every Canadian partner gets exactly the same experience on day one. It’s a more deliberate approach, with TD SYNNEX working closely with participating partners.

And that fits into the company’s broader PartnerFirst strategy.

TD SYNNEX has been expanding the AI-powered capabilities of its digital platform, with the goal of making it easier for partners to find products, prepare quotes, place orders and manage transactions.

Some of those developments were announced earlier this month at the company’s U.S. Inspire event, but they were an important part of the discussion in Canada as well.

One of the particularly interesting themes from my conversation with Meredith was how quickly agentic commerce could change the way partners interact with distributors.

We’ll have much more from Inspire Canada next week on In The Channel.

I’ve recorded conversations with TD SYNNEX Canada president Chris Fabes about the distributor’s Canadian strategy, including the Caledon investment, and with Meredith Payne about PartnerFirst, MyShop and the evolution of agentic commerce.

And finally today, Ingram Micro has reported a strong third quarter, with AI infrastructure and cloud solutions helping drive significant growth for the distributor.

Ingram reported fifteen point two billion dollars in quarterly sales, an increase of twenty point eight percent from a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings per share rose twenty-six point four percent to ninety-one cents, and both revenue and earnings came in ahead of analyst expectations.

The company also raised its financial outlook.

Ingram says growth was particularly strong in its Advanced Solutions business, including GPUs and AI infrastructure, as well as its cloud solutions business.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle in those results.

While AI infrastructure demand is helping drive substantial sales growth, Ingram also reported pressure on gross margins because those GPU and AI infrastructure products generally carry lower margins.

And that’s a useful reminder that the AI infrastructure boom isn’t necessarily an uncomplicated profitability story.

There’s clearly a tremendous amount of money being spent on the infrastructure required to support AI workloads.

But the real opportunity for solution providers may be in the services around that infrastructure: helping customers design, deploy, secure, integrate and manage increasingly complex environments.

Ingram’s results offer another indication of just how significant AI infrastructure demand has become for the channel, while also illustrating the importance of finding ways to capture value beyond the hardware transaction itself.

You can find more details on all three stories at ChannelBuzz.ca.

And before we go, a couple of notes on In The Channel.

Later today on In The Channel, we’ve got my conversation with Glenn Kaul of CDW Canada, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit in Vancouver.

Glenn offers a particularly interesting solution-provider perspective on how AI is changing the market.

We discuss how demand for AI infrastructure is affecting traditional IT purchasing patterns, how increasingly sophisticated security threats are changing the services partners need to deliver, and how AI itself could reshape the economics of professional services.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel featured my conversation with Raj and Erin from Cisco Partner Summit, looking at the opportunities emerging for partners as Cisco’s technology and partner strategy evolve.

Both episodes are available through ChannelBuzz.ca and wherever you get your podcasts.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.

Erin Gertner, vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB sales at Cisco Canada

Cisco Partner Summit 2026 brought a wide range of announcements around artificial intelligence, security, customer experience, and the evolution of the company’s partner ecosystem. But for Canadian partners, the biggest question is how to translate those announcements into practical business opportunities.

In this edition of In the Channel, wet sit down with Raj Juneja, president of Cisco Canada, and Erin Gertner, vice president of the partner organization at Cisco Canada, to discuss where they see the biggest opportunities for Canadian partners and what partners should be doing to capitalize on them.

One of the more immediate opportunities comes from Cisco’s growing integration of Splunk into its broader portfolio. Juneja argues that partners with established Cisco networking and security businesses should look beyond simply reselling Splunk and consider how its data capabilities can help them deliver new services to existing customers.

By collecting and analyzing data from infrastructure customers already own, partners can potentially develop new offerings around security, observability, operational intelligence, and business insights. For partners that haven’t worked extensively with Splunk, Juneja suggests starting by understanding the platform’s capabilities and identifying opportunities within their existing customer base.

Raj Juneja, president of Cisco Canada

Cisco IQ is another potential foundation for new partner services. Gertner points to network inventory, infrastructure assessments, vulnerability management, and modernization planning as natural starting points for partners looking to build advisory and lifecycle practices around the platform.

The conversation also explores Cisco’s new Ecosystem Deal Registration initiative, which is designed to recognize partners that influence customer technology decisions even when they aren’t responsible for the eventual transaction.

Gertner says Cisco Canada sees an opportunity to build relationships with advisory firms, consultants, and other organizations that have historically played a less visible role in Cisco’s partner ecosystem. She also acknowledges that Cisco has work to do in identifying the full range of organizations influencing customer decisions.

And as Cisco continues its transition to the Cisco 360 Partner Program, Gertner emphasizes the importance of developing adoption and lifecycle services capabilities. Cisco has provided transitional protections intended to give partners time to adapt, but those protections won’t last indefinitely.

Gertner says Cisco Canada is working closely with partners to help them prepare for the next stage of the program, and reports that many partners have been pleasantly surprised by their initial payments under Cisco 360.

Looking at customer demand, both executives identify secure networking and network modernization as significant opportunities in Canada, particularly as organizations prepare for the growing demands of AI-driven workloads.

But their message to partners is that a network refresh shouldn’t simply be a like-for-like replacement. Instead, it should be an opportunity to introduce additional capabilities around security, observability, infrastructure visibility, and ongoing services.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The biggest opportunities for Canadian partners emerging from Cisco Partner Summit 2026.
• Why existing Cisco networking and security partners should consider building services around Splunk.
• Practical first steps for partners looking to get started with Splunk without making a major upfront investment.
• How Cisco IQ could become the foundation for new advisory, assessment, and lifecycle services.
• What Ecosystem Deal Registration means for consultants, advisors, and other non-transacting partners.
• How Canadian partners are responding to Cisco 360 and what they should be doing to prepare for the next stage of the program.
• Where Cisco Canada sees the strongest customer demand heading into 2027.
• Why network modernization represents an opportunity to expand customer relationships rather than simply replace existing infrastructure.

Listen to the full conversation with Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner of Cisco Canada, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, in this edition of In the Channel.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

We’re continuing our coverage of Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, where Cisco has been laying out its vision for a new generation of partner opportunities around artificial intelligence, security, and an increasingly integrated technology platform.

But with so many announcements, new capabilities, and changes to the partner program, there’s an important question for Canadian partners: Where do you start, and how do you turn this into a profitable business?

That’s what we’re exploring in today’s episode, as I’m joined by Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner from Cisco Canada.

We discuss some of the biggest opportunities they’re seeing for Canadian partners, including how existing Cisco networking and security partners can begin building a business around Splunk, and how Cisco IQ could become the foundation of new advisory and lifecycle services.

We also get into the evolution of the Cisco 360 Partner Program, including some of the early feedback from Canadian partners and what they need to be doing now to protect and grow their profitability as the program continues to evolve.

And we look at Cisco’s new Ecosystem Deal Registration initiative, which recognizes that the partners influencing customer decisions aren’t necessarily the same partners ultimately selling the technology.

Finally, we discuss where Canadian customers are spending their technology budgets, and why Cisco sees an opportunity for partners to rethink their traditional network refresh rather than simply replacing what’s already there.

Let’s get right into it. My chat with Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner.

Robert Dutt: Erin, Raj, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Erin Gertner: Thank you for having us.

Robert Dutt: I guess let’s start with the obvious, given where we’re sitting right now. What does it mean to the Cisco Canada team and to your partners to have home-ice advantage this week?

And I guess I should add, between Vancouver once before and Montreal, we’re back on home ice.

Erin Gertner: Yeah, I think it’s just such a privilege to have everybody join us in Vancouver.

I think I can speak for myself and probably on behalf of Raj. We’re such proud Canadians, and Cisco Canada had such a fantastic year this year, and we have so much to celebrate.

We’re so grateful for our partners. So I think being back in Canada, and specifically in Vancouver, has been amazing for us.

And it’s been really nice to hear feedback from the partners as they’re walking by, saying how much they love the city and that they’ve gotten to explore.

If you look out the window, it’s so picturesque when you get to look at the mountains. I think our city shows very well, so I’m very happy to be here.

Raj Juneja: Yeah, I think I would echo everything that Erin is saying.

I’ve heard nothing but positive sentiment about coming to Canada and what they’re surrounded by here.

This venue in downtown Vancouver, overlooking the ocean. What can you say?

It’s beautiful, and it brings joy to folks who are visiting for the first time. It’s a good representation of what Canada has to offer.

Robert Dutt: Now, with Vancouver 2010, there was the strategy leading up to it to position the team well for that.

Was there a similar long-term strategy behind getting Cisco Canada to have that great year, with Partner Summit coming here? I ask entirely in jest.

Erin Gertner: And own the podium!

That was great.

I think we just had a great opportunity this year in Cisco Canada, and being able to show off our success here is an even bigger blessing.

I think we’re always intentional around our success, and we’ve been asked to replicate it year on year.

If you hear everybody talk about the notion of durable growth, Raj talks a lot about that, and growth on growth.

We’re proud of the year we had, and I think we wish we had this year again next year so we can demonstrate another growth-on-growth year.

But we’ll be in luck even if we’re doing this in Vegas.

Robert Dutt: Yes, even if we’re doing it in Vegas.

We’ve heard a lot this week about the vision around the next generation of the ecosystem, particularly around AI, security, and services.

When you look at the announcements through a Canadian lens, what stands out as particularly important?

What do you see as the biggest opportunities for Canadian partners in this moment, especially the stuff that’s been talked about here this week?

Erin Gertner: I think that Ecosystem Deal Registration that was announced this week is particularly interesting for our Canadian partners.

Raj and I were actually talking about this on the way here.

That’s something Splunk has always done very well, and it was something that I don’t think Cisco had completely figured out.

But we know as the world evolves, we’re seeing different types of partners spending time advising our customers, helping them figure out how to build AI, how to build out a secure network, and how to drive digital transformation.

And the fact that we can have multiple partners in an opportunity delivering value to a customer, and each of those partners be rewarded in some capacity, I think that’s a really exciting opportunity.

The other feedback we’ve gotten from partners over the last few days has been around Cisco IQ.

I think they see the value of that platform, and they truly understand how to monetize that and drive value for customers.

Specifically, when they’re starting to think about network modernization and understanding what their infrastructure looks like.

For a lot of customers, that’s been a little bit of a black hole over the years.

And now, when we think about the complexity of patching and all the other things that our customers are being tasked with on a daily basis, the fact that our partners can play an important role, I think, is very important.

The last piece is SCI. Chuck announced that on stage, so sovereign critical infrastructure.

That is a big part of Cisco Canada’s strategy this year, just given what’s going on in the world and what we’re hearing from customers.

We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to deliver applications and some of our core infrastructure in a sovereign fashion.

And I think our partners are very interested in that as well because they’re hearing it from customers and from the government.

Anything to add on your side?

Raj Juneja: No, I think you’ve hit all the top points.

I think the capabilities around the integration with Cloud Control and Cisco IQ coming together, that’s a great opportunity.

Not only for our customers to take advantage of something that they’ve been asking for over a long period through Cloud Control, but then the IQ capabilities for our partners.

Going back to what Erin said, I think we have a couple of capabilities, and the fact that everything is going to be built within Cloud Control speaks to the opportunities that lie ahead for both our customers and partners.

Robert Dutt: A couple of follow-ups there.

One, on the non-transacting partners: How realized is that opportunity in terms of identifying the folks who are going to be that base today?

Obviously, the incentives are now in place to activate.

I’m curious how much of it you think is from folks who you already know, and how much of it is from folks who have yet to be surfaced in the Cisco partner ecosystem.

Erin Gertner: I think that’s an interesting question.

I think we have a lot to learn about who is truly influencing our customers.

Again, I think Splunk always did a great job of truly understanding what the landscape looked like in their customers and who was helping to influence a decision or a strategy.

For our account teams, they’ve always focused on the transacting partner and maybe didn’t have as broad of a view around who is behind the scenes.

We know of the GSIs, and we see a lot of them doing advisory work on behalf of our customers.

But then if you look at all the various architectures, security being one where there’s often somebody in there doing consultative work for customers.

Now that we have an incentive in place, I think that gives us the opportunity to broaden our ecosystem and start developing conversations and relationships with companies that we haven’t historically done a lot with.

So I think it’s going to be a big learning opportunity for us and our teams, but we have something to talk to them about now, which we didn’t have in the past.

Robert Dutt: And on the other side, on IQ, clearly Jeetu was talking about this as someplace where he wants partners to build a practice around it.

Not just a product in the lineup, but a foundational part.

Obviously, early innings of that particular game, but I’m curious if you have any thoughts on what you see as the most likely or most obvious first step for partners to start down that road.

Erin Gertner: I think they need to get comfortable with IQ themselves and really understand the power of it, and develop a unique offering around it.

Now that we have role-based access and they can play a role in a customer actually going through the adoption of IQ, I think it’s going to present an opportunity for them to figure that out.

There’s an obvious play in helping customers take an inventory of their network and get a good handle on what the totality of their environment looks like.

For many customers, even going and doing a renewal is a very complicated value proposition for them, because maybe they don’t understand what their topology looks like, or maybe they don’t understand where they have vulnerabilities or where they’re behind in security patching.

And IQ gives them that peripheral view of it.

But I think our partners can build a really interesting service around what the advisory looks like.

What’s the next generation? How do we go build a net-new network? Or how do we get ahead of any vulnerabilities and patches when they haven’t historically been able to do that?

Robert Dutt: I wanted to spend some time on Splunk because that’s another area that got a lot of main-stage attention and a lot of “pay attention to this” kind of love from the leadership team.

I think it’s an interesting opportunity for a lot of Cisco’s existing partner base.

A lot of partners have built successful businesses around networking, infrastructure, and security, but may not have that experience with Splunk today.

Why should those partners be looking seriously at the opportunity?

What’s the potential they’re leaving on the table if they aren’t integrating Splunk into what they’re doing today?

Raj Juneja: I mean, if you think about what’s going on in the market right now, and what the underlying most valuable asset is right now, it’s data.

And ultimately, whether it’s securing it, whether it’s enabling AI, being able to provide customers the governance, visibility, and security capabilities through a common platform is a competitive advantage that they now have if they take advantage of it.

As you just mentioned, the investments that we’ve made to incorporate the capabilities of Splunk, even within our own portfolio, speak to the strong capabilities that they themselves can take advantage of in building practices.

Going back to customers who don’t want to build it themselves, that’s where they’ve built their revenues for many years, around managed services and professional services.

And I think that Splunk is a great data platform to enable that.

The thing with Splunk that’s so powerful is that traditionally, people who have leveraged Splunk may have leveraged log aggregation or log collection and may not understand the full value proposition.

Or they may leverage it from a security standpoint or a security use case.

Knowing that the same data you harness can actually give you the opportunity to have a business-level conversation around things like tokenomics and things around your whole estate that will give you visibility and allow you to make business decisions, that itself speaks to opportunities for partners to take advantage of.

Robert Dutt: How much of the opportunity is around selling Splunk itself versus making Splunk a way to create additional value around the Cisco solutions that they’re already selling?

Raj Juneja: I don’t know if I’d quantify it.

It’s going to be basically no different than the traditional Cisco team, or people who make investments in Cisco.

They’ll understand the opportunity in terms of the capabilities that Splunk provides to what they already have.

From a Splunk perspective, I think what’s interesting is that bringing in that data from the Cisco estate that they own provides them the ability to advise and leverage the capabilities of things like IQ and things like defence, and look at everything from a Cloud Control perspective.

And give them a broader value proposition back to those customers, as opposed to something that they’ve traditionally only been looking at in a siloed fashion, if that makes sense.

Robert Dutt: Yeah, no, it does.

So if I’m a Canadian Cisco partner with a solid networking and security business, but I haven’t really engaged with Splunk, what’s the first step?

Where do I start building that business without having to make a giant upfront investment into it?

Raj Juneja: I think first is understanding the capabilities of the platform.

Taking advantage and demonstrating to yourselves that you can leverage the data that you’re collecting already from your customers, your pre-existing customers, and how you take that data and turn it into business intelligence that you can then provide back to them in terms of an offering.

So that could come from traditional IT, come from OT, and be able to then turn that around and give them an opportunity to look at offering security practices, offering observability practices, looking at the data and leveraging it as a whole.

But I would say the first thing is understanding the power that you have with Splunk.

So if you wanted to get started, I think it’s bringing our team in to give them a demonstration around the simplicity of first collecting that log data with Splunk and the power that you can get from the data once you’ve collected it.

Robert Dutt: One of the messages we’ve heard repeatedly here is that AI is creating opportunities for partners that go beyond selling the infrastructure, selling AI itself.

You’re talking about how partners can help customers rethink workflows, build solutions, and deliver services.

How ready is the average Canadian partner to take advantage of that?

And what are you doing to help partners level up their game and meet that opportunity?

Erin Gertner: From the conversations I’ve had, every partner seems to be in a different state of readiness or is taking a very different approach, which I love because I think it creates a lot of unique differentiation for each.

We were actually just in a meeting with a partner, and we were talking about use cases as an example.

We do a great job of building the underlying technology, but the role of a partner with many of our customers is helping them really understand where they can optimize, where they can drive use cases, or where they can help customers realize true value from AI.

We’ve got teams in there doing enablement from a technology perspective and helping them understand how we can create a resilient network, how we can secure AI workloads, how we can help them build.

But our best partners are the ones who are really thinking about how they deliver unique value and how they take the power of their entire ecosystem and their portfolio and bring it to customers.

We’re also seeing service providers really thinking about sovereignty with AI.

And they’re thinking about all kinds of different models to help customers be successful, depending on how they want to consume technology.

Whether it’s GPU as a service, whether it’s inferencing at the edge, whether it’s building out a sovereign cloud or building out sovereign applications.

Everybody’s taken a very different approach, and we’ve had a lot of ideation sessions with customers, helping them think about: Who is your customer base? What do you want to deliver to the market? What are you good at? And how do you build a profitable practice around that?

So customers are looking to you as a thought leader versus just another technology provider.

Robert Dutt: It feels like at the same time that some of these things are becoming more concrete and more clear in terms of building a business, it’s going off in so many directions at once.

When I was chatting with Glenn Kaul a few minutes ago in here and asked about AI as well, it depends what you mean by AI.

Because there’s AI, what my customers are doing with AI, what I’m doing internally with AI for my business, what I’m doing internally with my customers with AI, there’s what I’m doing with my vendor partners.

There are so many different aspects to it.

I think your point is well received about there being so many different paths, and there’s not one easy answer in terms of what it looks like for a partner.

Erin Gertner: For sure.

AI means something different to everybody, just like sovereignty means something different to everybody.

Every company is on its own journey to realize value, whether that’s for its own internal use or whether it’s for helping customers be successful with their goals and ambitions as well.

Robert Dutt: We’ve heard, obviously, a lot about the evolution of Cisco 360, the changes to the incentives, and the growing importance of different types of partner contributions.

When Canadian partners go home from Vancouver, or cross town if that happens to be the case for those in the Lower Mainland, and start looking at those changes, what should they be paying particular attention to?

Where are the opportunities to do things differently as a result of where you guys are going programmatically?

Erin Gertner: I think continuing to build out those adoption practices and managed practices.

As we rolled out Cisco 360, we wanted to make it a very manageable transition for our partners.

So we’re still paying the majority of our rebate structure on the land motion to make sure our partners are still highly profitable with us, and to give them time to start to build out some of the other motions and practices within their organizations.

So I would say continuing to build that out and getting good at that.

We’re seeing it especially as we’re selling more and more software. The importance of adoption and doing that well becomes increasingly more valuable for customers to really realize the potential of their investments.

We did a great job of protecting our partners for the first 18 months and making sure that they were going to stay above that 7.5 mark if they were already there, or at least holding that high-water mark.

But as they continue to evolve and we go back into a qualification period, we’re paying particular attention in Canada to our partner community to make sure they’re doing all the right things to set themselves up for success.

Once that 18 months lapses, we don’t want any of them to fall below where they are, because it’ll have a material impact on their profitability and working with us.

Robert Dutt: Any early, I hesitate to say it’s too early for a metric, but gut feelings, reactions, thoughts on how that’s landing and how partners are doing on meeting that mark?

Erin Gertner: I think partners have been pleasantly surprised as they got their first cheques from us and continued to work with us.

Change isn’t easy.

And this was the first big change we made to a program that was beloved by partners and profitable for partners for many, many years.

They understood it, and they knew how to make money with us.

And we changed the game a little bit. We had to.

But I think after all that transition and all the difficulty partners anticipated in getting there, a lot of them have been pleasantly surprised by where they landed.

And in all the conversations we’ve had with partners, I think they understand the why behind it.

Many of them feel like they are in a good place, and they have an understanding of where we’re going and how our sales teams are compensated.

You saw them get up on stage and actually share that information, and share how our incentives are aligned to that.

So I think the fact that those two things are aligned is really important for them because it means what they’re investing in, what they’re building, is what our teams care about.

And that alignment drives the right behaviour.

Robert Dutt: On the demand side, we talked about this a little bit six months ago, or now more, but obviously this is a fast-changing market.

Erin Gertner: Yes, it is.

Robert Dutt: Things evolve.

When you’re talking to Canadian customers, both of you, where are you seeing the strongest demand right now?

Is it infrastructure, security, modernization of networks, something else?

Where do you see the biggest opportunities at this moment and developing into the early parts of 2027?

Erin Gertner: I can answer from what I’m hearing from partners and customers, and then I’ll pass it over to Raj.

I still think secure networking is one of the biggest opportunities out there.

What worked a couple of years ago in terms of longevity of a network, or having a network that’s ready for agentic AI and AI workflows, it’s not the same.

And I think that has caused a lot of customers to think through how they keep up with patching, as an example.

Things we’ve heard from customers are that it’s consuming an enormous amount of time, effort, energy, and resources within their organizations.

And they’re looking for better ways to do that and get an inventory of where they are.

Security, obviously, is very top of mind for everybody, especially given what the security landscape looks like today and the vulnerabilities that have been identified in the broader landscape.

I don’t know if you have anything else.

Raj Juneja: Yeah, no, I think it’s spot on.

I think the network presents a huge opportunity, especially in the world of agents and the throughput that’s going on.

And so that obviously is what they’re seeing from a demand standpoint.

Coming through the network requires a different approach to management, if you will.

And I think that’s where the opportunity is that we’re taking full advantage of.

Robert Dutt: That chart that Jeetu showed with the difference between network consumption for chatbot AI versus agentic AI was, A, sobering, and B, if you’re in the business of selling networks, it looks like dollar signs in a big way.

Last one for me.

Looking ahead over the next year, what’s the one thing you’d most like to see Cisco Canada partners do differently as a result of what they’ve heard here at Partner Summit?

What would tell you that the Canadian partner is taking advantage of the opportunities out there if we’re doing this again next year in Las Vegas?

Raj Juneja: From my lens, I’d say it’s taking advantage of what we’ve highlighted here at Partner Summit this week.

Taking advantage of the capabilities of building on top of IQ and leveraging the capabilities they’ll see in the combination of IQ and Cloud Control.

So I’d say that.

And then something that we’re preaching to all our partners is that we have a large network refresh going on across Canada, especially with the demands of AI.

Let’s not just focus on like-for-like.

Let’s make sure we’re surrounding the network with all the capabilities we have to offer, whether it be from a security standpoint, an observability standpoint, everything that we have.

Let’s not just sell the network refresh the same way we have in the past.

Erin Gertner: I would say that cross-sell piece, or upsell, is very, very important.

Don’t just look at something for what it is today.

We’ve got buying vehicles, and there’s a ton of data that our partners can leverage to broaden deal size and broaden opportunities that they identify in our customer base.

And PXP, I always sort of joke, has almost too much data for our partners, but in the best possible way.

It really helps them identify what they can be doing better and helps them think bigger.

The other thing that we are very focused on in Canada is market share.

We want to go out and grow our market-share footprint, and we have incentives in place that our partners can leverage to help them do that, and they’re very lucrative.

So we’re trying a few new things here that we’re very excited about that we think will help our partners be much more profitable upfront.

Because we know how our partner sellers get paid, and we want to make sure that they’re able to leverage those programs to want to partner with us.

But we also want to go out and win.

We think we have a great portfolio, and we think we have the right tools to help partners be successful in winning.

And we want to take advantage of that opportunity this year.

So we’re very bullish on that.

Robert Dutt: All right. Once again, I appreciate you both taking the time.

Erin Gertner: Thank you.

Raj Juneja: Thank you for having us.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner from Cisco Canada.

I’d like to thank Raj and Erin for their time, and thank you for listening.

One of the themes running through this year’s Partner Summit has been the idea that Cisco wants its partners to build more sophisticated businesses around its technology rather than simply selling more products.

And I think this conversation offers some useful starting points for Canadian partners, whether that’s finding new value in the data their customers are already generating, building services around Cisco IQ, or taking advantage of the changes Cisco is making to how it recognizes and rewards different kinds of partner contributions.

But there’s also a fairly straightforward message here.

As customers modernize their networks and prepare for AI, partners have an opportunity to do considerably more than replace existing infrastructure.

If you’re finding value in the podcast, please do subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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And if you feel like doing so, we’d love a rating or review.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

Cisco says November price increases will be smallest of recent rounds

Cisco is preparing another round of price increases effective November 7, but the company says the adjustments will be more selective than previous increases.

CRN reported October 24 that Cisco plans mid-single-digit increases on affected networking and security software, along with adjustments to selected hardware.

Speaking at Cisco Partner Summit in Vancouver, Cisco CFO Mark Patterson said rising costs for memory, printed circuit boards, power supplies and logistics continue to pressure the company. However, he emphasized that many products will see no increase at all.

Patterson said the November adjustment will be Cisco’s smallest recent price increase when measured across its global price list.

Cisco is also pursuing more than 30 memory-efficiency initiatives, including engineering changes that have reduced memory requirements by approximately 50 percent in one of its Wi-Fi 7 products.

For partners, the immediate consideration is reviewing affected products and outstanding quotes before the November 7 effective date.

Read CRN’s original reporting on Cisco’s November 7 price increases.

ThinkOn and Preservica expand Canadian sovereign cloud opportunity

Canadian cloud provider ThinkOn has partnered with Preservica to help government organizations preserve permanent digital records while keeping them under Canadian jurisdiction.

The offering combines ThinkOn’s Canadian cloud infrastructure with Preservica’s digital preservation technology, targeting long-term records management, accessibility and compliance.

ThinkOn plans to bring the solution to market through its network of more than 200 channel partners.

For solution providers serving Canadian government customers, the partnership creates an opportunity to expand existing cloud and infrastructure relationships into digital preservation and information governance services.

Read ThinkOn’s October 27 announcement of its partnership with Preservica.

Digitate adds autonomous agents to IT operations platform

Digitate announced ignio Hummingbird on October 28, introducing additional agentic AI capabilities designed to move enterprise IT operations beyond detecting problems and recommending fixes.

The new release targets workflows including service desk operations, incident management and patch planning, with AI agents intended to execute approved tasks under defined governance controls.

The announcement reflects the broader shift toward autonomous IT operations, with potential implications for service delivery, operational efficiency and the economics of managed services.

For MSPs, the important question is how these capabilities can be incorporated into services while maintaining appropriate oversight and accountability.

Read Digitate’s ignio Hummingbird announcement.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Thursday, October 29, 2026.

We’re looking at three developments for the Canadian IT channel: Cisco’s upcoming price increases, a Canadian cloud partnership focused on data sovereignty, and new AI agents designed to automate enterprise IT operations.

First, Cisco is preparing another round of price increases, effective November seventh.

CRN first reported the changes last week, including mid-single-digit increases on affected networking and security software, along with selected hardware.

But during Cisco Partner Summit in Vancouver this week, the company offered some additional perspective on how those increases will affect its overall portfolio.

Cisco chief financial officer Mark Patterson discussed the changes during a session with Tim Coogan, the company’s senior vice president of global partner sales.

Patterson said Cisco continues to face increasing costs for memory, printed circuit boards, power supplies and logistics. With demand for AI infrastructure putting additional pressure on supply chains, those costs are becoming more difficult to avoid.

But he emphasized that raising prices is a last resort, and that Cisco is taking steps to limit the impact.

Those efforts include more than thirty initiatives aimed at improving memory efficiency. Patterson pointed to one example involving Cisco’s Wi-Fi 7 products, where engineering work has reduced memory requirements by approximately fifty percent.

And when Cisco does increase prices, Patterson said it’s trying to be selective rather than applying the same adjustment across its entire portfolio.

Some products will see mid-single-digit increases, but many others won’t see an increase at all.

In fact, Patterson said that when Cisco measures the November seventh adjustment against its overall global price list, it will be the smallest of the company’s recent rounds of price increases.

That’s an important distinction for partners. The increase on an individual product isn’t necessarily representative of the change across Cisco’s entire portfolio.

It also means partners need to understand which products are affected, particularly where they have customer quotes or projects already in progress.

And coming out of a Partner Summit where Cisco spent considerable time discussing partner profitability, it’s an interesting reminder that improving the economics of the channel involves more than incentives and rebates. Partners also have to manage the costs of the products and services they’re delivering.

Next, Canadian cloud provider ThinkOn has announced a partnership with Preservica focused on digital preservation and data sovereignty for Canadian government organizations.

The partnership combines ThinkOn’s Canadian cloud infrastructure with Preservica’s technology for preserving permanent digital records.

The companies say the offering will help government organizations manage long-term records preservation, maintain access to important information, and keep that data under Canadian jurisdiction.

And there’s a direct channel component to the announcement.

ThinkOn plans to bring the solution to market through its network of more than two hundred channel partners.

For partners already working with government customers, that creates an opportunity to extend existing infrastructure and cloud relationships into information governance and digital preservation.

It also gives those partners another way to address data sovereignty requirements, which continue to be an important consideration for Canadian public-sector organizations.

The opportunity here isn’t necessarily just selling another cloud service. It’s helping customers manage information that may need to remain accessible, trustworthy and under their control for decades.

Our third story is another example of how agentic AI is moving from assisting IT teams toward taking a more active role in their operations.

Digitate has introduced ignio Hummingbird, an update to its AI operations platform that adds new capabilities for autonomous action.

The company is targeting workflows including service desk operations, incident management and patch planning.

The idea is to move beyond identifying problems and recommending what someone should do about them, toward AI agents that can execute approved tasks within defined governance controls.

It’s a direction we’re seeing from a growing number of enterprise technology vendors, and it has some potentially significant implications for managed service providers.

Routine operational work has traditionally been an important part of managed services delivery. As more of that work becomes automated, providers will need to consider how they differentiate their services and demonstrate their value.

And there’s also the question of oversight. Giving AI agents the ability to act on enterprise systems creates opportunities for efficiency, but it also makes governance, accountability and security particularly important.

Those are questions service providers will increasingly have to address as they build AI into their own operations and the services they deliver to customers.

Later today on In The Channel, we’re continuing our conversations from Cisco Partner Summit with Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner, Cisco Canada‘s president and channel chief respectively, looking at Cisco’s evolving partner strategy and the opportunities it creates.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode featured Cisco’s Andrew Sage discussing how agentic AI is transforming technology distribution, including the work Cisco is doing with Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX.

You’ll find that interview, along with links to today’s announcements, at ChannelBuzz.ca.

That’s how wer’re seeing the headlines. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Andrew Sage, Cisco’s vice president of global partners and distribution sales

Artificial intelligence is beginning to change the way technology moves through the IT channel, and Cisco believes the impact on distribution could extend far beyond simply automating transactions.

At Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, the company highlighted new agentic AI integrations with distributors designed to simplify the process of configuring, pricing, and ordering technology. But Cisco also sees an opportunity for distributors to take on a much broader role in helping partners deliver sophisticated solutions and services to customers.

In this edition of In the Channel, ChannelBuzz.ca editor Robert Dutt sits down with Andrew Sage, Cisco’s vice president of global partners and distribution sales, to discuss how the company’s distribution strategy is evolving and what those changes mean for Canadian VARs, MSPs, and solution providers.

One of the most immediate examples is Cisco’s new integration with Ingram Micro’s Xvantage platform. Sage says the agentic workflow can reduce a process that previously took as much as a day — including network configuration, deal registration, pricing, and ordering — to approximately five minutes.

Unlike traditional API-based integrations, which typically exchange information through predefined requests and responses, the new approach allows AI agents operating across Cisco and distributor systems to exchange information and recommendations as part of a more sophisticated workflow.

And Ingram Micro isn’t the only distributor involved.

Sage describes another integration already operating within TD SYNNEX’s U.S. presales organization, where a distributor-side AI agent can communicate with Cisco’s configuration agent to help turn customer requirements into proposed solutions and quotes. Human presales engineers remain involved in reviewing and refining the results.

For Sage, however, the long-term opportunity goes beyond speeding up the sales process.

Cisco is encouraging distributors to provide more capabilities on behalf of partners, including security assessments, infrastructure modernization planning, professional services, and software activation and adoption.

That approach could be particularly valuable for smaller partners that lack the resources to develop every specialized capability internally.

Sage points to sophisticated purchasing arrangements, including Cisco enterprise agreements, as an example of opportunities that smaller partners may be able to pursue with distributor support.

And as Cisco continues expanding its use of agentic AI, Sage expects the next generation of distributor integrations to move beyond configuration and commerce into installed-base analysis, security recommendations, lifecycle management, and renewals.

The conversation also explores the upcoming integration of distributors into the Cisco 360 Partner Program. Sage says distributors will begin prequalification in January 2027, ahead of the program‘s planned launch on August 1, 2027.

With AI driving demand for networking and security infrastructure while simultaneously reducing the cost of scaling channel operations, Sage believes Cisco distribution is entering a period of significant opportunity.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Cisco sees the role of IT distributors evolving beyond traditional fulfillment and transactions.
• Why Cisco is connecting its AI agents directly with distributor platforms.
• How the Ingram Micro integration can reduce configuration, deal registration, pricing, and ordering from as much as a day to approximately five minutes.
• How a separate agentic integration is already supporting TD SYNNEX’s U.S. presales organization.
• Why Cisco wants distributors to deliver more services and capabilities on behalf of smaller partners.
• How agentic AI could help smaller VARs and MSPs pursue more sophisticated Cisco opportunities.
• What’s next for agentic distribution, including installed-base analysis, security recommendations, and lifecycle management.
• How distributors will transition into the Cisco 360 Partner Program in 2027.
• Why Sage believes the distribution channel has several significant growth opportunities ahead.

Listen to the full conversation with Andrew Sage, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, in this edition of In the Channel.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing you news and information for the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

We’re continuing our coverage of Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, where one of the recurring themes has been the evolution of the partner ecosystem, and particularly the growing role of artificial intelligence in changing how partners, distributors, and Cisco itself work together.

And when it comes to distribution, Cisco isn’t just talking about what’s possible. It’s already putting agentic AI to work.

This week, we heard about an integration between Cisco and Ingram Micro that can reduce a process involving network configuration, deal registration, pricing, and ordering from as much as a day to just five minutes. And there’s similar work underway with TD SYNNEX, where AI agents are helping automate the presales configuration and quoting process.

But the bigger opportunity may be what these technologies allow distributors and their partners to do next.

Cisco is increasingly looking to distributors to provide services and expertise on behalf of partners, helping smaller VARs and MSPs offer more sophisticated solutions, develop new capabilities, and compete for opportunities that might previously have been out of reach.

To explore what this means for the future of distribution, I sat down with Andrew Sage, Cisco’s vice president of global partners and distribution sales, here at Partner Summit.

We discussed how agentic integration is changing the relationship between Cisco and its distributors, where the next wave of automation is heading, and why Sage believes these changes could significantly expand Cisco’s reach into the SMB market.

We also get into the upcoming integration of distributors into the Cisco 360 Partner Program and what Sage sees as an unusually strong set of growth opportunities for the distribution channel.

Let’s get right into it. My chat with Andrew Sage.

Robert Dutt: Andrew, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Andrew Sage: Of course, Robert. Always great to see a fellow Canadian here in Vancouver.

Robert Dutt: Speaking of that, you’ve spent so much of your career with global roles at Cisco. What’s it like having Partner Summit in Vancouver this year? And from your perspective, what is bringing Cisco’s global partner community back to Canada for the third time, may I add?

Andrew Sage: For the third time, yeah.

Well, you know, we move Partner Summit around North America, and I was patiently waiting to come back to the home country.

I think it’s a perfect time to get partners together because there is so much going on right now in our business.

We sat through a keynote today where Jeetu Patel, our president and chief product officer, walked through the innovation that Cisco is bringing to this moment we’re having with AI.

And our CEO, Chuck, was comparing it to the Internet and how that changed how people thought about technology. The impact was underestimated at the beginning and ultimately became quite profound.

I really feel like it’s exactly the same now, probably on steroids, if I can add that.

So, yeah, we’ve got a lot to talk about, and we’re lucky enough to be in this beautiful convention centre. This place is just off the charts.

Robert Dutt: And distribution has been such a hot topic.

It always gets attention because it’s Partner Summit, and obviously distributors are a big part of that. But it feels like the subject of distribution is getting the love from the top executives on down at this week’s event. There’s a lot going on.

We’ve heard a lot this week about the vision of an agile, increasingly AI-enabled partner ecosystem. And distribution has obviously been central to the channel strategy for obvious reasons.

But how do you see the role of the distributor changing, both as a result of that vision becoming reality and as a result of the decisions the distributors are making about what they want to be going forward?

Andrew Sage: Yeah, great question.

Distribution remains hugely important to Cisco. About a third of our business goes through our distribution channels. More than two-thirds of our transactions go through our distributors.

So they are very, very busy partners of ours in every corner of the world, and they continue to gain share in Cisco’s route-to-market mix. They become more and more relevant over time.

And their business is changing.

I have an AI agent that every morning gives me a summary of what’s been announced from our distributors, usually earnings announcements and things like that.

Their businesses are growing really well, and they’re profitable. They’re in a good spot.

But they’re being asked to do more and more by companies like ours who partner with them.

Obviously, they still need to deliver that core value of scaling our business into every corner of the world, providing us with capillarity, enabling our partners, helping our partners do demand generation, and even the most basic things they provide, almost taken for granted: inventory, credit, those sorts of things.

But now, more than ever, we’re really focusing on getting our distributors to help partners move fast, because this is all moving very fast.

We have this concept we call “on behalf of,” where our distributors are building capabilities to do things on behalf of partners.

In a community of partners that is pretty diverse, not every partner is going to be able to drive adoption, for example, and lifecycle services for their customers.

Not every partner will be able to do a sort of post-[unclear] security assessment for their customers, where there’s massive demand right now.

As you can imagine, customers are extremely nervous about the state of their infrastructure.

Do they need patches? Do they need upgrades? Do they need to put compensating controls in place?

A lot of our partners can’t deliver that service yet, but our distributors can.

And so we’re asking them to do some of these things on behalf of partners.

That last one is a really important example: doing customer assessments using some of the tools Cisco has, like Cisco IQ, to look into the customer’s network on behalf of that partner.

Give that customer a sense of what their priority actions are in order to secure their network in this crazy AI world, and then build a plan to help them go out and do it.

The distributors can also support that partner with professional services.

What this does is allow us to move quickly to get the new solutions into the hands of our customers.

It also creates a great profitability opportunity for our distributors. They’re really leaning into it, and we’re excited about this new phase we’re in.

Robert Dutt: Well, and it maps nicely with one of the things distributors have wanted to do for a while, which has obviously been the “sure, we’ll be your bench” kind of approach.

And that sounds like it’s taking it even a step beyond, as in, “Don’t just tag me in on a specific opportunity. I’ll be able to surface more of what your customers need,” because of telemetry and automation and all those good things.

Andrew Sage: Yeah, exactly.

And the earlier that partner has the conversation with the customer and then brings the resources from the distributor into that opportunity, the better.

Because once you’re early in that phase, you can consult with that customer. You can give them a path.

Customers’ budgets aren’t instantly doubling to upgrade everything in their network.

They need to know: Where do I go first? Where are my most vulnerable devices? What’s facing the Internet? What do I need to patch immediately? What could potentially wait until down the line? Where do I put a control in place?

And ultimately, how do I modernize that infrastructure?

It’s a long journey for some customers, and the distributors are helping a lot there.

Robert Dutt: One of the really interesting themes here has been Cisco’s work to make its own partner operations more agentic and to bring more of that automation into the mix, intelligent automation beyond just the rote rules.

Now, we’ve seen the announcement with Ingram Micro around SMB Quick Buy, which connects Cisco’s intelligence to Ingram’s Xvantage platform to automate more of the buying process.

Walk me through what that represents for you.

How fundamentally does it change the relationship between Cisco, the distributor, and the partners who you are jointly, ultimately serving?

Andrew Sage: What it does, in a nutshell, is that over time, I think we’re going to see a blurring between the distributor, the vendor, the partner, and the customer in terms of who does what in a typical workflow, whether it’s a commerce workflow, a design workflow, or an adoption workflow.

And I’m really thrilled by the opportunity to use AI in our business because it’s the most operationally complex business Cisco has.

As I mentioned, most of our transactions go through the distributors. Millions of transactions, some very small, some larger.

Where we think AI will really apply is in embedding it into workflows that face the partner and maybe ultimately even face the customer, taking manual, lower-value tasks away from the distributors’ teams so they can focus on the things I talked about before, like doing these post-[unclear] assessments.

So they move to value and use agents connecting back to our agents to conduct some of these more routine tasks.

And over time, those routine tasks will become even more sophisticated.

With Ingram Micro, what we’ve done is launch a service on their Xvantage platform that really walks a partner through designing a network, registering that opportunity with Cisco, getting the best pricing, and then ultimately placing the order, all assisted by Cisco’s AI agents on the back end.

It’s going to really simplify the process of working with Cisco for these partners.

And frankly, some of the smaller partners serving the SMB market, who we really value, find us a little difficult to work with sometimes.

This is going to really help that, I think.

Robert Dutt: What does it do, or what do you think it has the potential to do, for the velocity of the deal, especially once it’s been configured and set up on the partner end and handed off to Cisco?

I’m curious how much faster things can go when it’s a couple or three agents dealing with it, as opposed to going through the formal processes of getting a deal approved.

Andrew Sage: Of course, yeah.

And I have to stress that in all of these workflows, there are humans in the loop, for sure.

Because you want somebody to ensure at the end, “Yes, this is what I’m looking for. Yes, I’ve had a chance to tune it,” or whatever.

But in the case of Quick Buy, the process of designing the network, applying for a deal registration to get the best available pricing, and then placing that order, because of the back and forth between the partner, Ingram Micro, and Cisco, could potentially take a day to get all the approvals done and everything else.

In this agentic workflow that we built with Ingram Micro, it can be five minutes.

And that partner never has to leave Xvantage to get the value and intelligence of the agents we have on the Cisco platform, because they’re connected directly into that Xvantage workflow.

Robert Dutt: What do you see as the biggest difference between what you’re doing, and can do in the future, with agents versus the sort of e-commerce and automation work that distributors have been doing for a long time?

What’s possible now that wasn’t possible before?

Is it just a matter of that velocity, or is there more to it than that?

Andrew Sage: It’s a different kind of exchange of information, Robert.

Our interactions with our distributors are the most automated at Cisco, and we’re oftentimes the most automated vendor that these distributors work with.

But it’s done with APIs.

We’ve built out an extensive set of API connections, but APIs just exchange bits of information back and forth when asked. Ask, answer. Ask, answer.

Now that we’ve got these agentic communications, we’re exchanging intelligence. We’re exchanging insights.

It’s a very different exchange of information.

And using MCP servers, the connection between our agents and theirs is really simple to do.

Robert Dutt: Is what we’re seeing with Ingram a model for what the relationship with distributors is going to look like more broadly in the future?

Are we headed toward a world where these kinds of connections become the standard across the distribution ecosystem?

Andrew Sage: Sure hope so.

Robert Dutt: You’re betting on it?

Andrew Sage: Yeah, we’re betting on it.

I’ll give you another example, just to show you how quickly things are moving.

In fact, the work that we’re doing with the distributors is the first external agentic connections that Cisco has done.

So we’re going to see this broadly across our channel, our entire customer base, over time.

And we’ve got another example with another large global distributor, TD SYNNEX, where they’ve got a presales agent.

That presales agent takes a quote request from a customer, automatically passes it to our configuration agent, and our configuration agent reviews the request, recommends the right equipment, potentially recommends expansion opportunities, and passes that back to TD SYNNEX’s agent.

A quote is created in the TD SYNNEX ERP system that then gets reviewed by that presales engineer at TD SYNNEX.

They get involved in more value-added work of customizing it, potentially expanding it.

But they save a ton of time in all those initial phases because the first two or three phases of that entire interaction were done purely agent to agent.

And that is also live now in TD SYNNEX U.S.’s presales team.

Robert Dutt: So how do you see this changing how distributors differentiate themselves?

As the transactional side becomes increasingly automated, how does that change how they create value, how they justify themselves and what they do to both you and to their customer, the partner?

Because obviously, in distribution, you have to please a multitude of masters.

Andrew Sage: You do, yeah.

And you have to differentiate, for sure.

I will stress that the core values that distributors bring for vendors like ours — that capillarity, the ability to hold inventory, because we are very much a company that has hardware tethered to software to create that unique value for customers — remain important.

So inventory, subscription management, enablement: that continues to be really important.

But what this does is enable the distributor to move away from what would be considered busywork, potentially, and start to focus on some of those things we talked about at the beginning of the conversation.

Helping partners deliver AI security customer assessments for their customers, for example.

Another area where our distributors are really leaning in is software activation and adoption.

We want every customer of ours to love the subscription they have with us, but they won’t love it if they don’t activate it. They won’t love it if they don’t make sure everybody’s using it.

And once again, a lot of partners don’t have the teams or the skills to do that activation and adoption.

So the distributors are now staffing those teams to drive adoption with customers.

And there’s actually a really great incentive program at Cisco that they’re driving some super profitability out of as well.

So that’s the trend we see, moving toward that kind of work.

Robert Dutt: What are you hearing from partners, especially that smaller or midsize VAR or MSP who buys through distribution, in terms of where they see the most value in this sort of thing?

I’m curious how much is the ability to expand what they do versus the ability to take time out of the sales process.

Andrew Sage: I think that over time, it’s that “expand what they do” part that’s going to be the most valuable.

We have a lot of partners out there that are smaller, but whose customers, for example, want to use some of our more sophisticated buying programs, like enterprise agreements.

And so the distributors can basically represent the enterprise agreement capabilities for that customer and for that partner, and allow them to do an enterprise agreement when they could not have done one before.

The partners see huge value in that because all of a sudden, they can punch above their weight.

They can show up in an account with the distributor behind them, supplementing their capabilities to make them go head to head with a partner that might already have made those investments.

That’s pretty exciting for small partners.

I think we’re going to broaden our partner base by doing so.

Robert Dutt: You’ve spent a good part of your career focused on making Cisco’s technology more accessible to small and midsize businesses.

I know that’s not necessarily directly in your bailiwick at this exact moment, but is the next generation of distribution capabilities potentially a breakthrough for that market?

Could AI-driven automation make it easier for smaller partners to bring some of the higher-end stuff to market, especially, as you say, with partners who don’t necessarily have that capability today?

Andrew Sage: That is definitely the plan. Absolutely right.

We want to increase the breadth of our partner community.

We think that potentially complexity has limited us a little bit from reaching the number of partners that we want to reach.

And I think this kind of work we’re doing with the distributors is going to absolutely impact that.

Robert Dutt: What are the biggest SMB opportunities to add some of the technologies that may not have been as SMB-friendly in the past as they potentially could be?

Andrew Sage: One of the biggest benefits of the Cisco portfolio is that we have this platform approach, where under a single agentic management console, you can meet the needs of a customer from a networking standpoint, from a security standpoint, and from a collaboration standpoint.

And the platform on top of that allows it to be really easily managed under one interface, very agentic, so that it’s quite simple and doesn’t require quite as much manual work.

What I would love to see, frankly, Robert, is the partners we’re working with sell across the breadth of the portfolio and realize that platform advantage, which is going to really help out their customers as well.

They can do more with fewer people.

And I think that’s an exciting proposition for most SMBs that I talk to.

Robert Dutt: And that’s been, I know, an area of focus. Obviously, engaging distributors and getting cross-sell going has been an ongoing focus for God knows how long.

Andrew Sage: Forever, yes.

Robert Dutt: And it remains so.

Andrew Sage: One hundred percent.

Robert Dutt: But it seems like this is a real opportunity to potentially accelerate that as things get more automated and as distributors can add more of that ability and support.

Andrew Sage: One hundred percent.

Robert Dutt: Cisco’s asking partners to develop new capabilities in a bunch of new areas: AI, security, lifecycle services, customer experience.

How do you see distributors being able to help partners make that transition and build those skills themselves, as well as being the augmenter?

Andrew Sage: I think ultimately, over time, most of the SMB-focused partners that I talk to want to develop those skills themselves.

They want to be able to monetize those capabilities with their customers and maintain relevance with the customer.

But it’s rare that they’re going to have all of the people they need at the time they need them to do assessments or adoption.

And it’s also rare that, at the very moment the customer needs it, they may have the breadth of skills.

They may have the networking capabilities. Most of our partners are awesome at networking.

But some of them may just be starting to build some security capabilities, particularly around agentic AI and AI defense and some of these new technologies.

So I think that’s where the role of the distributor is most important.

It may be transient over time as they build out the capabilities of the partners, and then the partner moves on and does it on their own.

But it’s going to be hugely valuable for the channel.

Robert Dutt: Obviously, we’re in relatively early innings of agentic distribution, but I’m curious what you see now, especially now that we’ve got those first use cases in action with both Ingram and TD SYNNEX, and then probably others in the works, I don’t know, but I have to imagine.

What do you see as the next steps?

Where do you see this going in the short to medium term, in terms of the relationship and how that evolves?

Andrew Sage: Well, if you listen to Cisco, you’ll know for sure that we’re aggressively deploying AI in our own business to cover sales use cases, adoption, CX, et cetera.

And we see our relationship with our distributors moving in the same direction.

The examples I gave you are really focused on commerce simplification, configuration, and commerce.

The next wave of agents that we’re going to start deploying for the distributors are around installed-base analysis and recommendations, and identifying threats in a customer’s network.

Because we know what the customers have in the network through our systems and the distributor systems, we can apply agent technology to that to help that partner go out and articulate the challenges, the risks, and the opportunities there.

So, last day of support, identifying renewals, for example, is another great area where we can apply agentic workflows.

We can take a look at a customer’s renewal base, or a partner’s entire renewal base, and start to drive potentially agentic outbound to those customers to make sure that they know they’ve got a renewal coming.

Sometimes partners remember to do that, sometimes they don’t.

And the last thing you want is to get, “Oh my gosh, your renewal’s up, and I need you to do something for me in a day or two.”

Another area where distribution has been adding value for a long time, but the ability to do so at a different scale and a different velocity, certainly, as it gets agentic.

Robert Dutt: That makes sense.

Andrew Sage: One hundred percent.

Robert Dutt: A little bit of a sidebar, a little bit off the line of what we’ve been talking about, but we’re almost at the point of distributors getting represented under Cisco 360 and getting that PVI in place.

Beyond everyone liking to feel like they belong to the club and are under the same umbrella, what does it mean to your organization and to the distributors to be fully integrated into Cisco 360?

Andrew Sage: We’re thrilled.

We announced it to our distributors in some detail on Monday, and we got really great feedback.

So, like the Cisco 360 Partner Program, we’re about to enter the prequalification phase for our distributors, which is going to start in January.

That’s where they build up the capabilities they need in order to meet the requirements of the program.

But the feedback we’ve been getting is, number one, they love the fact that it’s very consistent in how the partner program is designed.

Number two is that the work Cisco has been doing to make the program super manageable in PXP is now available.

In fact, it’s available first for the distributors, and they love that.

And so we’re excited.

We’ve strived to get a program that was more predictable and simpler and ultimately more profitable.

And we got the thumbs-up this week from the distributors.

It goes live on the first day of our fiscal year 2028, which is August 1, 2027.

Robert Dutt: All right.

And I know with Cisco 360, obviously, you did a lot of premodelling to help make sure that partners were fitting into the program where they fit into, or better than, under the previous program.

I assume the same process is going on with the distributors.

Andrew Sage: Yeah, we’ve been co-designing this with them for about 18 months.

Ironically, we came to them with a really simple design.

Actually, they gave us ideas about a really simple design.

We went away and came back with a really complicated one, and then spent 12 months going back and forth, and we’re back to a very simple one now.

And that co-design process was super critical.

They gave us tons of great feedback along the way.

So it wasn’t really a surprise to many of them because most of them spent a lot of time telling us what they really needed from us.

Robert Dutt: Right on.

Wrapping up, when you look at this two or three years down the road, how different do you expect the Cisco distribution ecosystem to look, both in terms of what it does and how it does it?

And what’s the biggest change that you think partners should be preparing for in their own relationship with distributors?

Andrew Sage: I think partners should always ask a distributor for more than they’re getting from the distributor.

And I think they’re going to be surprised to find that that distributor will be able to meet those requirements.

Because we’re going to be really pushing them from our side, both enabling and encouraging the distributors to build out some of these value-added capabilities.

Ultimately, what it’s going to result in is a broader channel for Cisco and a more prepared channel for Cisco.

And I think that one of the biggest benefits of using distributors in this way is that we need to be agile.

It’s going to change quickly.

And I think our distributors can help us execute on the constant new opportunities and changes that we’re going to see in the market.

So that agility and breadth is something that I’m looking forward to.

And we have really big growth ambitions for the distribution channel over the next three years.

We have more tailwinds at the moment in this business than we’ve ever had.

We used to be happy with one solid tailwind, a growth cycle or something like that.

And we think we’ve got really four legitimate tailwinds.

We’ve got a cyclical growth cycle.

We’ve got the fact that agentic AI is driving up network traffic and requiring some redesigns and enhancements.

We’ve got a third one in the sort of post-[unclear] world of “I need to be secure.”

And then we’ve got the fourth one we just spent a lot of time talking about, which is AI is driving down the cost for us to scale and making room for the distributors and the small partners to drive more value.

Robert Dutt: Sounds like fun times for us distribution nerds.

Andrew Sage: Darn right it is.

Robert Dutt: Andrew, I appreciate your taking the time.

Andrew Sage: Great to talk to you, Robert.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Andrew Sage, Cisco’s vice president of global partners and distribution sales, speaking to me at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver.

I think one of the most interesting takeaways from that conversation is that agentic AI could change distribution in two important ways.

The first is efficiency, taking processes that previously involved multiple systems, organizations, and manual steps and dramatically reducing the time required to complete them.

But the second may be even more important: giving distributors the ability to provide more sophisticated services and capabilities on behalf of partners, potentially allowing smaller solution providers to compete for opportunities that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

As Andrew points out, the next wave of agentic integration could take this even further, helping partners proactively identify customer needs around security, modernization, and lifecycle management.

My thanks to Andrew for taking the time to join us, and to Cisco for hosting us at Partner Summit.

And of course, as always, thank you for listening.

If you’re enjoying the podcast, please do subscribe to or follow the podcast, whatever podcast app you use. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, all the usual suspects.

And of course, if you’re in the mood, ratings and reviews are always appreciated.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

[Music]

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers includes a potentially significant new AI services opportunity from Cisco, an effort by N-able to accelerate vulnerability remediation, and expanded cybersecurity and resilience capabilities from Dell Technologies.

Cisco Model Foundry opens new AI development opportunity for partners

Cisco is giving partners access to specialized artificial intelligence models through a new service called Model Foundry, introduced at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver.

The offering is part of Cisco Cloud Control and is designed to let partners use Cisco’s purpose-built models in their own applications and customer solutions. Partners can also customize those models using customer-specific data, creating opportunities for differentiated AI services.

The initial catalogue includes models focused on networking, security, operational decision-making and time-series analysis.

Among them are Cisco’s Deep Network Model for network troubleshooting, Antares for identifying software vulnerabilities, and a decision model designed to help AI agents determine which tools to use and when human intervention is necessary.

Rather than requiring partners to develop specialized models from scratch, Cisco is positioning Model Foundry as a foundation for building customer-specific AI solutions.

That could include AI-powered network troubleshooting, automated security investigations, operational assistants and applications trained on a customer’s infrastructure and support history.

During Tuesday’s Partner Summit keynote, Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel explicitly encouraged partners to develop practices around the new capability.

The business proposition is that Cisco supplies the underlying domain expertise and model infrastructure, while partners contribute their knowledge of customer environments, business processes and operational requirements.

Cisco also presented early testing conducted with World Wide Technology.

In a 12-scenario laboratory evaluation, a Cisco Deep Network Model fine-tuned using WWT troubleshooting data recommended the correct remediation in 11 cases, compared with eight for the frontier model used as a benchmark.

The results suggest potential benefits from specialization, although the small evaluation does not establish how the models will perform across different customer environments.

Model Foundry entered controlled availability with partners first at Partner Summit. Cisco is targeting general availability in June 2027.

For Canadian solution providers, the announcement raises an interesting question: Could developing, customizing and operating specialized AI models become a practical managed service, rather than a capability restricted to large organizations with substantial AI development teams?

The opportunity will depend on pricing, implementation complexity, ongoing support requirements and whether partners can demonstrate meaningful improvements in customer operations.

But it represents another step in Cisco’s effort to help partners build services businesses around its technology rather than relying primarily on product transactions.

Read more from Cisco’s Model Foundry announcement and ChannelBuzz.ca’s coverage of Cisco Partner Summit 2026.

N-able connects vulnerability discovery, patching and verification

N-able has announced AI-accelerated Vulnerability and Patch Management capabilities intended to help MSPs reduce the time between identifying a security vulnerability and confirming that it has been remediated.

The enhancements are part of the company’s Unified Endpoint Management platform.

The approach brings vulnerability scanning, risk-based prioritization, patch deployment and post-remediation verification into a connected workflow.

For MSPs, the objective is to reduce the manual work involved in moving between vulnerability assessment tools, patch management systems and reporting processes.

N-able says the platform can prioritize vulnerabilities based on exploitability and other risk factors, apply appropriate updates and rescan systems to verify that remediation was successful.

The company’s N-zo AI assistant can also provide information about failed patches and help administrators determine whether another deployment attempt is appropriate.

N-able is positioning the enhancements as a way to reduce patching windows from days to minutes, although actual results will depend on the vulnerability, affected systems and operational environment.

The announcement addresses a persistent challenge for MSPs managing multiple customer environments.

Identifying a vulnerability is only the beginning. Service providers must also determine which customers are affected, prioritize remediation, coordinate changes and confirm that the vulnerability has actually been addressed.

Bringing those activities together could help reduce administrative overhead and improve consistency.

The opportunity for MSPs is not simply faster patch deployment, but a more complete and demonstrable vulnerability management service.

Read N-able’s announcement.

Dell expands cyber resilience across AI, identity and infrastructure

Dell Technologies has expanded its cybersecurity and resilience portfolio with capabilities designed to protect AI environments, strengthen identity recovery and improve infrastructure resilience.

Announced Tuesday at Dell’s AI Cybersecurity and Resilience Summit, the additions reflect the changing requirements of organizations deploying increasingly complex AI systems.

The expansion includes new AI-focused services and PowerProtect capabilities intended to help organizations protect AI environments and recover from security incidents.

Dell is also placing greater emphasis on identity resilience.

Identity systems increasingly control access to applications, data and infrastructure, making them critical to business continuity. Compromising those systems can disrupt an organization’s ability to operate even when its underlying data remains intact.

Dell’s new capabilities are intended to strengthen protection and recovery for critical identity platforms, alongside managed threat detection.

The company is also expanding integration between PowerProtect and PowerScale and introducing additional capabilities intended to prepare infrastructure for emerging quantum-related security risks.

For solution providers, the announcement reinforces the growing overlap between cybersecurity, data protection, identity management and business continuity.

Customers adopting AI need more than protection for the models and applications themselves. They also need to consider the data those systems access, the identities controlling them and the infrastructure required to restore operations after an incident.

That creates opportunities for partners delivering security assessments, resilience planning, implementation and ongoing management.

The challenge will be integrating those capabilities into coherent services that customers can understand and justify.

Read Dell’s cybersecurity and resilience announcement.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Wednesday, October 28, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We’re coming to you from Vancouver, where Cisco Partner Summit 2026 is underway.

Yesterday, we took a broad look at Cisco’s efforts to help partners build more profitable businesses around artificial intelligence.

Today, we’re going to start with something a little more specific. And potentially, a pretty interesting new business opportunity for partners.

We’re also looking at new developments from N-able and Dell Technologies, both focused on helping organizations manage increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges.

Let’s get into it.

First, Cisco Model Foundry.

During yesterday’s Partner Summit keynote, Cisco president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel introduced a new service intended to give partners access to some of the company’s specialized artificial intelligence models.

And perhaps more importantly, to let them customize those models for individual customers.

It’s called Model Foundry, and it’s part of Cisco Cloud Control.

Now, Cisco has been developing AI models specifically for networking, security and infrastructure operations for some time.

These aren’t general-purpose models designed to answer questions about everything from programming to pizza recipes.

They’re models trained to understand particular technical domains.

For example, Cisco’s Deep Network Model is designed to understand network configurations, telemetry and troubleshooting.

Another model, called Antares, focuses on identifying potential software vulnerabilities.

And there’s a decision model designed to help AI agents determine which tools they should use, whether they have enough information to make a decision, and when they should escalate a problem to a human.

What’s changing with Model Foundry is that Cisco wants partners to be able to use those models directly in applications and services they develop for customers.

And they can go a step further.

Partners can fine-tune those models using information specific to a customer’s environment.

Think about a managed service provider that has years of information about a customer’s network, including configurations, support tickets, troubleshooting history and operational data.

Instead of relying entirely on a general-purpose AI model, that provider could potentially build an assistant that combines Cisco’s networking expertise with detailed knowledge of that particular customer.

That could create opportunities for more sophisticated troubleshooting, operational automation and ongoing managed services.

And Cisco is trying to reduce the technical barriers involved.

Model Foundry provides access to the models through APIs, along with tools for testing, customization and evaluation.

Partners don’t necessarily have to build or operate the underlying AI infrastructure themselves.

Cisco also presented some early results from work with World Wide Technology.

In a laboratory evaluation involving twelve network troubleshooting scenarios, a Cisco model fine-tuned using WWT data recommended the correct fix in eleven cases.

The frontier model used for comparison got eight correct.

Now, twelve scenarios is a pretty small test, and I wouldn’t read too much into that result on its own.

But it does illustrate the argument Cisco is making.

A model that understands both a technical domain and a customer’s particular environment may be able to deliver better results than a more general-purpose system.

And the more interesting part, from a channel perspective, is who gets to build that customer-specific intelligence.

Patel was quite explicit about wanting partners to develop practices around Model Foundry.

Cisco provides the underlying models and platform. Partners bring their customer relationships, technical expertise and knowledge of individual environments.

And potentially, they turn that combination into a new services business.

Of course, there are still some important questions.

How much will it cost to develop and operate these solutions? How much specialized expertise will partners need? And how much of the work can be repeated across customers?

Those questions are going to determine whether this becomes a broadly accessible opportunity for MSPs and solution providers, or something primarily pursued by larger organizations with substantial development resources.

There’s also a timing consideration.

Model Foundry entered controlled availability with partners first at Partner Summit, and Cisco is targeting general availability in June of next year.

So we’re still looking at an emerging opportunity rather than a mature services market.

But I think it’s one of the more interesting announcements from this year’s Partner Summit, because it points toward partners doing more than simply deploying AI technology.

They could increasingly be developing and operating specialized AI solutions that become part of how their customers run their businesses.

And that’s a potentially significant change in the role of the channel. In a briefing with press and anlysts here, Patel oulines how the company see the technology as a way to lower the barriers to sophisticated AI services, while acknowledging that partners will still need to develop the strategic and change-management skills to deliver them. I’m sure we’ll see much more before general availability next year.

Our second story comes from N-able, which is looking to accelerate one of the more frustrating parts of cybersecurity operations.

Finding vulnerabilities is important, but finding them doesn’t actually make an organization more secure until somebody does something about them.

And for managed service providers, that process can involve a lot of moving parts.

You identify a vulnerability, determine which customer systems are affected, prioritize the risk, deploy a patch, and then verify that the problem has actually been resolved.

Often, those steps involve different tools, manual handoffs and considerable administrative work.

N-able has announced new AI-accelerated Vulnerability and Patch Management capabilities intended to bring those activities together.

The enhancements are part of its Unified Endpoint Management platform.

The company says the system can help prioritize vulnerabilities based on exploitability, apply appropriate patches and then rescan systems to verify that remediation was successful.

Its N-zo AI assistant can also provide information about failed patches and help administrators determine whether it’s appropriate to try deploying them again.

N-able is positioning the technology as a way to reduce patching windows from days to minutes.

That’s a pretty ambitious claim, and actual results will obviously depend on the systems and vulnerabilities involved.

But the broader idea is interesting.

For an MSP managing hundreds or thousands of endpoints across multiple customers, reducing the number of manual steps involved in remediation could make a meaningful difference.

And it could also help providers demonstrate the value of their security services.

There’s a big difference between telling a customer that you’ve identified fifty vulnerabilities and being able to show which ones were addressed, how quickly they were resolved and whether the fixes were verified.

That’s where vulnerability management starts to become a more complete service rather than simply another collection of alerts.

And as attackers become faster at identifying and exploiting weaknesses, reducing the time between discovery and remediation is becoming increasingly important.

Our third story comes from Dell Technologies, which is expanding its cybersecurity and resilience portfolio.

The company announced new capabilities yesterday focused on protecting artificial intelligence environments, strengthening identity recovery and improving infrastructure resilience.

And there’s an interesting connection to the broader AI conversation.

Organizations are deploying increasingly sophisticated AI systems, but those systems depend on a lot of infrastructure that also needs to be protected.

There’s the data the AI applications use, the storage and computing systems supporting them, and the identity platforms controlling access to everything.

Dell is introducing new AI-focused services and PowerProtect capabilities intended to help organizations protect those environments and recover more quickly when incidents occur.

It’s also putting additional emphasis on identity resilience.

And that’s an important distinction.

When we talk about recovering from a cyberattack, the conversation often focuses on restoring data and applications.

But if an organization’s identity systems have been compromised, simply restoring its data may not be enough to get the business operating securely again.

Those identity systems control who can access applications, infrastructure and sensitive information.

So protecting and recovering them needs to be part of the broader resilience strategy.

Dell is also expanding integration between PowerProtect and PowerScale and introducing additional capabilities intended to address emerging quantum-related security risks.

For solution providers, this is another example of cybersecurity and business continuity becoming increasingly interconnected.

Customers need help understanding not just how to prevent an attack, but how to maintain operations and recover when something goes wrong.

And as AI becomes more deeply embedded in business processes, those conversations are only going to become more complicated.

That creates opportunities for partners delivering security assessments, resilience planning, implementation and ongoing management.

But it also creates a challenge.

Partners need to bring those capabilities together into services that customers can understand, afford and measure.

And that brings us back to a common theme across today’s announcements.

Cisco is trying to make sophisticated AI development more accessible to partners.

N-able is trying to simplify the operational work involved in vulnerability remediation.

And Dell is expanding the tools available to protect and recover increasingly complex enterprise environments.

Different technologies, but all addressing the growing need for expertise and services around systems that are becoming harder for customers to manage on their own.

If you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode of In The Channel features my conversation with Alex Pujols from Cisco’s global partner sales organization, recorded here at Partner Summit in Vancouver.

We discuss how artificial intelligence is changing the kinds of businesses Cisco partners can build, including opportunities in security services, AI-powered infrastructure and partner-developed applications.

Alex also walks us through Cisco’s Vulnerability Operations Maturity Model, and we talk about how the company is trying to make more sophisticated capabilities accessible to a broader range of partners.

It’s an interesting conversation about the opportunities AI is creating, but also the work partners will need to do to turn those opportunities into viable businesses.

You can find that episode, along with links to today’s announcements and more coverage from Cisco Partner Summit, at ChannelBuzz.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll have more episodes of In The Channel from here in Vancouver over the coming days, including Cisco Canada leaders Raj Juneja and Erin Gertner, distribution and sales leader (and Canadian) Andrew Sage, and the partner point of view as well. So be sure to check those out.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.

Alex Pujols, vice president of solutions engineering for Cisco’s Global Partner Organization

Artificial intelligence isn’t just changing the technologies Cisco partners deliver. It’s changing the kinds of businesses they can build.

That’s a central theme of this episode of In The Channel, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, where Alex Pujols, Cisco’s vice president of sales solutions engineering, joins us to discuss the opportunities emerging as AI becomes increasingly embedded in enterprise infrastructure and operations.

Pujols identifies security as perhaps the most immediate opportunity. He discusses Cisco’s five-stage Vulnerability Operations Maturity Model, designed to help partners assess their capabilities and develop the increasingly sophisticated services customers require. He also offers his assessment of how quickly partners are progressing through those stages.

The conversation turns to infrastructure, including emerging edge AI use cases, before exploring how Cisco Cloud Control could simplify managed services delivery. Pujols confirms that Canada is among the next markets targeted for Cloud Control availability, although no specific date has been announced.

Another major theme is partner-developed intellectual property. Cisco’s AI Studio and Model Foundry aim to make it easier for partners to build AI agents and specialized solutions, potentially creating new opportunities for recurring revenue.

But if AI agents become easy to create, how do partners differentiate their offerings and protect their intellectual property? Pujols discusses the importance of customer trust, creativity and the commercial protections Cisco is developing for its marketplace.

Finally, Pujols reflects on how AI is transforming Cisco’s Partner Innovation Challenge, with AI-related submissions rising from fewer than 20 percent just a few years ago to more than 95 percent today.

It’s a look at how Cisco sees the channel evolving from selling technology to building solutions around it.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show.

We’re coming to you today from Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver, where Cisco is laying out its vision for how partners can capitalize on the next wave of artificial intelligence.

And while there’s no shortage of technology announcements this week, one of the more interesting themes is how those technologies are changing the kinds of businesses Cisco partners can build.

We’re talking about partners moving into increasingly sophisticated security services, building and managing AI-powered infrastructure, and developing their own AI agents and applications.

Cisco is also making a significant push to lower the barriers to creating those solutions, potentially opening up opportunities that were previously limited to partners with substantial development resources.

But making technology easier doesn’t necessarily make it easier to build a differentiated business around it.

That’s one of the questions I put to Alex Pujols, Cisco’s senior vice president of sales solutions engineering in its global partner sales organization, when we sat down here Monday at Partner Summit.

We also discussed Cisco’s new Vulnerability Operations Maturity Model, which is helping partners assess their capabilities and develop more sophisticated security practices; the implications of Cisco Cloud Control for managed services providers; and the opportunities emerging around specialized AI models and edge computing.

And Alex shared some interesting observations about how quickly Cisco’s partner community is evolving, including a dramatic increase in the proportion of Partner Innovation Challenge submissions involving AI.

It’s a conversation about where Cisco sees the channel heading and what partners need to do to take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Alex Pujols.

Robert Dutt: Alex, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I’m sure this is a busy week for you.

Alex Pujols: Happy to be here, of course.

Robert Dutt: You talked this morning about the three major shifts you’re seeing in the market: securing agentic AI, scaling infrastructure for AI, and bringing agentic AI into business operations.

From a partner’s perspective, which of those shifts do you see creating the most immediate opportunity today? Like, the right-now opportunity?

Alex Pujols: I think there’s an opportunity for all of them right now.

It’d be really hard to ignore the role that security is playing within AI, not even just for agentic operations, but just more broadly.

We also talked about this whole post-Mythos era that we’re in, and defending at machine speed, at machine scale.

And so I think, 100 percent, the agentic opportunity. If I’m a partner right now, and I’m looking at these shifts, and I have to invest in a single area, I would certainly look there because the demand that we’re seeing from customers is overwhelming.

The activity from a compliance and legislative perspective means there’s probably going to be even more opportunity around this moving forward.

And then, selfishly, I feel that we have an amazing portfolio to address the opportunity. And so I certainly would say the security side of it.

Robert Dutt: I have to imagine that’s accelerating, too. AI has been the priority for a while now, but over the last six months or so, drip, drip, drip — Mythos, [unclear], OpenAI — all of that is just adding to the awareness, the appetite, all of it.

Alex Pujols: A hundred percent.

And it’s interesting. It’s to the point where family members who know nothing about technology are asking me, “Is it over? Is the end near?”

And so, in between therapy, I also just do a little bit of education and kind of help them understand where things are.

But the point is, it’s mainstream. It’s mainstream.

And so Mythos did that. The news reports of AI autonomously attacking other AI and stealing secrets have people spooked.

But while I think, in my opinion, a lot of that is inflated, what’s not inflated is the opportunity more broadly around security.

And so I think it certainly is real, and it’s going to continue to grow.

Robert Dutt: You talked a bit today about the Vulnerability Operations Maturity Model, helping partners understand where they are today and what capabilities they need to develop.

Can you give me that kind of elevator pitch on that? Just the real quick walkthrough of it: how it works, and what it tells a partner about how and where they should be investing right now?

Alex Pujols: Yeah. So how the maturity model came about was initially a little bit before Mythos, but certainly as the news dropped, we really accelerated the conversations we were having with partners.

And in my conversations, I was just noticing that everyone was on a different journey, or they were at different stages of that journey.

And so a lot of partners, we’d say, “Hey, how can we help?”

They’d say, “Get out of the way. We’re rocking and rolling. We’re cooking. We’re good.”

Then we had a lot of partners that said, “I have no earthly idea how to have a conversation with my customer about this. I have no idea what capabilities I need to build out. I’m not sure how to build them out.”

And so, “I’m struggling with just understanding the gravity of the situation and how I should respond.”

As we saw so many different levels, we said, “Look, let’s put this into a model, and as part of that, we can help partners get from one stage to the next.”

And so the model has five stages.

You could say Level 1 is probably partners with the least amount of sophistication around their practice.

And then Level 5, which is our most advanced partners, have full-fledged, what we’re calling Vulnerability Operations practices.

And so they can manage customer vulnerabilities really at machine speed, instantly.

They have super-advanced capabilities, like being able to go out and proactively scan customer networks, almost leverage AI to create automated patching on the fly, even when the vendor hasn’t supplied patching on their end.

So, super-advanced capabilities. But ultimately, that’s not needed for every customer.

And so the idea isn’t that every partner has to develop that capability. They need to find out where on that maturity model their customers need them to be, and then build to that.

So if your customers need you to be at a three, and you’re at one, then you can move to Stage 2 and Stage 3.

From a vendor perspective, what we want to do is equip them with the skills and the capabilities and the tools, and ultimately the guidance, so that they understand clearly how to get from one level to the next and build out the practices their customers need.

Robert Dutt: Especially for those partners who are finding they’re at the Level 1, perhaps, and their customers are saying, “Maybe two or three would be more representative of what we need, what we want from a partner.”

Are there any common threads or common first steps that you find work best for helping them move up that?

Alex Pujols: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things.

Number one, of course, even though we’re talking about this more in the context of agentic AI and post-Mythos and things like that, what is just the fundamental understanding of AI at the organization?

Generally, for our Level 1 partners, AI means that a few people have ChatGPT subscriptions or something.

And so it’s kind of tapping into, where are you? What are the specific skills and capabilities that you need to build? And then also, how do you apply them?

Because a lot of partners maybe work with a specific subset of customers, or customers focused on a particular vertical. And so there are different flavours of what those customers need.

Can you provide those base-level capabilities to those customers in that particular area? And if you can, then you can kind of graduate to the next steps.

We actually have a really cool tool that a partner can leverage and go in and basically self-assess to find out where they are.

So it’s like 20 questions. It sort of tabulates and gives them initial guidance.

Then they can go and leverage a lot of the documentation and collateral that we’ve put out, and they can follow some concrete steps, almost like a journey.

“These are the things that I need to do, or I need to develop, to build out a capability so that I’m Level 3 or Level 4.”

And then the big one is — and I heard this from a lot of partners that I would probably say are on the two or the one maturity level — “What does a five even look like?”

What does somebody like that look like? The entire business, the practice, the operation.

And so we provide guidance across that entire continuum. And then we also have things like workshops where we can engage with partners to help them more.

Ultimately, again, get to wherever their customers need them to be, not necessarily where any particular vendor wants them to be.

Robert Dutt: I know it’s obviously early in the game, but how are partners grading out on that one-to-five kind of scale? Is it about where you’d expect?

Alex Pujols: It’s moving quickly.

I would say, generally, from a Vulnerability Operations perspective, that type of practice was almost relegated to some of the largest partners in the world.

And so, yeah, there were a few fives out there, but there were very few.

Generally, if I averaged it out, the partner community was probably more at a two.

And I can say, just probably within the last half-year, I think that’s a strong three at this point, because the demand is so intense.

For example, one of the characteristics of a Level 4, Level 5 partner is they have to have a managed capability, because you have to be able to protect in real time.

And so there are a lot of partners that didn’t have that, that are saying, “In this new world, I actually have to become a managed services partner. There’s no other way for me to do that.”

And so, yeah, I would say initially two, definitely a strong three.

I think the average would probably settle at around a four, with just some very special partners that are servicing clients that have multinational, complex, regulatory-adjacent types of environments where they need to be a five.

Robert Dutt: Yeah. I wanted to ask how broadly you saw five being, and that sounds like it makes sense that the five, that very tippy top, remains the cream of the crop who’ve really invested heavily in there.

Alex Pujols: Absolutely.

I mean, you even take it a step further for some of the fives, and they’ll fully outsource a lot of that work.

So it’s interesting. There are so many transitions over the last couple of years.

It makes me think of COVID as well. After COVID, there was this strong move of, “Okay, uncle, I can’t do this anymore. Somebody step in and manage my infrastructure.”

And that created a ton of opportunity for our partners.

Post-Mythos is almost doing the same thing, because it’s so complex for a customer to try to stand this up on their own that you almost have to work with the partner community. You have to leverage a strong partner to deliver that.

And so there are some customers, just like in post-COVID, that are saying, “You know what? I’m just going to go back to building cars. Real-time automated patching with this level of intelligence is just not my thing.”

And that’s okay. Again, it presents a huge opportunity for our partners.

Robert Dutt: You talked about AI infrastructure becoming more diverse, going from the gigawatt-scale data centre deployments to smaller AI pods to inference at the edge.

How does that change the opportunity for partners, especially those who traditionally build and manage enterprise infrastructure?

Alex Pujols: I think it creates another pathway of opportunity for them.

There certainly is enough business where partners can sustain themselves on the traditional data centre buildouts, but there’s a rich set of opportunities on the horizon.

A lot of them have already dropped around edge inference use cases.

It makes me think of a partner I was talking to that was working with their client, and they were trying to figure out how they could use AI at the edge to reduce traffic fatalities at railroad intersections.

Their client was in railroads.

And one of the issues is that some of these fatalities, they believe, could be prevented if they could algorithmically find out what areas are potentially most prone, and whether they should develop more safeguards, things like that.

And so they ended up taking some edge compute and basically having it in proximity to the railway, where a lot of the intelligence and the analysis was actually happening at the edge.

Because those satellite links for the railroad are very expensive. They don’t transmit a lot of data, so you have to push the intelligence to the edge.

And they were really nice use cases where they were actually able to reduce traffic fatalities at intersections by leveraging that.

And that’s, in essence, an edge AI inference use case.

But that’s not something that you get in the standard book.

Some creativity is required to go out there and uncover those opportunities, but they’re there.

The technology is ready, the use cases are ready, and it’s really about making sure that the partner’s ready.

Robert Dutt: How much does that, especially as things become more personalized, bespoke at the edge, as you’re describing, change who the partner involved is?

I’m just curious how broad an opportunity this becomes beyond the big integrators who maybe have traditionally had that play.

Do you see it becoming a broader channel play?

Alex Pujols: I think so.

And I think there’s an opportunity for some new partner types: developers, for example, advisor-type partners that may not make their business on selling a particular piece of infrastructure or hardware, but are more involved in the broader consulting around how to address these unique use cases.

I know one of the things that we get asked quite a bit when we work with partners is specifically around solution development.

And when we’re developing something, we’re co-developing with them, instead of just focusing on a traditional use case, like just sitting down and doing a design-thinking session for a week.

Let’s just sit down, put all the technology aside. Let’s just sit down and have a conversation around what it is you do, what we do, what the opportunities are, and what we can build together.

Not what can we sell together, but what can we physically build?

And I think there are a lot of partners that are starting to have those conversations with customers.

Like, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, what do your accounts need? What do they need from you? What could we build together?”

And it sort of democratizes technology more broadly.

It makes it more about the group that can build, that can brainstorm, be creative, and build more effectively, as opposed to the partner that can just do a traditional resale-type motion.

Robert Dutt: One thing that caught my attention when you were talking about Cloud Control and the idea of partners using agentic operations to manage increasingly complex customer environments.

You talked about availability in the U.S. and then into other regions.

Where does Canada fall in that rollout? Are we in lockstep with the U.S., or is that somewhere else?

Alex Pujols: So Canada is in a soon-to-follow next phase.

The current GA is for the U.S., minus federal accounts, but that’s going to scale out significantly.

I don’t necessarily have a date I could give you, but certainly Canada, Latin America, rounding out North America, is next on the list.

Then EMEA, then APJC.

Robert Dutt: Okay. And when partners do get access to these capabilities, how does it change their managed services business?

Is it mostly about being more efficient, or does it enable services that they couldn’t do before?

Alex Pujols: Oh, I think if I was a managed service provider, I would be in love with this thing.

One of the number one pieces of feedback we get from MSPs, especially when they’re incorporating Cisco’s products more broadly, is that whether it’s APIs or however they interface with our technology, it may be different product to product, product family to product family.

That creates complexity. It creates challenges for them to build out their services.

One of the great things about Cloud Control is it provides that single front end so that those MSPs can basically tap into Cisco’s entire portfolio from a common front end.

And so it makes it so much easier.

It’s not even just the beautiful interface that we show on stage. It’s also APIs.

And so, if you have a customer that’s embracing Cloud Control more broadly, as an MSP, I can leverage the APIs that I’m given by Cisco to tap into that customer data to build out more effective services for those same clients.

So when done right, it’s going to dramatically reduce the friction and the time to value for partners that are trying to build and develop capabilities for customers.

Robert Dutt: All right. You talked about partners being able to build agents in AI Studio in seconds without programming expertise, kind of vibe-coding agents, basically.

And then potentially commercializing them, bringing them to the marketplace, which is obviously something that we’ve talked about in the channel for a long time: the ability to do repeatable solutions, and the power in that, and productizing, for want of a better word, solutions.

Powerful capability, but I guess the question it brings to mind for me is, if I can build that agent in seconds by describing the business process I want to solve, presumably my competitors can, too.

How do I maximize the differentiation and commercial value from those, especially if I’m looking to bring them to the marketplace and go beyond the specific-to-one-customer kind of opportunity?

Alex Pujols: Well, there is an element in there of he who is most creative will win.

And so the creativity is still going to be required.

But there’s an aspect of this where, if I’m a partner and I’m building this out for my client, my client, in essence, is authorizing me to view their information in Cloud Control.

So number one, for a partner to be able to build that out for a customer, they have to be trusted by the customer.

And so it isn’t nearly as simple as any partner can log in and basically create anything that they would need for any client.

There’s still some trust required on the front end, coupled with the creativity and the innovation.

Then I do think that they can create some unique services, ultimately, that they could offer to their clients.

Where it gets interesting is when a partner wants to post that to the marketplace.

We’re currently working through this. It’s sort of in beta right now.

But we’re working through what type of protections we can offer that partner so that they can obviously benefit from potentially monetizing that capability without opening it up to their competitors that may otherwise try to go in there and replicate it.

We make it really simple, but there are still some elements that are required, and I think that’s the value the partners are going to focus on.

Robert Dutt: All right. You also talked about the shift towards smaller, specialized language models, particularly for customers concerned about cost, or where the application demands or works best with a small language model.

You guys are introducing Model Foundry to help partners work with those models.

What does that enable partners to do, specifically, that they couldn’t easily do before?

Alex Pujols: Yeah. So there’s an inherent complexity with providing security and governance, and in essence a harness, around some of these localized language models, whether they’re getting them from a marketplace like Hugging Face, for example, or whether they’re developing them internally.

And so that’s something the frontier providers have had to deal with privately on their side.

It’s not something our customers, the average enterprise, have had to do with small language models.

And so what this is going to do is allow our customers, or our partners on behalf of our customers, to drive a level of governance around those local language models that otherwise, really, right now, are deployed without safeguards for the most part.

And so there’s Model Foundry, but there are also a couple of other pieces that plug in that sort of act as a bit of a security wrapper around these SLMs.

Because the last thing you’d want to do is include that capability in your enterprise to reduce cost, only to create a cost elsewhere by opening up more risk for the business.

And so the idea is that you should be able to take advantage of that while ensuring that all of the actions with that SLM are secure.

And so that’s one of the things that isn’t at scale. This is not an issue with the enterprise, but it’s certainly on the horizon as more enterprises look to negate some of that cost.

And also, by the way, take advantage of more intelligence out of those systems, because a lot of those small language models are calibrated for specific domains, whether it’s medicine or finance or whatever it might be.

So you can get the best of all those worlds, but you have to do it in a secure fashion, and that’s where that helps out.

Robert Dutt: As we get into that side of things, does that bring AI development more within the reach of the traditional Cisco infrastructure partner, as opposed to having previously a pretty specialist practice required for it?

Alex Pujols: I think so. I think so.

Time will tell how quickly those small language models can be tuned to a place where they’re effective and they’re outperforming some of the AI frontier model peers for specific tasks.

But I do 100 percent think that it is going to be easier.

We’re going to see much more of that.

And frankly, you’re probably going to see more from Cisco in terms of things that we’re releasing as open source to help support that transition.

Robert Dutt: A little bit of a tangent, but you’ve had the Partner Innovation Challenge for a number of years under your belt.

I’m curious how the current milieu, the current transformations going on across business and the channel everywhere around AI, are changing what you’re expecting and what you’re seeing in the context of those awards.

Alex Pujols: Oh, goodness.

Was it two years ago? Trevor, was it two or three years ago?

The percentage of submissions that included anything AI-related was less than 20 percent.

And I think we’re over 95 percent now.

Robert Dutt: There are five percent who are holding out?

Alex Pujols: Yeah, well, very narrow use cases on the submissions.

But yeah, no, it’s here to stay. It’s permeated through everything.

Even our Partnering for Purpose awards, which are the solutions that have the best humanitarian impact, basically, even those are AI-related or AI-driven.

And so it’s everywhere. It’s here to stay.

It’s fascinating. It’s interesting.

What it’s also done is — this is probably because of Codex and other capabilities — it’s even further democratized who can build.

Because there was a moment in time where building was really relegated to our largest partners.

You couldn’t stomach the cost or hire the expertise to do that if you were a smaller partner.

That’s not the case anymore.

Literally, you have a great idea, you have a couple of friends, you have a weekend, you build it.

But then you spend weeks — and what our partners are doing is, they’re doing that fast, but they’re still spending a ton of time refining it, pressure-testing with their clients, rebuilding it, enhancing it, and then eventually submitting it to us as part of the competition.

So the quality of what we’re seeing, it was always high, but it’s even higher now.

And what partners are doing with AI is just ridiculous. It’s awesome.

Robert Dutt: All right. Last one for me.

You mentioned that partners are getting involved earlier in developing many of the capabilities, many of the products, many of the technologies you’re bringing to market.

Can you give me an example of something that changed along the roadmap as a result of a partner’s feedback that this is what they want or need?

Alex Pujols: Well, it might be a little secret sauce, but I’ll touch on the high level.

Cloud Control is a perfect example.

So we were engaged, we were involved with the business unit on this product for a long time.

And even at the earliest phases, when there were many Cisco employees who weren’t familiar with it, we had already brought in GSIs and managed service providers, basically to walk through the concepts and for them to share with us a day in the life of being a managed service provider.

And ultimately, what they would need from the product to realize the goals that we wanted.

And so they were very vocal, very supportive.

A lot of those partners became our alpha partners, our beta partners, and EFT partners, and kind of helped us early on.

So definitely, the partner community had a strong opinion and definitely shaped where we ended up with Cloud Control, and frankly, where we’re still going.

Robert Dutt: All right. Look forward to seeing where it goes next.

And once again, I appreciate your taking the time.

Alex Pujols: Awesome. Thanks. Appreciate it, Rob.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Alex Pujols from Cisco.

Thanks again to Alex for joining us here at Partner Summit in Vancouver, and thanks for listening today.

A few things that stuck out for me from that conversation.

First, the pace at which AI is changing the security business.

Alex described Cisco’s five-stage Vulnerability Operations Maturity Model and suggested that the average maturity of partners has moved from Level 2 to a strong Level 3 in just the past six months.

That’s a pretty significant change, particularly when you consider that some of the most advanced capabilities require partners to develop managed services practices.

Second, there’s a growing opportunity for partners to build their own intellectual property.

Cisco is making it easier to create AI agents, customize specialized language models, and potentially bring those solutions to a much broader market.

But I thought Alex’s response to my question about differentiation was really interesting.

If creating an AI agent becomes something almost anyone can do, the value isn’t necessarily in creating the agent itself.

It’s in understanding the customer’s business, having access to the right information, and developing something that genuinely solves a problem.

Cisco’s still working through some of the commercial protections that will help partners monetize those solutions through its marketplace.

Finally, I was struck by how much broader Cisco’s definition of innovation is becoming.

Alex told me that just two or three years ago, fewer than 20 percent of submissions to Cisco’s Partner Innovation Challenge involved AI, and today that figure is above 95 percent.

And the partners building those solutions aren’t necessarily the largest organizations with the biggest development teams.

That’s an interesting change in what’s possible for the channel.

Thanks for listening.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please subscribe or follow the podcast wherever you get your podcasts — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, the usual suspects — and consider leaving us a rating or review.

It helps other members of the channel community find what we’re doing here.

We’ll have more conversations from Cisco Partner Summit, along with our regular coverage of the people, technology, and business opportunities shaping the Canadian channel, later this week.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

VANCOUVER — Cisco’s message to partners at Partner Summit 2026 is about more than the opportunities created by artificial intelligence. It’s about how partners can turn those opportunities into profitable businesses.

In this special edition of The Buzz, we’re reporting from Vancouver with a closer look at the announcements and strategy emerging from the opening day of Cisco’s annual partner gathering.

A central piece is the continued evolution of Cisco 360, including new incentives intended to reward partners for more of the value they contribute throughout a customer relationship.

That includes Ecosystem Deal Registration, designed to recognize partners that influence customer decisions even when they aren’t the ones completing the transaction. Cisco is also expanding incentives tied to adoption, customer growth and recurring revenue.

The changes reflect a broader reality: As customer technology environments become more complex, the partner creating the opportunity, the partner delivering the solution and the partner providing ongoing services may not be the same company.

Cisco is also expanding its AI infrastructure opportunity, including making rack-scale infrastructure developed with Supermicro available through its global price list. But the more significant profitability opportunity may lie beyond the initial infrastructure sale—in networking, security, observability and services.

That theme extends to Cisco IQ, Cisco’s evolving customer experience platform, and new Cisco Powered managed services built around Splunk and Duo.

For MSPs, those developments could create new ways to build recurring revenue. They also raise questions about how Cisco’s increasingly integrated platform strategy fits with partners’ existing technology stacks.

Distribution is another important part of the picture. Cisco plans to bring distributors into the Cisco 360 Partner Value Index in February 2027, while continuing to invest in AI-assisted partner workflows intended to reduce administrative complexity.

The bigger question is whether these changes can deliver meaningful improvements in profitability across Cisco’s diverse partner ecosystem—not just for large global integrators, but for smaller partners serving Canadian businesses.

That’s the focus of today’s special edition of The Buzz from Cisco Partner Summit 2026

Read Full Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Tuesday, October 27, 2026. And here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We’re coming to you from Vancouver, where Cisco Partner Summit 2026 is underway.

We’re doing something a little different for this edition of The Buzz. Rather than our usual roundup of industry news, we’re dedicating the entire episode to the announcements, conversations and bigger themes emerging from the opening day of Cisco’s annual partner event.

And while there’s certainly plenty of AI technology to talk about, I think the more interesting story here is about how Cisco wants its partners to make money.

Because the company is making a fairly ambitious argument: That the AI era isn’t simply going to create more opportunities to sell infrastructure, networking and security products. It’s going to change the kinds of services partners deliver, the ways they participate in customer relationships, and ultimately, how they’re compensated.

And Cisco is trying to adjust its partner program, its technology portfolio and its own processes to support that transition.

The question, of course, is how much of that ambition translates into real business opportunities for partners.

Let’s get into it.

First, Cisco 360.

Cisco’s new partner program has been a major focus of the company’s channel strategy, and Partner Summit brought another round of changes intended to address how partners actually create value.

One of the more interesting is something called Ecosystem Deal Registration.

Traditionally, deal registration has been built around the partner that identifies an opportunity and ultimately transacts the sale.

But that’s not always how technology projects work anymore.

A consultant might help a customer develop its AI strategy. Another partner might design the architecture. A systems integrator might build the solution. And a different partner could ultimately handle the transaction or provide ongoing services.

Cisco wants to recognize more of those contributions, including from partners that influence a deal without necessarily selling the products themselves.

That’s a meaningful change in philosophy.

And it reflects something Tim Coogan, who leads Cisco’s global partner sales organization, has been emphasizing: The partner ecosystem increasingly includes companies that don’t fit the traditional reseller model.

Cisco is also expanding incentives around customer adoption, growth and recurring revenue.

The company says adoption incentives are nearly doubling, and it’s introducing additional opportunities tied to Enterprise Agreement activation and the use of Cisco IQ.

There are also new incentives intended to reward partners for growing customer relationships over time, rather than simply closing the initial transaction.

Now, there’s an important distinction between creating more incentive categories and creating more profitable partner businesses.

Partners will ultimately judge these changes by whether they can understand the rules, qualify for the incentives, and receive predictable payments.

Cisco says it’s working on those issues, including better visibility into potential earnings and more predictable program administration.

But the real test will come when partners start using these programs in the field.

And there’s another question worth watching with Ecosystem Deal Registration: Does recognizing more participants create additional revenue opportunities, or does it sometimes mean dividing the economics of an existing opportunity among more companies?

That’s something we’ll be watching as the program develops.

Next, the AI infrastructure opportunity.

Cisco’s technology announcements this week reinforce its ambition to play a larger role in the infrastructure supporting enterprise AI.

Among the developments is the availability of rack-scale AI infrastructure developed with Supermicro through Cisco’s global price list.

That gives Cisco partners another route into AI infrastructure projects, with associated deal protection and opportunities to attach networking, security and services.

But there’s a useful distinction here between selling AI infrastructure and building a profitable AI business.

During the opening-day presentations, Cisco’s leadership repeatedly returned to the idea that the strongest economics aren’t necessarily in the compute hardware itself.

They’re in everything surrounding it.

The networking required to move data. The security required to protect increasingly complex environments. The observability tools needed to understand what’s happening. And the services required to design, deploy, operate and optimize the whole thing.

Cisco’s leadership made the point that margins follow the platform.

That’s an important way to understand what the company is trying to accomplish.

Cisco doesn’t simply want its partners to participate in the next wave of infrastructure spending.

It wants them to capture a larger share of the work surrounding those investments.

And Cisco has some numbers suggesting customers are going to need help.

In a survey of seventeen hundred partners, ninety-one percent reported customer concerns about the operating costs of AI.

And forty-one percent identified on-premises AI as a growth opportunity.

Those findings point to a market that’s still working through some fundamental questions about where AI workloads should run, how much they cost, and how to manage them securely.

For partners, those questions create opportunities for assessment, consulting, integration and ongoing management.

But they also mean AI infrastructure isn’t necessarily an easy sale.

Customers are going to want a credible business case, not just a collection of expensive new hardware.

And partners that can help customers answer those questions may be better positioned than those focused primarily on moving products.

That brings us to security and managed services.

One of the most consistent themes across the opening day was that AI is changing the security conversation.

It’s not just about protecting employees using AI applications.

It’s increasingly about protecting the infrastructure supporting AI, understanding what AI agents are doing, and managing the identities and permissions those agents need.

That creates opportunities for partners to develop more sophisticated security practices.

And Cisco is trying to make some of those opportunities easier to package and deliver.

The company announced two additional Cisco Powered managed services: One built around Splunk for security operations, and another using Duo for identity and access management.

For MSPs, that’s particularly interesting.

Managed security is already an established business opportunity, but the complexity of delivering advanced security services can be a significant barrier.

If Cisco can make it easier for partners to build repeatable offerings around these platforms, that could open opportunities for partners that haven’t traditionally operated at that level.

Cisco IQ is another part of the strategy.

Cisco is positioning the platform as a way to give customers and partners better visibility into their environments, while supporting more proactive management and customer experience services.

And it’s backing that strategy with additional partner incentives.

There’s a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Cisco IQ adoption incentive, along with opportunities associated with higher support tiers.

Cisco has also announced a one-million-dollar Builders Challenge intended to encourage the development of new services using Cisco IQ.

The broader idea is that partners should be able to build more of their business around the ongoing customer relationship.

Not simply sell infrastructure, install it and wait for the next refresh cycle.

Cisco illustrated that thinking with an example of a relatively straightforward network infrastructure sale that could become a substantially larger customer opportunity once services and recurring relationships were included.

Now, examples like that are useful for illustrating the ambition.

But they aren’t a guarantee that every partner can double the value of every infrastructure project.

And there’s an important practical consideration for MSPs.

Many already have established relationships with security vendors, identity providers, monitoring platforms and other tools.

Cisco’s increasingly integrated approach could make it easier to deliver a broader range of services using its technology.

But it also means partners will need to decide where Cisco fits into their existing stacks, and whether the economics justify making changes.

That’s going to be a particularly interesting conversation in the Canadian MSP market.

And finally, there’s the question of partner experience and distribution.

Cisco has spent years talking about making it easier to do business with the company.

To its credit, the leadership team acknowledged that history during the opening-day presentations.

Chuck Robbins even joked about how long Cisco has been promising simplification.

But the company is now putting more emphasis on using AI to reduce the administrative work involved in partner operations.

Jeremy Sawyer, who leads global partner sales strategy and operations, offered a useful way of describing the objective: Time is currency.

The idea is that partners should spend less time navigating systems, managing transactions and chasing information, and more time delivering outcomes for customers.

Cisco is expanding AI-assisted workflows across its partner experience and commerce platforms, with additional capabilities planned into 2027.

It’s also working with distributors on agent-to-agent processes that could streamline some of the interactions between Cisco, distribution and partners.

For Canadian partners, distribution is an especially important part of this story.

A significant share of the channel depends on distributors not just for product availability and financing, but for technical expertise, enablement and access to vendor programs.

Cisco plans to bring distributors into its Partner Value Index framework in February 2027, with a dedicated experience designed around their role in the ecosystem.

That’s worth watching closely.

Because if Cisco wants a broader range of partners to participate in increasingly complex AI and managed services opportunities, distributors are likely to be essential to making those opportunities accessible.

And the success of the new partner program may depend as much on execution through distribution as it does on the incentives Cisco announces from the stage.

So what should partners take away from the first day of Cisco Partner Summit?

I think there are three important themes.

First, Cisco sees AI as an opportunity to expand the business surrounding its technology, not simply increase hardware sales.

Second, it’s trying to recognize more of the ways partners create value, including through influence, adoption and ongoing customer services.

And third, the company understands that none of this works particularly well if its partner ecosystem finds the programs and processes too complicated to navigate.

The ambition is substantial.

But there’s still a difference between having a broad technology portfolio, creating incentives around it, and making it practical for a diverse ecosystem of partners to build profitable businesses.

That’s where the real story is going to develop.

And it’s something we’ll be following through the rest of Partner Summit and beyond, particularly from the perspective of Canadian partners.

That’s going to do it for this special edition of The Buzz, coming to you from Cisco Partner Summit 2026 in Vancouver.

We’ll be back with our regular roundup of channel news in the next edition, along with more coverage from the event.

And for a deeper dive into some of the opportunities Cisco sees around AI and security, check out today’s edition of In The Channel, featuring my conversation with Alex Pujols from Cisco’s global partner sales organization.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

Oracle commits $1 billion to partner growth

Oracle has announced a $1 billion commitment to its partner ecosystem over four years, including technical training, skills development, migration resources, demonstration environments and go-to-market support.

The investment is intended to help partners build capabilities and deliver more Oracle-based cloud and AI solutions.

It’s a substantial commitment, but not a billion-dollar pool of unrestricted partner payments. Individual benefits depend on eligibility, and Oracle hasn’t disclosed a Canadian allocation.

For Canadian solution providers, the important questions are how accessible those resources will be, which partners can benefit, and whether they translate into profitable customer engagements.

Read Oracle’s announcement.

Kiteworks names Matt Marlier global channel chief

Kiteworks has appointed Matt Marlier vice president of global channels and alliances, bringing in a veteran of Red Hat, NGINX, HashiCorp and Software AG to expand its partner ecosystem.

The company is targeting distributors, resellers, MSPs, MSSPs and technology alliances, with an emphasis on partner recruitment, enablement and sales support.

The appointment raises interesting questions about how Kiteworks intends to expand its secure data exchange and compliance business through different types of partners, particularly those looking to develop ongoing managed services.

Read Kiteworks’ announcement.

Portal26 looks to turn AI governance into managed services

Portal26 has introduced its Managed Intelligence Platform and Point2 Academy, combining technology for discovering and managing customer AI usage with training intended to help MSPs develop service offerings.

The company sees opportunities in AI governance, advisory services, cost management and licence optimization.

But the distinction between having a platform and operating a profitable managed service remains important. Partners will need to establish how those services are priced, delivered and measured.

Read Portal26’s announcement.

In Brief

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Canadian cloud distributor Sherweb has added DNSFilter to its marketplace, giving MSPs DNS-layer threat protection and visibility into shadow IT and AI usage. Sherweb announcement.

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Cork Cyber has expanded automated vulnerability remediation for MSPs, reporting more than 50,000 remediation runs and an estimated 5,100 technician hours saved, according to original reporting by Channel Insider. Channel Insider report.

•

Mailprotector has launched Shield Blueprints, allowing MSPs to apply standardized email security configurations across multiple customer environments. Mailprotector announcement.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, and today is Monday, October 26, 2026.

Let’s start with Oracle, and a pretty substantial number.

The company announced Friday that it’s committing one billion dollars over the next four years to supporting its partner ecosystem.

Now, whenever a vendor puts a number that large into a partner announcement, it’s worth asking exactly what the money represents, and how much of it is actually going to be available to partners.

In Oracle’s case, we’re talking about a broad investment in partner development and enablement, rather than a billion dollars in direct grants or payments to solution providers.

The commitment includes technical training, skills development, resources for building and demonstrating solutions, support for customer migrations, and assistance with joint go-to-market activities.

In other words, Oracle is investing in the infrastructure around its partners, with the aim of helping them develop more capabilities and pursue more customer opportunities.

And there are a couple of reasons that’s interesting right now.

First, Oracle has been investing heavily in its cloud and AI businesses, and it’s going to need partners that can help customers make use of those capabilities.

It’s one thing to provide the underlying infrastructure or software. It’s another to help a customer migrate existing workloads, integrate new services, build applications and manage the environment over time.

That’s where the channel comes in.

And second, as the industry shifts toward more complex AI and cloud projects, the cost of developing the necessary skills can become a significant barrier for partners.

Training people, maintaining certifications, building demonstration environments and developing repeatable service offerings all require investment, often before a partner has a customer ready to pay for the work.

If Oracle can help reduce some of those upfront costs, that could make it easier for partners to pursue opportunities they might otherwise leave alone.

But there’s an important distinction between announcing a billion-dollar commitment and demonstrating that the investment is making a difference to partners.

Eligibility matters. So do the terms of individual programs, the resources available in a particular market, and how difficult it is for partners to actually access them.

Oracle hasn’t specified how much of the commitment will be directed toward Canada.

And for Canadian solution providers, that’s going to be one of the questions worth asking.

Are these resources readily available to Canadian partners? Are they aimed primarily at large integrators with substantial Oracle practices, or is there a meaningful opportunity for smaller and mid-sized firms?

And perhaps most importantly, can a partner turn the available support into a profitable customer engagement?

Because the goal isn’t simply to get more people certified or add another logo to a partner’s website.

The real measure of success is whether that investment helps partners win business, deliver projects successfully, and develop ongoing customer relationships.

We’ll be watching for more detail on how Oracle intends to put that commitment to work, particularly in Canada.

Our second story is about a new face at the top of a security vendor’s channel organization.

Kiteworks has appointed Matt Marlier vice president of global channels and alliances.

The appointment was announced last Wednesday, and it’s an interesting one because Kiteworks operates in a part of the cybersecurity market where the channel opportunity isn’t necessarily as obvious as it is in endpoint protection or firewalls.

Kiteworks focuses on securing the exchange and handling of sensitive information.

That includes situations where organizations need to move confidential files, collaborate with external parties, or demonstrate that sensitive data is being handled in accordance with security and regulatory requirements.

For customers in regulated industries, or organizations dealing with particularly sensitive information, those can be substantial business problems.

And for solution providers, they can create opportunities that go beyond the initial sale of a security product.

There may be consulting work around information governance, integration with existing systems, compliance requirements, deployment and ongoing management.

But those opportunities don’t necessarily look the same for every type of partner.

A large security integrator serving enterprise customers may approach Kiteworks very differently from an MSP serving smaller businesses.

And that brings us back to the new channel chief.

Marlier has held channel leadership roles at Red Hat, NGINX, HashiCorp and Software AG, giving him experience across enterprise software, infrastructure and developer-oriented technologies.

His new responsibilities include expanding Kiteworks’ relationships with distributors, resellers, managed service providers, managed security service providers and technology alliance partners.

He’s also expected to focus on the mechanics of the partner experience, including recruitment, training and sales support.

Those may sound like fairly routine channel priorities, but they’re particularly important when a vendor is trying to expand into different types of partners.

It’s one thing to recruit a partner. It’s another to give that partner a practical way to identify customer opportunities, build the necessary expertise and make money delivering the solution.

And there’s an interesting question here about where Kiteworks sees its greatest opportunity.

Is the growth primarily going to come from specialist security firms working with large and highly regulated organizations?

Or does Kiteworks see a broader opportunity among MSPs and other solution providers that want to add secure data exchange and governance capabilities to their managed services portfolios?

Those are different channel strategies, and they require different approaches to enablement, sales support and service delivery.

It’s also worth watching how much emphasis Kiteworks puts on partners providing ongoing services, rather than simply reselling its technology.

We’ve covered Kiteworks before, particularly around compliance and sensitive information. But a conversation with the company’s new channel leader would provide an opportunity to look more closely at its go-to-market strategy and where it sees the partner opportunity developing.

And that’s something we’re hoping to explore on In The Channel in the coming weeks.

Our third story takes us into another area where vendors are trying to help managed service providers build new practices.

Portal26 has introduced what it calls its Managed Intelligence Platform, alongside a training initiative called Point2 Academy.

The announcement came last week, and the basic proposition is that MSPs have an opportunity to help customers manage the growing use of artificial intelligence across their businesses.

Now, that’s a broad statement, and we’re hearing versions of it from a lot of vendors right now.

But Portal26 is trying to address a fairly specific problem.

Many organizations are adopting AI tools faster than they’re developing policies and processes to manage them.

Employees may be using approved enterprise AI services, but they may also be experimenting with consumer tools or applications that the IT department doesn’t know about.

That creates questions about security, privacy, compliance and cost.

What information is being shared with AI systems? Which tools are being used? Who has access? And how much is the organization spending on services that may overlap with one another?

Portal26’s platform is intended to help MSPs gain visibility into that activity and provide customers with a way to manage the associated risks.

But the more interesting part of the announcement, from a channel perspective, is the attempt to build a services model around the technology.

Point2 Academy is designed to provide training in areas including deployment, support, sales positioning and service delivery.

And Portal26 is suggesting that partners can use those capabilities to develop offerings around AI advisory, governance, cost management and licence optimization.

That distinction matters.

Simply discovering which AI tools a customer is using is useful, but it’s not necessarily a recurring managed service on its own.

The longer-term opportunity is in helping the customer decide what to do with that information.

For example, an MSP might help a customer establish an approved set of AI tools, identify risky usage, develop policies for handling sensitive information and regularly review whether the organization is getting value from its AI spending.

That starts to look more like an ongoing relationship, with regular reporting, recommendations and adjustments as the customer’s needs change.

Of course, the existence of a platform and a training program doesn’t automatically create a profitable managed service.

Partners still have to determine what they’re going to deliver, how they’re going to price it, what expertise they need, and how they’re going to demonstrate value.

And there are some interesting questions about the economics.

How much of the work can be automated? How much requires a consultant or security specialist? And will smaller customers pay enough for ongoing AI governance to support the cost of delivering it?

Those are the kinds of questions that will determine whether managed AI governance becomes a substantial MSP practice or remains a relatively specialized offering.

Still, the direction is worth paying attention to.

We’re seeing more vendors recognize that MSPs need more than another product to add to their catalogues.

They need a way to turn new technologies and new customer problems into repeatable, supportable and profitable services.

And that’s really the common thread connecting today’s three stories.

Oracle is investing in partner capabilities and resources. Kiteworks is putting new leadership behind its channel expansion. And Portal26 is trying to connect an emerging customer problem with a managed-service delivery model.

Three different approaches, but all aimed at helping partners build businesses around increasingly complex technology.

Now, a few other developments worth keeping an eye on, in brief.

Canadian cloud distributor Sherweb has added DNSFilter to its marketplace, giving MSPs another option for DNS-layer protection against phishing and malware, along with visibility into shadow IT and unauthorized AI usage across customer environments.

Cork Cyber is expanding its automated vulnerability remediation capabilities for MSPs, reporting more than fifty thousand remediation runs and an estimated fifty-one hundred technician hours saved since launching the technology in September, according to original reporting by Channel Insider.

And Mailprotector has introduced Shield Blueprints, which lets MSPs create standardized email security configurations and apply them across multiple customer organizations, reducing repetitive setup work while maintaining consistent security policies.

Before we go, a quick note from In The Channel.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, Friday’s episode features a conversation with Shaney Salomon, CEO of Optima Consulting.

Optima has returned to OpenText’s formal partner ecosystem after years of working with the company’s technology outside that relationship.

We talk about why the company decided to come back, what’s changed under OpenText’s evolving partner strategy, and what still needs to improve if that strategy is going to work for partners.

It’s an interesting perspective from a solution provider that’s been working with OpenText technology for years, and has some very specific ideas about what makes a vendor relationship worthwhile.

You’ll find that conversation, along with links to today’s announcements, at ChannelBuzz.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, have a great day.

Shanel Salomon, president of Optima Csonulting

For years, Optima Consulting built a successful business implementing OpenText technology for enterprise customers without maintaining a formal partnership with the vendor. Now, under new leadership and with a renewed emphasis on its partner ecosystem, OpenText has brought Optima back into the fold.

In this episode of In The Channel, recorded at OpenText World 2026 in Orlando, Optima CEO and founding partner Shaney Salomon discusses what brought the company back, and why OpenText’s partner transformation remains a work in progress.

Salomon, a former OpenText executive who built Optima around the intersection of SAP and OpenText technologies, says previous OpenText leadership sometimes viewed implementation partners as competitors for professional services revenue rather than as organizations that could expand the vendor’s reach.

That attitude is changing, she says, although aligning field sales teams with the company’s partner-first ambitions remains an important challenge.

The conversation also explores the changing economics of enterprise modernization as customers weigh cloud migrations against rapidly evolving AI capabilities. Salomon argues that vendors need to deliver practical AI value even to customers that haven’t completed their modernization journeys, or risk seeing those customers turn to alternative technologies.

And she shares lessons from building Optima, including why solution providers must continually evolve their expertise, why change management can make or break technology projects, and how helping customers realize more value from existing investments creates opportunities for deeper, longer-lasting relationships.

It’s a candid look at OpenText’s evolving partner strategy from a solution provider that’s both enthusiastic about the opportunity and realistic about the challenges ahead.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

We’re wrapping up our coverage from OpenText World 2026 in Orlando with a look at what the company’s changing partner strategy looks like for a solution provider that’s built a business around OpenText technology.

My guest today is Shaney Salomon from Optima Consulting, a company that operates at the intersection of the OpenText and SAP ecosystems, helping enterprise customers implement, modernize, and get more value from their technology investments.

Shaney has an interesting perspective on OpenText’s partner evolution. She started her career with the company, left to build Optima, and after years of working with OpenText technology without being an official partner, has recently brought the company back into the OpenText partner program. And she’s quite clear about why.

We talk about how OpenText’s previous approach to professional services sometimes put the company at odds with its partners, what’s changed under new leadership, and why there’s still work to do to make that partner-first approach a reality throughout the organization.

We also get into how AI is changing the enterprise modernization conversation, why customers can’t necessarily wait until they’ve completed their cloud migrations to start seeing AI value, and the lessons Optima has learned about building a successful solution provider business around major technology platforms.

It’s a useful look at OpenText’s strategy from the perspective of a partner that’s actually putting it into practice.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Shaney Salomon.

Robert Dutt: Shaney, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I’m sure it’s a busy week for you.

Shaney Salomon: It is. It’s been a busy week so far, but super happy to be here with you and looking forward to the questions.

Robert Dutt: And just starting, too.

Let’s start with your story. You started within OpenText and then went out and built out Optima Consulting. What led you to make that leap? What was the opportunity that made you decide that building a partner organization around OpenText was the right move to make back when you made that decision?

Shaney Salomon: I came to OpenText through an acquisition, actually, of one of the solutions that SAP considers a solution extension today, Vendor Invoice Management. That was back in the 2004 timeframe.

Once I joined OpenText, I worked my way up into leadership, into the SAP Global Services lead, and had a really good run there.

But when SAP and OpenText really went to market together around their archiving solutions, and then eventually Vendor Invoice Management, the partner community, the big guys, the Big Four, started coming into the space.

And those were the partners that OpenText, I think, thought would be the right level of partners to really work with SAP and OpenText on bringing these solutions to market.

I saw that a little bit differently. I saw that as an opportunity to go out into the ecosystem, partner with both SAP and OpenText, and create a company that really focused in that space.

Robert Dutt: In that kind of intersection. That’s interesting, because I’ve heard the story of folks who are within a vendor and decide to go out and build a partner organization around that vendor. But it’s an interesting twist to have that be at the intersection of two vendors’ businesses there.

Shaney Salomon: I had been in the SAP space for several years and really saw that as the catalyst.

OpenText has very, very strong technologies, but SAP had the breadth of reach with enterprise customers. It was really interesting to me.

Being able to marry the two, where my understanding of the OpenText products married up with the SAP ecosystem and that enterprise customer breadth, that was really interesting. And the thesis has proved correct.

Robert Dutt: I guess an interesting level of insight, especially going into it, into customer needs and customer requests across both OpenText and SAP.

Shaney Salomon: Absolutely.

Things have changed a lot. I think originally the idea was we were out really just selling and implementing OpenText at the time. We started out with just a product or two, and now we cover everything where SAP and OpenText meet.

But our team has expanded, our opportunities have expanded, and we’ve really moved also into the spend management space around SAP and the OpenText Vendor Invoice Management space, accounts payable, that whole procure-to-pay space that we really got good at.

Leveraging the OpenText solutions afforded us the opportunity to move deeper into the spend management space with SAP.

And now, with SAP really moving all of their customers to cloud, that big S/4 transformation that’s happening in the market today, we see customers really needing to modernize their stacks. And that’s our bias today, helping them modernize so that they can get prepared for AI in a way that makes sense.

Robert Dutt: Is that something that you find you’re driving to them, or is it something that they’re coming to you and asking for, looking for?

Shaney Salomon: It’s certainly both, but it’s top of mind for everyone. It’s board level, CEO level, CIO level. But bringing it to life is a whole different story, right?

And OpenText has a great perspective around that, I think, because without structured content, the context around that, making AI work for a company is really challenging.

Both OpenText and SAP are bringing their own technological versions of AI to the table. But customers are really, really trying to figure out which stack makes sense, which AI is the best, how do they combine them, where do we orchestrate all of that kind of thing.

So it feels like the Wild West right now, but it is certainly the mandate for all of our customers today.

Robert Dutt: It feels like the Wild West, but I think I’m hearing over the course, especially over the course of this year, that we’re getting past the point of customers coming to an organization like you and saying, “CEO says we have to do AI. Don’t really know what that means, but we need to do it.”

Sounds like there’s an increased level of sophistication, understanding, and wanting to get to outcomes as quickly as possible in doing that.

Shaney Salomon: Absolutely. And that’s where I think we start, and we do really well, is focusing on what is the outcome.

Then you can think about what are the inputs and who’s it going to impact and all of that.

But if there isn’t a really good reason to do it in the first place, where it’s going to provide ROI, allow a company to do things better, faster, make better use of their resources, all of that, then what’s the point?

And that’s our perspective. It has to come with a clean core, good data, good context, a business process that’s going to help them move their business forward.

But it also needs to be a trusted place as well.

We see our customers finding use cases in spaces where there are outcomes that will make a big difference, but also aren’t too risky right up front.

And so the starting point is places where you can really make a business outcome and a big difference.

Robert Dutt: Going back to the spin-up and the buildup of Optima over the years, you built a business around a couple of major technology vendors’ ecosystems.

What were the biggest lessons along the way? What did you get right about your thesis coming into it, and what did you kind of have to go, “Okay, in reality, this needs to look a little different”?

Shaney Salomon: I think the number one lesson is you can’t rest on your laurels, right?

You might be knocking it out of the park in one business area, but being able to always be looking forward, seeing where the market is heading, getting ahead of your clients so that you’re there before they even know they need to be there, I think that’s probably one of the most painful lessons learned.

Because when you are really, really focused in one channel, one product, one approach, and even though you may be fantastic at it, you have to continue to evolve.

And now, as we all know, things are evolving at the speed of light, right?

But I think that’s the biggest lesson learned so far, is really that innovation and that future-looking strategy have to be top of mind every single day.

And I think that’s what we do differently than a lot of our competitors.

Robert Dutt: How has the transition to AI and that whole evolution over the last couple of years changed Optima, both in terms of how you work with customers and especially internally? How have you looked at it from an internal lens?

Shaney Salomon: We’re on the journey ourselves, right?

And we’re doing things like marketing systems, areas where the risk is low, but it’s easy to test our theory, building harnesses behind the scenes, trying to make a difference in big ways. But we’re continuing to roll that strategy out internally.

It’s really very similar for our customers. Everybody’s ready to go all in on AI, but they also need to do it in a way, as I mentioned before, that provides the right business outcome and doesn’t provide too much risk.

What we’re seeing, though, is even internally, change management is a big part of it, and that’s with clients as well.

It’s a new way of working. People don’t think that way natively sometimes. And as the workforce is aging, some people are having trouble making the shift to thinking about AI practically. Where does it practically make sense?

There’s still a lot of fear out there about what’s it going to do to our job.

So it’s an interesting time.

Internally, our goal really is to make the work easier, faster, better for our folks so that we can serve our clients consistently in a way that makes sense.

And then for our customers, at this point, it still is finding those practical use cases where they’re feeling good about it.

And then it’s on to agentic and all of those kinds of things.

Robert Dutt: Yeah. Always something new.

Shaney Salomon: Exactly.

Robert Dutt: Especially, obviously, your job is to educate and then facilitate around the technology side of things.

But when you get to that more cultural side of AI, the building up of internal processes, the setting of expectations, all that change management stuff

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

Huntress expands Ingram Micro distribution relationship into Canada

Huntress is extending its existing distribution relationship with Ingram Micro into Canada, creating another route for Canadian managed service providers and solution providers to access the cybersecurity vendor’s portfolio.

The expansion also includes Latin America and builds on the companies’ existing US go-to-market relationship.

The development is particularly relevant as Huntress continues expanding beyond its original endpoint security focus into a broader set of managed cybersecurity capabilities for MSPs.

For Canadian partners, the relationship could provide additional purchasing and procurement options through an established distributor.

The companies have not yet provided ChannelBuzz.ca with detailed information about Canadian pricing, product availability or the commercial structure of the expanded relationship.

ChannelBuzz.ca is also pursuing a joint conversation with Huntress and Ingram Micro about the Canadian opportunity and the evolution of their partnership.

Fortinet urges immediate security updates across major products

Fortinet is calling on customers and partners to prioritize a coordinated set of security-hardening updates released Thursday for FortiOS, FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer.

The updates follow recent releases for FortiMail and FortiAuthenticator.

Fortinet says the releases address critical and high-severity vulnerabilities, including issues identified through its frontier AI-assisted security testing program.

The company is urging organizations to prioritize internet-facing systems and treat the updates as an urgent security change rather than routine maintenance.

Recommended steps include inventorying affected systems, scheduling maintenance windows, backing up configurations and restricting administrative access where immediate upgrades aren’t possible.

Detailed public vulnerability advisories are expected November 10.

Read Fortinet’s security-hardening announcement.

Cycode reports 500% Canadian customer growth

Application security vendor Cycode is expanding its Canadian operations following what it describes as 500% growth in its Canadian customer base over approximately 18 months.

The company has established dedicated presales, postsales and customer-success resources serving Canada.

Canadian customers named in the announcement include Jane Software, Clio, Tenstorrent, Benevity, BDO Canada and theScore.

Cycode is also repositioning its portfolio around agentic development security, reflecting the growing role of AI coding assistants and autonomous agents in software development.

Its platform is intended to provide visibility, governance and security controls across the development lifecycle, from initial prompts through production.

The announcement doesn’t specify the size of Cycode’s Canadian partner network or whether the expansion includes new channel resources.

Read Cycode’s Canadian expansion announcement.

Also in today’s briefing

Huntress documents Microsoft 365 token-replay attacks. New research describes a ten-week campaign affecting 79 organizations, involving more than 200,000 login attempts and 497 confirmed successful sign-ins. Attackers used stolen authentication tokens rather than guessing passwords, sometimes registering their own devices and MFA methods to maintain access. The campaign is distinct from the recent ConnectWise incident. Read Huntress’s research.

Climb Global Solutions acquires French distributor NeoVAD. Climb has completed an approximately €16 million acquisition of NeoVAD, a value-added distributor serving about 300 active French reseller partners. The transaction expands Climb’s European presence and strengthens relationships with vendors including Cato Networks, DataCore and Netwrix.

Wagepoint finds Canadian small businesses growing and retaining workers. Payroll data from approximately 6,800 Canadian businesses shows average headcount increasing 44% between 2019 and 2025, while annual employee separations fell from 38% to 27%. Gen Z now represents 38% of employees in the dataset, compared with 18% in 2019. Read Wagepoint’s Canadian workforce research.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt:

Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Friday, October 23, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We begin with a development that’s particularly relevant to Canadian managed service providers.

Huntress is expanding its distribution relationship with Ingram Micro into Canada.

The two companies already have an established go-to-market relationship in the United States, and the expansion will also include Latin America.

For Canadian MSPs and solution providers, the announcement means another route to market for Huntress’s cybersecurity portfolio through one of the country’s largest technology distributors.

Huntress has become an increasingly significant name in the managed cybersecurity market.

The company built much of its reputation around managed endpoint detection and response, but has been steadily broadening its portfolio and the range of security problems it helps MSPs address.

And that makes the distribution expansion interesting from both sides.

For Huntress, Ingram Micro offers access to an established Canadian reseller and MSP community, including partners that may not already have a direct relationship with the security vendor.

For Ingram, the relationship adds another security offering to a portfolio serving partners that are increasingly being asked to provide managed protection rather than simply sell cybersecurity products.

And for MSPs, an additional distribution route can potentially simplify purchasing and vendor management, particularly when they’re already doing significant business with Ingram.

There are still some details we’d like to understand.

The companies haven’t yet provided specifics about Canadian pricing, product availability or how the commercial relationship will operate.

And there’s a broader question about where Huntress sees its next phase of growth in Canada, particularly as more MSPs expand their managed security practices.

We’re hoping to explore those questions with representatives from both Huntress and Ingram Micro on a future episode of In The Channel.

For now, the important development is that Huntress is extending an existing distribution relationship into the Canadian market.

Our second story concerns an unusually urgent security update from Fortinet.

The company is strongly encouraging customers and partners to prioritize a coordinated set of security-hardening releases across several of its major products.

Updates for FortiOS, FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer were scheduled for release yesterday, following recent updates for FortiMail and FortiAuthenticator.

And Fortinet is making it clear that these shouldn’t be treated as ordinary maintenance releases.

The company says the updates include fixes for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities.

Some of those issues were identified through Fortinet’s use of frontier AI models to examine product code, protocol handling and configuration logic.

Fortinet says that approach has helped it identify weaknesses more efficiently than traditional testing methods.

But there’s another side to that development.

The same advances in AI-assisted code analysis could help attackers examine software updates, identify vulnerabilities and develop exploits more quickly.

And that means the time between a security fix becoming available and attackers attempting to exploit the underlying weakness could become considerably shorter.

Fortinet is recommending that organizations prioritize internet-facing devices, inventory affected systems and schedule updates as quickly as practical.

It also recommends backing up configurations and reviewing logs for suspicious administrative activity.

For organizations that can’t update immediately, temporary measures include restricting administrative interfaces to trusted IP addresses and ensuring management systems aren’t directly exposed to the internet.

Those mitigations can reduce risk, but Fortinet stresses that they aren’t substitutes for applying the updates.

Detailed public vulnerability advisories are expected on November 10.

For MSPs, this is an operational story as much as a security story.

Partners managing Fortinet equipment across multiple customer environments need to understand which versions are affected, coordinate maintenance windows and ensure that systems don’t remain exposed simply because an update hasn’t yet been scheduled.

And the broader implication is worth watching.

If AI is accelerating both vulnerability discovery and the development of exploits, the economics and logistics of patch management may become increasingly challenging for service providers.

Our third main story comes from application security vendor Cycode, which is reporting substantial growth in Canada.

In an announcement earlier this week, Cycode said its Canadian customer base has grown by 500 percent over approximately eighteen months.

That’s a company-reported growth figure, and Cycode hasn’t disclosed the starting customer count.

But the company has also made a more tangible investment in the market, establishing dedicated presales, postsales and customer-success resources serving Canadian organizations.

Cycode names several Canadian customers, including Jane Software, Clio, Tenstorrent, Benevity, BDO Canada and theScore.

The expansion comes as the company shifts its positioning from traditional software supply chain security toward what it calls agentic development security.

The underlying problem is straightforward.

AI coding assistants and autonomous development agents are changing how software gets written, tested and deployed.

That can increase the speed of development, but it also creates new questions about visibility, governance and security.

Cycode’s platform is intended to address those risks across the development lifecycle, from the initial prompts used to generate code through to applications running in production.

The company has been expanding its capabilities in areas including AI-assisted vulnerability analysis, attack-path identification and developer workstation protection.

For Canadian solution providers, the announcement is another indication that application security is becoming a more significant part of the enterprise cybersecurity conversation.

As customers adopt AI-assisted software development, they may need help evaluating the risks, integrating security tools into development workflows and maintaining appropriate controls.

Those services could create opportunities for security integrators and consulting partners.

But Cycode hasn’t provided details about the size of its Canadian channel or whether its local expansion includes additional partner resources.

So while the growth figures are impressive, the channel opportunity still needs a closer look.

Now, a few other developments worth watching.

Huntress has also published new research into a Microsoft 365 attack campaign that relied on stolen authentication tokens rather than guessed passwords.

Over a ten-week period ending in September, Huntress says it observed more than 200,000 login attempts, 497 confirmed successful sign-ins and unauthorized activity affecting 79 organizations.

The attackers used techniques including phishing and intercepted authentication sessions to obtain legitimate tokens, then replayed those tokens to gain access.

In some cases, attackers registered their own devices or changed multifactor authentication methods to maintain access.

That’s particularly important because changing a compromised password may not be enough to remove an attacker who has already established another way into the account.

For MSPs, the research reinforces the importance of reviewing active sessions, registered devices, authentication methods and suspicious mailbox rules when investigating Microsoft 365 compromises.

And to be clear, this is a separate campaign from the ConnectWise-related incident we discussed earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Climb Global Solutions is expanding its European distribution business.

The company has completed its acquisition of French value-added distributor NeoVAD for approximately sixteen million euros, or eighteen million US dollars.

NeoVAD serves approximately three hundred active reseller partners and works with vendors including Cato Networks, DataCore and Netwrix.

Climb says the acquisition will strengthen its French presence and create opportunities to expand relationships with those vendors across its broader distribution business.

Climb already operates in Canada, although the immediate focus of this transaction is Europe.

And finally, new Canadian small-business workforce research from Wagepoint offers an interesting look at how smaller employers have changed since before the pandemic.

Using payroll data from approximately sixty-eight hundred Canadian businesses, Wagepoint found that average headcount increased 44 percent between 2019 and 2025.

At the same time, annual employee separations declined from 38 percent to 27 percent.

And Generation Z now represents 38 percent of the workforce in the dataset, up from 18 percent in 2019.

The figures don’t specifically describe IT service providers, but they provide useful context for Canadian small businesses that are managing larger teams, changing workforce demographics and ongoing pressure on labour costs.

Before we go, a couple of notes from In The Channel.

Later today on In The Channel, we’re continuing our coverage from OpenText World with a conversation featuring Shaney Salomon, CEO of Optima Consulting.

Optima has recently renewed its formal relationship with OpenText after years of working with the company’s technology outside its partner ecosystem.

We discuss what’s changed, what still needs work, and how OpenText’s evolving AI strategy is creating both opportunities and challenges for enterprise solution providers.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode features OpenText chief product and technology officer Shannon Bell.

Shannon talks about the lessons OpenText has learned from its own AI journey, including why people, organizational change and the quality of enterprise information remain so important as businesses move toward agentic AI.

Both conversations are available at ChannelBuzz.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend.

Shannon Bell, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer at OpenText

Even the companies building the technology are discovering that the road to autonomous AI isn’t quite as straightforward as expected.

At OpenText World 2026, Shannon Bell, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer at OpenText, acknowledged that the company had expected to move toward fully autonomous AI workflows much faster than it has. The biggest surprise? The importance of the human element.

In this episode of In The Channel, Bell discusses what OpenText has learned from deploying agentic AI internally, including its global command centre, where human operators and AI agents work together. Those lessons have prompted a more deliberate approach to adoption, with greater emphasis on change management, employee readiness and incremental deployments.

For channel partners, the implications extend beyond the technology itself.

Bell argues that getting enterprise data ready for AI is an ongoing discipline, not a project with a defined finish line. As customers improve data quality and governance, deploy agents and identify new business processes to automate, partners have opportunities to deliver continuing value rather than one-time implementations.

We also discuss OpenText’s evolving AI portfolio, including Aviator and Aviator Studio, and the potential for partners to build repeatable, industry-specific solutions using the company’s technology. Bell acknowledges that partner adoption remains in its early stages, but sees considerable opportunity as customers mature in their AI journeys.

And looking ahead, Bell shares her enthusiasm for hybrid agentic AI, which would allow organizations to deploy AI workflows across cloud and on-premises environments while keeping sensitive data where it belongs.

It’s a candid look at the practical challenges behind the agentic AI vision — and what those challenges mean for the partners tasked with making it work.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

Zoom outlines new MSP specialization and partner incentives

At its Zoomtopia Partner Connect event, Zoom announced updates to its Zoom Up Partner Program, including a new Managed Service Provider specialization expected in December.

The specialization is intended to recognize partners delivering managed services, with anticipated benefits including advanced delegated account access, direct Tier 2 support and enhanced service levels.

Zoom is also simplifying its performance metrics around monthly recurring revenue growth, introducing new incentives for longer customer commitments in 2027, and expanding self-service capabilities for partners.

The company says partners are now its largest source of new enterprise business.

In an interview with Channel Dive, global channel GTM leader Nick Tidd said more than 300 partners had signed up to deliver professional services over the previous two quarters.

Read Zoom’s full partner-program announcement.

SentinelOne expands PartnerOne to support AI security services

At OneCon 2026 in Las Vegas, SentinelOne announced a significant expansion of its PartnerOne program, introducing new certifications, assessments and delivery resources intended to help VARs, MSPs and MSSPs build AI security practices.

The additions include Implementation Engineer certifications for Prompt Security, endpoint and identity protection, and AI SIEM.

Partners can also access an AI Recon Assessment Service, early access to Singularity Agentic Detection and Response, and deployment packages containing scoping guides, statements of work and implementation runbooks.

LevelBlue, GuidePoint Security and World Wide Technology are initial launch partners, with broader availability planned over the coming months.

SentinelOne separately expanded its Lenovo relationship, bringing Prompt Security capabilities into Lenovo’s ThinkShield portfolio.

Read SentinelOne’s PartnerOne announcement.

Dell expands AI Factory with NVIDIA

At NVIDIA GTC Berlin, Dell Technologies announced new capabilities across its AI Factory with NVIDIA portfolio, including validated AI software solutions, deskside agentic AI deployment templates and modular data-centre infrastructure.

New ecosystem additions include solutions involving Mistral, Dynatrace, Fogsphere and Reflection.

Dell is also expanding its deskside AI portfolio with reference designs intended to help organizations scale from individual developers to deployments of more than 1,000 systems.

On the infrastructure side, Dell introduced plans for modular AI data centres based on NVIDIA’s DSX POD reference design, alongside new PowerEdge platforms.

Dell says more than 6,500 organizations have adopted the AI Factory with NVIDIA.

Read Dell’s announcement.

Also in today’s briefing

Ricoh finds a Canadian AI adoption disconnect. New research finds that while 85 percent of Canadian business decision-makers believe their workplace technology is connected, 76 percent of employees say their jobs would be easier if those systems worked better together. Another 43 percent report using non-approved tools at least monthly. Read Ricoh’s research announcement.

Barracuda identifies cybersecurity expertise gaps. A new international survey finds 94 percent of organizations report cybersecurity skills gaps, particularly around AI risks and advanced identity and phishing threats. Read Barracuda’s analysis.

Tanium brings endpoint management to NVIDIA AI systems. A new collaboration extends Tanium’s management capabilities to local AI infrastructure, including NVIDIA DGX Spark and RTX Spark, with visibility into system configuration, compliance and AI-agent activity. Read the announcement.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt:

Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Thursday, October 22, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We begin with Zoom, which is preparing a new specialization for managed service providers as part of a broader overhaul of its partner program.

The changes were announced Tuesday at Zoomtopia Partner Connect, and they reflect Zoom’s continuing effort to make the channel a larger part of how it sells, implements and manages its expanding portfolio.

The headline for MSPs is a new specialization expected to launch in December.

Zoom says the specialization will recognize partners that deliver managed services, with anticipated benefits including advanced delegated account access, direct Tier 2 support, enhanced service levels and additional incentives.

Those are potentially important changes for partners looking to manage Zoom environments on an ongoing basis, rather than simply selling licenses and moving on.

The company is also simplifying how partners earn points within its program.

Under the new structure, partners will receive one point for every thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue growth during the applicable assessment period, while new-customer revenue will continue to be measured separately.

Zoom is also planning new incentives for longer customer commitments next year.

Other changes include expanded self-service access to not-for-resale licenses and a new business process outsourcing program for Zoom Contact Center.

And Zoom says the channel is now its largest source of new enterprise business, accounting for 90 percent of its ten largest customer experience deals in its second fiscal quarter.

There’s an interesting services story underneath all of this.

Speaking with Channel Dive, Zoom’s global channel GTM leader Nick Tidd said more than 300 partners had signed up to deliver professional services over the previous two quarters.

But Tidd also suggested that implementation is only the beginning.

The next challenge is helping customers actually adopt and use more of the platform.

For MSPs, that potentially means a larger role in ongoing administration, integration, optimization and customer adoption.

And as Zoom moves further into AI-powered services and consumption-based pricing, how partners participate in that recurring business will become an increasingly important question.

Our second story comes from SentinelOne, which is giving partners a more structured path into AI security services.

At its OneCon conference in Las Vegas yesterday, SentinelOne announced a major expansion of its PartnerOne program.

The goal is to help VARs, MSPs and managed security providers build services businesses around AI security and autonomous security operations.

There are several components.

First, SentinelOne is introducing new implementation certifications covering its Prompt Security offering, endpoint and identity protection, and AI SIEM.

Second, partners will have access to an AI Recon Assessment Service, designed to help them identify customer risks and create consulting and implementation opportunities.

There’s also early access to Singularity Agentic Detection and Response, which focuses on discovering AI agents, monitoring their behaviour, enforcing policies and responding to potentially malicious activity.

On the security operations side, SentinelOne is introducing additional certifications and assessment services covering data pipelines, AI-assisted investigation and automated response.

And perhaps most practically, certified partners will receive delivery packages containing scoping guides, statements of work, project plans and deployment runbooks.

Those resources are intended to make it easier for partners to turn technical capabilities into repeatable services.

The initial launch partners are LevelBlue, GuidePoint Security and World Wide Technology, with a broader rollout planned over the coming months.

That’s an impressive group, but it also raises an interesting question.

How accessible will these opportunities be to smaller MSPs that don’t already have sophisticated security practices?

SentinelOne clearly wants partners to own more of the services layer. The question is how broadly that opportunity will extend across its partner ecosystem.

The company also announced an expanded relationship with Lenovo, bringing SentinelOne Prompt Security into Lenovo’s ThinkShield portfolio.

That extends their existing endpoint security relationship into visibility and governance of enterprise AI use.

Our third main story takes us to NVIDIA GTC Berlin, where Dell Technologies has announced another substantial expansion of its AI Factory with NVIDIA.

Dell says more than 6,500 organizations have now adopted the platform, up from 5,000 last quarter.

The latest announcement is focused on helping enterprises move agentic AI beyond experimentation and into production.

That includes new validated software solutions and deployment blueprints involving companies such as Mistral, Dynatrace, Fogsphere and Reflection.

Dell is also expanding its deskside agentic AI offerings.

New reference templates are intended to help organizations move from an individual developer running AI locally to deployments involving more than a thousand systems.

The hardware additions include new Dell Pro Precision configurations built around NVIDIA processors.

And at the larger end of the market, Dell is introducing modular data-centre infrastructure based on NVIDIA’s DSX POD reference design.

These containerized systems are designed to combine compute, storage, networking, power and liquid cooling in factory-integrated deployments.

Dell also announced new PowerEdge systems designed for agentic workloads and high-throughput inference.

There are services implications here as well.

Dell Managed Services for AI, expected in the first quarter of next year, is intended to help organizations manage AI resources, access, consumption and costs.

For channel partners, the broader opportunity is in helping customers choose, deploy, integrate and manage increasingly complex AI infrastructure.

But it’s also worth watching how Dell balances the services it delivers itself against the work available to its partners.

Now, a few other developments worth watching.

New Canadian research from Ricoh suggests businesses may be considerably more confident about their technology investments than their employees are.

In Ricoh’s survey, 85 percent of Canadian business decision-makers said their workplace technology systems were connected.

But 76 percent of employees said their jobs would be easier if those systems worked better together.

And 43 percent of Canadian employees reported using non-approved tools at least once a month to get their work done more easily.

For solution providers, that’s a reminder that deploying technology and making technology useful aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Integration, adoption and governance remain significant opportunities.

Meanwhile, Barracuda has released new research suggesting the cybersecurity workforce problem is increasingly about expertise rather than simply head count.

In its international survey of organizations with between 100 and 2,000 employees, 94 percent reported cybersecurity skills gaps.

AI-related risks and advanced identity and phishing threats were among the most commonly identified challenges.

For MSPs and security providers, that reinforces the potential value of specialized expertise, particularly as customers struggle to keep up with increasingly complex threats.

And finally, Tanium is extending its endpoint management capabilities to NVIDIA’s local AI infrastructure.

The collaboration includes support for systems such as DGX Spark and RTX Spark, with capabilities for inventory, patching, compliance and visibility into AI workloads.

Tanium is also developing ways for IT teams to monitor and control AI agents running on those systems.

As AI compute moves beyond the data centre and onto deskside systems, managing those machines as part of the broader endpoint estate is becoming an increasingly important operational challenge.

Later today on In The Channel, we sit down with OpenText’s chief product officer and chief technology officer, Shannon Bell, to talk about the company’s approach to creating the context and information layer for agentic AI, how partners can build services around – and using – its platforms, and what OpenText learned from its own AI journey so far.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode features my conversation with Todd Cione from OpenText World.

We discuss OpenText’s shift toward partner-led growth in the midmarket, the role of implementation and delivery partners, and some of the questions surrounding the future of its existing MSP business.

You can find that conversation at ChannelBuzz.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Todd Cione, chief sales officer at OpenText

OpenText is rethinking how it reaches and serves mid-market customers, putting partners at the centre of a significant transformation in its commercial strategy.

Speaking with In The Channel at OpenText World 2026 in Orlando, Todd Cione, executive vice president and chief sales officer at OpenText, described a “radical pivot” away from a direct sales approach that has struggled to provide sufficient coverage of the mid-market.

Instead, the company is increasingly turning to regional solution providers, systems integrators and other channel partners to extend its reach and deliver customer value.

The shift is part of a broader transformation under OpenText’s new One OpenText operating model, which brings together the company’s extensive technology portfolio and partner ecosystem around customer needs. For its largest 2,400 customers, OpenText has introduced client executives responsible for coordinating internal specialists and external partners.

Cione also sees a substantial opportunity to drive organic growth by expanding adoption of OpenText technologies across its existing base of more than 120,000 customers.

But realizing that opportunity requires more than encouraging partners to cross-sell. Cione points to financial incentives, technical and commercial enablement, and simpler programs and systems as essential investments. That includes reconsidering the historically significant costs associated with some partner training.

The conversation also explores the role of OpenText’s MSP-focused cybersecurity business, opportunities to extend the company’s portfolio into smaller customers, and the challenge of creating a more consistent partner experience without losing the specialization different types of partners require. OpenText’s existing Accelerate Partner Program illustrates some of the distinct requirements of its cybersecurity channel.

Cione says roughly half of OpenText’s revenue is currently influenced by partners, a proportion the company hopes to increase over time.

In this episode of In The Channel, Cione discusses what these changes mean for OpenText partners and where the company’s channel strategy goes next.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the past 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

We’re coming to you from OpenText World 2026 in Orlando, where the company is laying out an ambitious vision for its future, positioning itself as a critical provider of trusted information and connected data for the emerging world of enterprise AI.

But delivering on that vision is going to take more than technology. It’s going to require some significant changes to how OpenText goes to market, particularly how it works with its partners.

That’s where today’s guest comes in. Todd Cione is OpenText’s president of Worldwide Sales, and I had the opportunity to sit down with him shortly after CEO Ayman Antoun laid out the company’s strategy in his opening keynote.

Todd describes what he calls a radical pivot in OpenText’s approach to the mid-market, moving away from a predominantly direct sales approach towards one that depends much more heavily on partners to reach and serve customers.

We also get into the company’s new One OpenText commercial model, the opportunities for partners to build businesses around more of OpenText’s extensive portfolio, and what it will take to make that cross-selling opportunity a reality.

And we discuss where the company’s substantial MSP-focused cybersecurity business fits into the broader strategy, as well as efforts to simplify the experience of working with OpenText across its many businesses.

It’s a conversation about some significant changes in how OpenText thinks about its channel, and what partners can expect as those changes take shape.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Todd Cione.

Robert Dutt: Well, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I imagine this has got to be a busy, active week for you and the whole team here.

Todd Cione: Thanks for having me, Robert. It’s a fantastic week, and very excited to have colleagues, partners, and clients here at OpenText World.

Robert Dutt: So we just sat in on a session where Ayman laid out a pretty ambitious vision for where OpenText goes from here. When you look at that strategy, when you were formulating that strategy, where do your partners fit into making that all a reality over time?

Todd Cione: Yeah, I think they play a critical role in the AI stack. I mean, put simply, no one vendor partner can deliver value across the entirety of the AI stack to a client. Shannon’s metaphor of a team sport, I think, is directly applicable. It takes an entire ecosystem working together to deliver the value that clients expect today.

Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about that ecosystem. Moving down the stack into the long tail of the channel, when you get beyond the GSIs, the technology partners, and start looking at the regional solution providers, the consultants, the implementation partners who are working directly with customers, large and small, but especially once you get into that mid-market and below size.

Todd Cione: Yeah, look, clients expect, whether they’re a large enterprise or they’re in the mid-market, they’re dealing with the same problems. They just have different amounts of resources available to them to solve problems. They need technology, they need expertise, but it’s that combination of technology and expertise where business value comes that they all expect.

Partners of all categories play a critical role. As you’re referencing, regional system integrators, resellers that are localized in markets, bring either local expertise on the marketplace or the country where they are serving and operating, or they bring some type of vertical expertise, whether it’s public sector or private sector. In that combination of their expertise and our technology is where I think the value lies for a client.

Robert Dutt: How do you see the transition that this whole industry, this whole world is in right now changing the definition of who is, or will be six months, a year, two years from now, an OpenText partner? I’m curious if the kind of things you’re looking for in the partner base are evolving as both the market itself and OpenText’s place within it evolves.

Todd Cione: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think if you look back on the last decade, just for context before we look forward, it’s important to recognize that we certainly have invested in a partner ecosystem and a partner channel. However, the expectation of value and scale was different previously than it is now, and it is going forward.

Partners unequivocally are core to our entire company, including our commercial model that I’m responsible for. That means large global system integrators and regional system integrators to extend the delivery of professional services expertise. That means cloud service providers to provide the infrastructure layer on that modern AI stack. That means technology providers like SAP, Salesforce, that we integrate into their systems of record. That also means technology providers that build applications, agents on top of our platform as well, and then resellers and distributors that provide scale.

Moving forward, this ecosystem is not only critical for clients because no one technology provider can provide the entire stack, but it’s core to OpenText. It is core to what we do. It’s going to be core to our product roadmap. You’re going to see more and more and more tomorrow. It’s core to how we bring value to our shared clients. It’s like an integrated part of our sales force that I’m responsible for.

Robert Dutt: How does that go-to-market continue to evolve, especially as that whole ecosystem that you describe gets more complex? We get into situations where it’s you plus an OpenText partner plus any number of those technology partners who may have their own channels, and sometimes there’s going to be overlap between their partners and your partners, but not always. It can create a complex ecosystem, and managing that is a little bit of a different beast.

Todd Cione: Yeah, certainly with more providers working together to provide a common solution for a client, there can be complexity. But put simply, our job is to simplify it. Our job is to integrate and work super closely with a partner ecosystem early in a sales cycle, in a value cycle with a client, so that we all have clarity on our roles and responsibilities. What part of the overall solution for a client are we going to provide? And that way there’s kind of a seamless experience, most importantly, for the client.

And so we work really, really, really hard on it. We’re not perfect. We’re learning a lot. Our teams are learning, but we’re making big investments, human investments in resources, to be able to bring that simplicity to clients, and then enablement investments for the teams that we do have.

Robert Dutt: Is it changing kind of the nature of the sales call, the sales motion, when you’ve got all those different folks potentially in the room to make something that hopefully will reach some of those outcomes that we’re all striving for on behalf of customers?

Todd Cione: Simple answer is yes. And the longer answer is, gone are the days where OpenText would show up just with a product specialist to our client by themselves. And here are the days where we’ve launched an initiative, an organizational structure, a program, a model called One OpenText that puts the client at the center of everything that we do and is partner-centric.

And with that, for our largest 2,400 clients globally, we have a client executive that we’ve deployed. And this is a new role that represents the breadth of OpenText for that client and is an orchestrator then of specialist resources, product specialists from OpenText, technical specialists from OpenText, but also partners working together to seamlessly, again, assemble that solution that brings value to the client. So it’s a new approach and a new model. Again, we call it One OpenText.

Robert Dutt: You’ve got such a broad portfolio of technology across information management, security, AI underneath it all, and other areas as well. Where do you see the biggest opportunities today for partners to build differentiated businesses around the portfolio rather than simply reselling product X or product Y?

Todd Cione: Yeah, that’s reselling. It’s not a lot of value. So put simply, our role in the modern AI stack is to provide trusted context and connected data. It’s a core, critical part of that AI stack, without which really an enterprise cannot get business value from AI.

So as it relates to a partner ecosystem contributing around OpenText, trusted context, and connected data, look, there’s tremendous opportunities. At the infrastructure layer, again, cloud service providers provide very, very valuable modern infrastructure in the cloud to enable AI. Systems of record providers, SAP, Salesforce, and others, obviously that’s where structured data sits. We integrate with those key systems of record, and then models and orchestrators. If you think about Cohere, really important, tight partnership. Then you have agents and applications as well.

For resellers and distributors, their ability to connect into tiers on that AI stack, understand the value that they can provide to localized clients in a local market or in a specific vertical, is the way to differentiate.

We know that we can’t be all things to all clients, and we won’t be. We need localized resellers and solution providers across the world, heavily in emerging markets. We also can’t be all things to all clients by vertical as well. Public sector, we depend very heavily on a very specific specialized channel to work with public sector clients, as an example.

Robert Dutt: It sounds like the key to the value is being the last mile. You can get that integration between yourselves and your technology partners to X percent, but there’s still going to be that little bit extra that needs to be done to make it really light up for a customer in their particular niche, their particular priorities, their particular business.

Todd Cione: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it, the last mile. Look, we actually have a direct sales force quite significantly at scale around the world. And even though we have strong coverage, I’d say amongst the best coverages in the marketplace, look, we know we don’t have comprehensive coverage, and we do need those localized partners, that last mile, using your phrase, to provide incremental value to clients.

Robert Dutt: How much of that is in place today versus something that you feel needs to be built out or evolved for the current market condition?

Todd Cione: Yeah, coverage is in place right now. Very publicly, Ayman, our CEO, has highlighted that we’ve invested in our commercial model this year, in FY27, hiring and staffing those client executive roles and then also our specialist seller roles. So that model’s in place.

We’ve also invested in partner development executives to be able to be experts on the localized partner ecosystem within markets. We’ve organized that structure into three geographies: an Americas geography, a Europe geography, and an APJ, Middle East, Africa geography.

Within those geographies, we have 15 markets. So small atomic teams, think of it, operating in markets that are each unique in and of themselves and have unique partner ecosystem requirements as well. Those market leaders then are accountable to work with local partners to execute and serve clients. So that is all in place right now.

Robert Dutt: One part of the business that we didn’t hear a lot about in the keynote is the MSP-focused business. I think that’s because it’s kind of historically been a little bit unto itself, but it’s a substantial business that’s been assembled over the years, largely through acquisitions. How do you think about its place in the broader OpenText strategy going forward?

Todd Cione: Yeah, that’s a fair question. And I’ll answer it this way. Look, we have a professional services, first-party OpenText PS team that’s important and will continue to be important to add value to clients. The purpose of our professional services team is to bring expertise around our technology to clients and to help us drive software growth for our shareholders. That’s the purpose.

So a managed service provider ecosystem plays an important connected partnership, even with our first-party PS organization as well. And look, that’s a shift. That’s a shift for OpenText. And it’s not a light switch. Shifts as significant as that take some time, but we’re in the midst of that.

I have a colleague, James McOrley, who, and Jack Miller, run our global PS team. And they’re working hard to invest not only in clients, but now in a partner ecosystem as well, so that managed service providers, RSIs, GSIs can be an extension of OpenText, and we’re not competing with them.

Robert Dutt: Particularly around that, that security and backup business that’s been built up through Carbonite and all those acquisitions over the years, and kind of has, over the last few years, become an MSP stack platform unto itself. How does that kind of fit into OpenText moving forward?

Todd Cione: Yeah, we’ve been very public on the breadth of our portfolio and focusing on a core, a core part of our portfolio. That includes content, that includes our IT operations management portfolio, it includes our business network portfolio, as well as our cyber enterprise portfolio.

Now, relative to your question, Robert, around the MSP ecosystem for cybersecurity, cybersecurity is a core focus of ours. We take those products to market directly and through an MSP channel. So it’s super, super important to us.

Robert Dutt: It sounds like one of your previous answers may have informed some of the way, but I’m just curious. Historically, many of those partners have come into the OpenText ecosystem through those acquisitions with a security or backup lens, whatever it was. But as you say, you’ve got a lot more going on. Is there an opportunity to bring more of that portfolio to MSPs? I have to imagine yes. And ultimately to the SMB and mid-market customers that those guys typically serve?

Todd Cione: Yeah, that’s a good question. Look, you’re right that SMB and the mid-market is such a massive marketplace. And the best way to cover and serve that client base is through a channel, period. So you’ll continue to see OpenText invest in channel partners to serve those market segments.

Robert Dutt: You’ve got such a broad portfolio built through acquisitions, including the MSP business, but there’s been a lot of talk, you guys have been pretty open about wanting to focus more on organic growth.

Is that a signal that the goal is to get more value out of the portfolio that you already have, particularly through better integration and cross-selling opportunities for partners, getting more of the partner base that’s maybe sitting over here in part of the business thinking more OpenText at large?

Todd Cione: Yes is the answer to the question. So by that, I mean we have over 120,000 clients globally, and the opportunity for those clients to get more value from OpenText sits with our ability to expand our portfolio into each of those client relationships.

On stage today, this morning, as an example, you heard a couple examples of that. Ochsner Health, a large integrated healthcare delivery network in the Southeast, uses very effectively our IT operations management platform to help them with asset management and discovery for acquisitions. And they’re just beginning to use other parts of our portfolio, just beginning to. And huge opportunity.

You heard from IBM on stage today. I think it’s a great example of AI actually in the enterprise that’s in action. And that came through an ecosystem. That came through integration with SAP, and SAP and OpenText working together. And that’s our content platform that IBM is leveraging today. Big opportunity for a large enterprise like IBM to use other parts of our portfolio.

And then particularly as you scale down into the mid-marketplace, we have a huge opportunity to scale the breadth of our products into our existing customer base. And that requires a partner ecosystem to do that.

Robert Dutt: What unlocks some of that cross-selling? Because it’s a thing where a lot of organizations are really interested in getting their existing partners selling more across the base. Because of course, it only makes sense. You’ve already got the relationship. They already know part of your business. So it’s a lot easier than ramping up a new partner at large.

But talking to folks who have put that stake in the ground, it can be challenging to get partners out of their comfort zone, their lane that they’re in, and thinking across the lines of business that you may have.

Todd Cione: Yeah. Put simply, value. Honestly, what unlocks it is value for the client first. The client has to see value in leveraging other technology from OpenText, and then value for the partner ecosystem.

We think about value for the partner ecosystem in a few components, Robert. First of all, it’s a value proposition that the partner has to understand for the client, number one. Number two, there have to be financial incentives for them in place to be able to leverage more of OpenText’s portfolio.

Number three, they have to be enabled to do that, both technically enabled, but also commercially enabled to do that. And then number four, we think about kind of a governance process that includes systems and tools and escalations and process to be able to support and serve them.

So we’re making investments across those four areas to enable the partner ecosystem to be able to cross-sell for our clients.

Robert Dutt: You talked a little bit earlier about the One OpenText kind of viewpoint, and having that viewpoint, I’m curious, do you see that logic extending to the partner base? Do you need to have a more unified partner experience across the various businesses, or is the diversity of those businesses such that it makes sense for them to kind of have their own approach, their own look and feel when facing partners?

Todd Cione: I think it’s a little bit of both, in that there’s no reason that we need to have complexity in contracts and in programs and systems and tools depending upon partner type or specialization. No reason at all. So we’re working to simplify that and ways that partners engage with us and vice versa.

But also we acknowledge that specialization within the partner ecosystem is critical. And a cybersecurity deep expert partner is not the same as a partner that’s been working on vendor invoice management and backup and recovery with SAP’s ecosystem. Very different.

So they need different types of enablement. They need different types of programs. But again, there’s a common denominator of systems, tools, process that needs to be simplified, and we’re committed to doing that.

Robert Dutt: On that first part, the kind of driving out complexity and making things as simple and streamlined as possible, where’s that at? And what do you see as the next big projects, milestones, demons to slay, however you want to phrase that?

Todd Cione: It is a long list, Robert, of simplicity that we’re working on. So you can start with programs. We’re working to simplify and bring consistency to our program infrastructure across all of our partner categories.

You can then go to enablement, and there’s different philosophies in the marketplace around enabling a partner channel, particularly technical delivery-oriented enablement.

In the past, OpenText has looked at that as a pretty important revenue stream for us to charge partners for, and we’re looking at different ways and have already introduced a few new programs to invest in a partner ecosystem so that they can take advantage of technical delivery competency-oriented training without maybe some of the historical heavy expense.

A couple examples.

Robert Dutt: Okay. How do you see the mid-market and below opportunity for OpenText? Enterprise has obviously kind of been the sweet spot historically, but I’m curious, especially when you’ve got that base of MSPs in the cybersecurity space who are primarily, I would say, transacting in the SMB space. Is there an opportunity to take the broader message down to that group, especially as AI becomes more baked in and complexity in terms of operator requirements hopefully declines over time?

Todd Cione: Yeah, that’s a good question. And our bread and butter and what we know extremely well is the large enterprise market segment. So you think about a billion dollars of annual turnover of clients on their side and above. And that’s what we do extremely well. And that’s our legacy.

Now, the mid-market, sub-one billion, maybe above 1,000 employees, roughly segmented, represents a huge opportunity for OpenText. And the way that we’ve gone to market there in the past has not enabled us to scale.

The metaphor I use is we’ve had a couple rowboats in the Atlantic Ocean rowing around for coverage in our direct inside sales model. And of course, you get much more coverage through a partner ecosystem.

So we’ve radically pivoted the way that we are trying to serve clients and new logo targets in the mid-market through a partner ecosystem. We have a couple leaders that are leading the charge there, and it’s a radical pivot that we’re in the midst of.

Now SMB and below, as you referenced, that’s 100 percent partner ecosystem. We’ve made some investments in technology to engage with that ecosystem and allow them to resell through a portal. We’ve modernized, and we still have room to improve and are still working on it, but we’ve made some investments, important investments for that ecosystem.

Robert Dutt: If we were having this conversation again at OpenText World next year, what would you hope has materially changed for partners? What should partners be looking for, expecting from OpenText over the next 12 years, 12 months or so?

Todd Cione: Yeah, well, we do have a long-term view while we execute in the short term. And I think, look, if you and I, when you and I, I hope we have an opportunity to talk next year at this point, what will have happened?

Outcomes that I expect to have happened is, today, directionally, half of our revenue is influenced by partners. Influenced meaning either resold or heavily influenced in some way in the buying decision by a client. That will have increased quite significantly 12 months from now, based on the investments that we’re making, the model changes that we’ve already introduced.

Robert Dutt: All right. That’s a big one the partners ask about, so I appreciate that. Yeah, that’s kind of where I wanted to go. I appreciate your taking the time, and thank you.

Todd Cione: Thank you, Robert. Appreciate the time, and thanks for the advocacy for OpenText.

Robert Dutt: Thanks again to Todd Cione for taking the time to join us here at OpenText World, and thanks to you for listening.

A few things that stood out for me from that conversation.

First, I think the scale of the change OpenText is making in its mid-market strategy is significant. Todd was pretty candid that the company’s previous direct sales approach simply wasn’t giving it the coverage it needed, and that partners are going to play a much bigger role in reaching those customers going forward.

Second, there’s the opportunity around OpenText’s existing portfolio. With more than 120,000 customers globally and a broad collection of technologies, there’s clearly an opportunity to bring more of those capabilities into existing relationships. But as Todd acknowledges, making that work means getting the incentives, enablement, programs, and partner experience right.

And third, I think it’s interesting that OpenText is looking to simplify how partners work with the company while recognizing that a cybersecurity specialist and an enterprise information management partner don’t necessarily need the same things. Finding that balance is going to be important.

There are still questions about exactly how the company’s existing MSP-focused cybersecurity business fits into the larger picture, particularly whether those partners will have the opportunity to take more of OpenText’s portfolio to their customers. That’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

And Todd gave us a useful benchmark to watch. Today, roughly half of OpenText’s revenue is influenced by partners, and he expects that number to grow significantly over the next year. We’ll see how that develops.

We’ll have more conversations from OpenText World here on In The Channel, so make sure you’re subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. And if you find these discussions useful, a rating, review, or recommendation to a colleague is always appreciated.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers:

• OpenText stakes out its role as the trusted data foundation for enterprise AI: OpenText CEO Ayman Antoun used his keynote at OpenText World 2026 in Orlando on Tuesday to outline a strategy centred on providing the secure, governed enterprise information needed to make artificial intelligence useful in production environments.Rather than attempting to own every layer of the emerging AI technology stack, OpenText is positioning itself as a provider of the trusted data and context connecting enterprise information to AI applications and agents.Antoun argued that the limitations of enterprise data are becoming a major obstacle to AI adoption, suggesting that only about 20 percent of enterprise information is currently usable in agentic AI workflows.His broader argument is that AI models and agents cannot consistently deliver reliable business outcomes without accurate information, appropriate context and strong governance over how that information is accessed and used.

OpenText sees an opportunity to provide that foundation across its existing portfolio of information management, business network, IT operations and cybersecurity technologies.

The approach also relies on partnerships with companies providing complementary capabilities, including AI models, orchestration platforms and infrastructure.

OpenText’s previously announced partnership with Canadian AI company Cohere illustrates that division of responsibilities: OpenText supplies the enterprise data and context layer, while Cohere provides models and orchestration through its North platform.

For solution providers, the strategy could create opportunities around preparing enterprise data for AI, integrating business systems, implementing governance controls and helping customers move AI projects from experimentation into production.

However, the keynote left questions about how those opportunities will extend across OpenText’s different partner communities, particularly its existing managed services business.

ChannelBuzz.ca is covering OpenText World in Orlando this week, including interviews with OpenText executives and partners examining how the strategy translates into channel opportunities.

• ThreatLocker launches Zero Trust AI Control for AI agents: ThreatLocker has introduced Zero Trust AI Control, or ZTAIC, a new security capability designed to restrict what AI agents can access, execute and connect to within an organization’s environment.The October 20 announcement addresses a growing concern as businesses move from AI tools that generate information to agents capable of taking actions across applications and systems.Traditional AI guardrails typically rely on instructions or policies intended to influence how an agent behaves. ThreatLocker is taking a different approach, applying security controls independently of the AI system itself.ZTAIC is designed to enforce restrictions on application execution, file access and network connections, including when an AI agent invokes other applications, scripts or processes to complete a task.

For example, an agent might be authorized to analyze information in a particular folder and generate a report, while remaining unable to access unrelated files or transmit information to unauthorized destinations.

The offering builds on ThreatLocker’s existing Zero Trust platform, including application allowlisting, Ringfencing and Web Content Control.

Security teams can begin with recommended policies and adapt them to the requirements of individual environments.

For Canadian MSPs, the development points to an emerging service opportunity around helping customers deploy AI agents safely.

That work involves identifying which agents should be permitted, defining their access requirements, limiting their privileges and maintaining controls as they interact with other software.

The announcement does not specify Canadian pricing, availability details or a new MSP-specific commercial program.

While the technology is designed to reduce the risks associated with agentic AI, it does not eliminate the need for broader identity security, monitoring and governance.

• Flexera expands AI cost management into infrastructure and data platforms: Flexera has announced an expansion of its AI Cost Management platform, extending its existing capabilities for tracking AI applications, agents, models and token consumption into the infrastructure and data platforms supporting those workloads.The October 20 announcement adds autonomous optimization capabilities designed to balance cost and performance across cloud infrastructure, containers and AI data services.Flexera is also expanding its ecosystem of integrations with AI gateways, model-routing technologies, observability platforms and economic-control systems.The company’s existing Token Cost Control capabilities provide visibility into consumption across AI model APIs and applications, including identifying the users and agents responsible for spending.

Those capabilities can support cost allocation, chargebacks, forecasting and governance.

The expansion adds more attention to the infrastructure costs that can accumulate behind AI workloads, including compute resources and data-platform operations.

Flexera expects automation for Snowflake environments to become available by the end of 2026, followed by Databricks automation in early 2027.

The company is also working with vendors including Revenium and Ascerta, formerly Pay-i, to expand the information available for managing AI economics.

A new AI cost-management maturity assessment is available to help organizations evaluate their practices.

Flexera partner SoftwareOne is among the companies highlighting growing customer demand for financial visibility and accountability as AI moves into production.

For Canadian solution providers, the opportunity extends beyond helping customers select AI technologies.

Partners can potentially build services around measuring consumption, identifying inefficient workloads, allocating costs, implementing spending controls and connecting AI investments to business outcomes.

The announcement builds on capabilities introduced earlier this year. Some of the newly described automation features remain scheduled for future release rather than being generally available today.

In Brief

• Grafana opens commercial marketplace for partner-developed plugins: Grafana Labs has announced general availability of the Grafana Marketplace, allowing verified technology partners and developers to sell commercial plugins through Grafana’s existing extension catalog.Announced October 20 at ObservabilityCON, the marketplace provides a new way for developers to generate recurring revenue from integrations they build and maintain for Grafana.The initial offering supports trials and monthly subscriptions for Grafana Cloud customers.Grafana Labs handles billing and payment support, while the partners developing the plugins remain responsible for technical support, maintenance and compatibility.

Every marketplace listing is reviewed by Grafana Labs and must meet requirements covering security, software signing and handling sensitive information.

The initial catalog includes integrations for network and security platforms, storage and virtualization systems, collaboration tools, and infrastructure cost management.

Available plugins include connections to technologies from Cisco, Fortinet, VMware, NetApp, Dell, Microsoft, Nutanix, Proofpoint and others.

Marketplace participants include Crest Data, Phenisys, Integration Plumbers, Helin Data and KensoBI.

The commercial marketplace is an addition to Grafana’s existing plugin ecosystem, not a replacement for its free and open-source extensions.

Developers can continue distributing free plugins without participating in the commercial program.

For Canadian software developers, systems integrators and specialized solution providers, the marketplace offers a potential way to commercialize expertise in connecting enterprise technologies.

Building an integration can require significant ongoing work to maintain compatibility, address security issues and support customers.

Grafana’s new model is designed to make that work more commercially sustainable by giving developers access to customers already using the platform.

The marketplace was introduced in preview earlier this year. The October 20 announcement marks its general availability.

• ConnectWise introduces technical webinars as cloud services remain suspended: ConnectWise said Tuesday that Cloud Backup, SaaS Security and Cloud Management remained unavailable while remediation and security validation continued following unauthorized access involving application identities. The company is planning a controlled, phased restoration but has not confirmed a timetable. It has also introduced technical webinars for partners, beginning October 20, to help administrators investigate Microsoft Entra ID logs, application credentials and permissions across their own and customer Microsoft 365 environments.
• Cycode expands Canadian operations after reporting substantial customer growth: Cycode says its Canadian customer base has grown 500 percent over approximately 18 months. The application-security company has established dedicated Canadian pre-sales, post-sales and customer-success teams, and names Jane Software, Clio, Tenstorrent, Benevity, BDO Canada and theScore among its customers. The company is emphasizing security for AI-assisted software development, although it has not disclosed the starting customer count behind its growth figure or announced a new Canadian partner program.
• Check Point expands AWS collaboration around cloud and AI security: Check Point has signed an expanded multi-year strategic collaboration agreement with AWS, building on an existing relationship established through a 2024 agreement. The companies will deepen integrations involving Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore and other AWS services, while expanding access to Check Point’s security technologies through AWS Marketplace and co-selling arrangements. The focus includes protecting generative and agentic AI workloads.
• Bishop Fox introduces managed testing for emerging threats: Bishop Fox has launched Emerging Threat Testing, a managed service designed to determine whether newly disclosed vulnerabilities represent actual risks in a customer’s environment. The offering combines automated analysis with expert validation and provides findings intended to distinguish confirmed exposure from vulnerabilities that are not applicable. It is available within Bishop Fox’s Continuous Security Testing portfolio.
• FireMon integrates Akamai Guardicore segmentation policies: FireMon has introduced an integration with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, allowing organizations to manage microsegmentation policies through the same governance environment used for firewalls and cloud security controls. FireMon provides policy visibility, normalization, change validation and auditing, while Akamai Guardicore continues enforcing segmentation rules. The integration is designed to simplify zero-trust policy management across hybrid environments.

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Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, October 21, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We’re starting today with OpenText World in Orlando, where OpenText CEO Ayman Antoun has laid out his vision for the company’s role in the emerging enterprise AI market.

And rather than trying to compete with every other company building AI models, agents and orchestration platforms, OpenText is staking out a particular part of the technology stack.

Antoun argues that one of the biggest obstacles to making AI useful in business isn’t the AI technology itself.

It’s the information that technology needs to work with.

During Tuesday’s keynote, he said only about twenty percent of enterprise data is currently usable for agentic AI workflows.

And he pointed to research suggesting that the overwhelming majority of AI pilots never make it into production.

His argument is that AI systems need more than access to information.

They need reliable, secure and governed information, with enough context to understand what that information means and how it should be used.

And that’s where OpenText sees its opportunity.

The company wants to provide the trusted data and context layer that connects enterprise information to AI applications and agents.

That means working alongside the companies providing the infrastructure, AI models and orchestration technologies, rather than necessarily trying to provide every piece itself.

It’s also a potentially important opportunity for channel partners.

Getting enterprise information ready for AI can involve integrating different systems, organizing data, establishing access controls and helping customers turn individual experiments into working business processes.

Those are areas where solution providers can play a significant role.

But there’s still an interesting question about how broadly that opportunity extends across OpenText’s partner ecosystem, including its existing MSP business.

Antoun’s keynote concentrated primarily on the enterprise AI opportunity, rather than detailing how the company’s managed services portfolio fits into the strategy.

And that’s something we’re exploring in our conversations with OpenText executives and partners here at the event.

The bigger message from Tuesday’s keynote is that OpenText doesn’t necessarily want to own every part of enterprise AI.

It wants to make the information underneath those AI systems trustworthy enough that businesses can actually put them to work.

As businesses begin deploying AI agents that can actually perform tasks, rather than simply answer questions, securing those agents is becoming an increasingly important challenge.

And ThreatLocker has introduced a new approach to addressing that problem.

The company announced Zero Trust AI Control, or ZTAIC, on Tuesday.

The idea is to give organizations technical control over what an AI agent can access, execute and connect to.

That’s different from the guardrails typically built into AI systems.

Those guardrails tell an agent what it should or shouldn’t do.

ThreatLocker’s approach is to enforce restrictions independently of the AI system itself.

For example, an agent might be authorized to examine documents in a particular folder and prepare a report.

But it shouldn’t necessarily be able to read unrelated customer records, execute unauthorized software or send information to an external destination.

And the challenge becomes more complicated when an AI agent uses other applications to complete its work.

An agent might launch a script, open a browser or invoke another program.

ThreatLocker says its new controls are designed to maintain the appropriate restrictions throughout those interactions.

ZTAIC builds on the company’s existing Zero Trust platform, including application allowlisting and Ringfencing.

It also includes recommended policies that security teams can customize.

For MSPs, there’s an interesting service opportunity here.

As customers adopt AI agents, someone needs to determine what those agents should be allowed to do, configure the appropriate controls and make sure the restrictions continue working as business processes change.

That’s not simply a software deployment.

It’s an ongoing security and governance responsibility.

ThreatLocker hasn’t announced detailed Canadian pricing or a new MSP-specific program as part of the launch.

But the broader direction is important.

If AI agents are going to become part of everyday business operations, organizations will need ways to enforce their security policies, rather than relying entirely on the agents to follow instructions.

And while security is one challenge for organizations putting AI into production, understanding what it’s costing them is another.

Flexera announced an expansion of its AI Cost Management platform Tuesday, adding new capabilities for controlling the infrastructure and data-platform costs associated with AI.

The company already provides tools for tracking AI applications, models, agents and token consumption.

Now it’s extending that approach into the cloud and data infrastructure supporting those workloads.

And that’s important because the cost of an AI application doesn’t necessarily end with the price of the model.

An agent may make repeated requests, process large amounts of information, access different data services and consume substantial computing resources.

A single business process can generate costs across several different systems.

Flexera wants to help organizations see those costs together and identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary spending.

The expansion includes autonomous optimization capabilities designed to balance performance and cost across infrastructure and data services.

The company is also working with AI gateway and model-routing providers to improve visibility into how organizations consume AI resources.

Some of the announced capabilities are still coming.

Automation for Snowflake is expected by the end of this year, with Databricks support following in early 2027.

Flexera has also introduced a maturity assessment to help organizations understand how well they’re managing AI spending.

For the channel, there’s a familiar opportunity here.

MSPs and solution providers already help customers manage cloud consumption, software licensing and infrastructure costs.

AI introduces some new measurements, including tokens and agent activity, but many of the underlying business questions are the same.

Who’s using the technology?

What’s it costing?

Where is money being wasted?

And is the organization getting enough value from what it’s spending?

As AI becomes a regular part of customer operations, answering those questions could become another recurring service.

In Brief –

Grafana Labs announced general availability of the Grafana Marketplace at its ObservabilityCON event on Tuesday.

ConnectWise says its Cloud Backup, SaaS Security and Cloud Management services remain suspended, and has introduced technical webinars to help MSPs investigate their Microsoft 365 environments while the company prepares for a phased restoration.

Cycode says its Canadian customer base has grown five hundred percent over approximately eighteen months, and has established dedicated Canadian teams to support customers adopting AI-assisted software development.

Check Point has expanded its multi-year collaboration with AWS, focusing on cloud and agentic AI security integrations and broader access to its technologies through AWS Marketplace.

Bishop Fox has introduced Emerging Threat Testing, a managed service designed to determine whether newly disclosed vulnerabilities actually affect a customer’s environment.

And FireMon has integrated with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, bringing microsegmentation policies into its broader network-security governance platform.

Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post.

Later today on In The Channel, I’ve got a conversation with Todd Cione from OpenText World.

We discuss the role of partners in OpenText’s business and where the company sees opportunities for the channel.

Look for that episode after eleven o’clock Eastern this morning.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday on In The Channel I spoke with Dave Baggett from Kaseya about why simpler security could mean stronger security for MSPs.

We discussed findings from Kaseya’s latest cybersecurity research, the operational burden created by too many security tools, and how providers can improve their security practices.

That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Dave Baggett, senior vice president and general manager of Kaseya’s Security Suite business

Cybersecurity has a complexity problem. And for managed service providers already struggling with limited resources and growing customer expectations, that complexity may be making it harder to deliver the protection businesses need.

That’s one of the themes emerging from Kaseya’s new 2026 Cybersecurity Report: Building Security That Survives Human Error, which surveyed more than 1,100 MSPs and IT professionals worldwide.

The research finds that 68 per cent of respondents identify human error as their biggest cybersecurity concern. But it also highlights the operational challenges created by security itself, including the time required to manage tools, maintain controls, and support users.

In this episode of In The Channel, Dave Baggett, senior vice president and general manager of Kaseya’s Security Suite business, joins us to discuss why stronger cybersecurity may increasingly depend on making security easier to manage.

Baggett argues that organizations need to design security around the reality that people make mistakes, rather than expecting users to behave perfectly. That means combining effective controls with systems that reduce the consequences of errors and simplify the work required to maintain protection.

The conversation also explores how AI could reshape security management, moving MSPs toward natural-language interfaces, more integrated security tools, and automated assistance with configuration and threat analysis. Baggett explains how Kaseya’s approach to connected cybersecurity fits into that vision.

Beyond the technology, Baggett discusses the challenges MSPs face in convincing customers to invest proactively in cybersecurity, the role of compliance in driving investment, and what Kaseya’s research reveals about the security practices of commercially successful MSPs.

The result is a discussion about making cybersecurity more effective, more manageable, and ultimately more sustainable for MSPs and their customers.

Read Full Transcript

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. We’ve spent decades talking about people being the weakest link in cybersecurity, and despite enormous advances in security technology, that fundamental challenge does not seem to be going away. Kaseya’s new 2026 Cybersecurity Report finds that 68 per cent of respondents identify human error as their biggest cybersecurity concern, but the research also highlights another challenge that may be just as important for managed service providers, the growing complexity of security itself. Organizations are deploying more tools, implementing more controls, and facing more demanding compliance requirements.

All of those things are intended to make businesses more secure, but they also create additional work for IT teams that are already stretched thin. And it raises an interesting question. At what point does the complexity of managing cybersecurity become a security risk in its own right? Joining me to explore that question is Dave Baggett, senior vice president and general manager of Kaseya’s Security Suite business. Dave and I discuss why building security that can withstand human mistakes is more realistic than trying to eliminate those mistakes entirely, and why simplifying security operations may be one of the most important opportunities for MSPs. We also get into the role AI could play in making security tools easier to manage, the challenge of convincing customers to invest in cybersecurity before something goes wrong, and what Kaseya’s research suggests about the relationship between security maturity and MSP business performance.

It’s a wide-ranging conversation about making cybersecurity not just stronger, but more practical for the people responsible for delivering it. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Dave Baggett.

Robert Dutt: Dave, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Dave Baggett: Absolutely. Great to be here.

Robert Dutt: Let’s start with the headline finding from the report, you know, a little over two-thirds of respondents identify human error as the biggest cybersecurity concern. You know, we’ve talked about people being the weakest link in security for probably as long as security has been done forever. There’s still such a persistent problem, and, you know, have we actually made any meaningful progress on this?

Dave Baggett: I think we have. I think one way to think about this is it’s a lot easier to manipulate people if you’re a bad guy than it is to find some vulnerability in a software system or, you know, so in some sense it’s because it’s easier. And you know, social engineering is just, it’s just so easy to be creative there, right? And one of the things that sort of always impresses me is how creative these bad guys are. And I often wish they were working on fusion power or something useful because we probably would have solved it by now. We are making progress though. I mean, it’s certainly true that forever this has been the number one source of breaches as you know, manipulating people. But we have been making progress.

One thing we we’ve leaned into with Kaseya with our email security in particular is trying to make the human part of the defense, right? So certainly the AI that we use blocks lots of malicious emails, but we also put yellow banners on some emails and that doesn’t mean we think the mail’s bad. We just want the user to slow down and pay attention before they go buy gift cards or click that link or fire money to somebody. And we found that’s actually really effective. That if you limit the percentage of emails you do this with, so they don’t become blind to it. Number one, and number two, you put in meaningful information, not technical verbiage. When people actually do stop and think for a few seconds and that materially lowers not only the rates of clicking on bad links, but all these other kinds of things that social engineering causes people to do.

Robert Dutt: One of the central arguments in the report is that we should probably stop expecting people to make the right decision every time and instead build systems that can survive and get around mistakes. For that smaller MSP who’s managing security across dozens or hundreds of customer environments, what is making that shift look like in practice?

Dave Baggett: I think part of it is making the tools easier to use because one of the things that we saw a lot of MSPs report to us in this was, hey, we just don’t have the time to manage all these tools. We can’t hire people who know how to use these tools well enough. So one of the things we think a lot about is how can we use things like AI to make the tools themselves simpler? How do we make the tools work better with each other? Because we heard a lot of feedback from this report, hey, we have to go to 17 different places to do things. We don’t like that. One of the things that I’m really optimistic about actually is we kind of envision the whole user interface for all these tools radically changing.

So instead of going to a UI and pressing buttons and clicking stuff, I think you’re going to see MSPs and admins in general using more like Claude Code kind of interfaces or copilot where they’re using a natural language interface and we’re going to expose MCP servers and that sort of thing to make that possible. So that instead of going, you know, imagine, you know, an admin generating a report to show one of their customers. Right now they would go to, you know, a webpage that’s a report generating webpage. Just imagine that being typing, hey, make me a report that has this information. And then on the backend, what we’re doing is building a unified data layer so that everything is stored, everything is queryable via MCP servers and all the information is shared across all the components.

The other thing we’re doing with AI is using AI, obviously we use AI to look for threats and we use AI to analyze things. Like for example, in INKY, the email solution we have, we can send an email to the AI and it’ll give you an analysis like an expert, right? It’s like a human expert. So you don’t need to have a human expert. But the other thing that I’m optimistic about is using AI to make recommendations about settings so that the admin doesn’t have to know every one of the thousand settings. I mean, some of these tools are really complicated, EDR for example, there’s lots of settings, the settings are hard to understand. So using AI to recommend to people, hey, you could suppress this noise, you could make these changes and so you’re not placing so much burden on the admin to know everything about the domain.

Robert Dutt: The research also talks about having a well trained internal IT or security team is the factor that is I think most frequently associated with coming back from an incident with rapid recovery. Exactly. So it seems like people are at the same time the biggest vulnerability and the most important defense, although obviously AI will be playing an important role there. I guess what I’m getting at is, you know, in this moment, how should MSPs be thinking about that balance between technology, automation, which also I guess follows under technology, but will treat as discrete for the purpose of this question, and human expertise?

Dave Baggett: I mean, I think that you’re going to still need to hire really, really good people. There’s no way we’re replacing all humans with AI anytime soon. You know, I think that what we’re looking at is, you know, people, when chess playing programs first came out, there is this funny term centaur chess, where you’d have a human use an AI to play another human using an AI. So the AI sort of augmenting the human’s ability. I think we’re going to see a mode like that for a while, where, you know, the AI is helping make more visible things that might be hard to see, you know, for a human, explaining to the human what these settings mean, for example, or, you know, another example is we have this tool, SaaS Alerts, which is cloud security.

And one of the things we’ve added to it is we’ve taken basically all of the knowledge of every Microsoft setting and baked it into an LLM. So now you can, as an admin, ask the LLM to look at your security posture in the Microsoft estate and then have it make recommendations to make fixes, and then it’ll actually go fix them for you. So this kind of human plus AI pair, I think is going to be the state of the art for quite a while. I think we, you know, at least we believe you need to have a human in the loop in most of these security contexts, rather than just have a bot go off and do things for you. I mean, you’ve seen lots of examples where it’s a bad idea to let these AI agents do whatever they think is sensible and they’ll go put your credit card information on the internet.

So for security, it’s going to be this kind of centaur mode, I think, for quite a while.

Robert Dutt: How realized is that at this moment in the state of tools that MSPs are using and where’s the biggest kind of, where’s the biggest bang for the buck opportunity to make that more real?

Dave Baggett: I mean, it’s real now in the sense that most of our products now have some sort of AI assistant capability and people always think of that as like a chat bot in the tool, but it isn’t just that. It’s things like alert suppression, an example that I gave earlier, which is what we call smart insights where you can take a result from EDR or email security and have an LLM analyze it. And in the case of the email security, we actually take all of the upstream analysis that we did and we put it in this form that’s digestible by the LLM and then it’ll come back and say almost like a human analyst. So you’re seeing a lot of that now. I think the leverage though, is going to come from again, all these things working together. Because one of the things that I realized, you know, I joined Kaseya by virtue of selling INKY, my company, last October.

And one of the things I realized was, you know, we had always, we’d been around for 10 years. We had always wanted to be the best at identifying malicious emails, right? Which sounds like a reasonable scope to go after. And for a very long time, we assumed you could do that simply by looking at the contents of the mail, which seems obvious, right? But in fact, now you’re seeing a lot of email born attacks where the bad stuff isn’t in the mail. Like it’s on SharePoint or something or, you know, it’s on a, you know, we’ll see, we’ll see examples of someone creating, you know, a PayPal account and then they’ll abuse the free form text for the memo or sometimes even the company name, you can put whatever you want in there and PayPal doesn’t filter it.

So people will create a real PayPal request, send it to the victim, and they’ll put in the memo, you know, you bought $150 steak knives, if this is an error, call this number, you know, and then like they call in their credit card harvesting scam. So you can’t actually look just at the contents of the mail. And this, I think, applies to basically all security contexts. And so where we’re headed and what I think is incredibly important for the whole industry is to make these tools talk to each other in real time. So we literally have a real time publish/subscribe event bus, where if INKY sees something weird, it can publish this. And then, you know, SaaS Alerts or whatever, EDR can pick it up, and the things are talking to each other. And that makes the sum better than the parts.

So I think we’re shifting from really a heuristic-based point solution world to more of an AI-assisted platform kind of world, where everything’s talking to everything else, and the AI is integrating all that information. And the other thing that’s tantalizing and isn’t really there yet, but I think we’ll get there in the next few years, is much more predictive cybersecurity. Like predict that this could be a problem, right? And the AI is clearly going to be capable of doing that with the right kinds of information. It’ll take a while to get there.

Robert Dutt: Something that caught my attention in the report is how much operational friction security itself creates. We talk about how important it is for MSPs to make sure their customers are doing MFA, make sure privileged account access management is set up right, make sure the compliance pieces are there, but that’s also consuming significant resources. We’re sort of reaching a point where the complexity of securing an organization is in itself a security risk. And I guess it has been historically, I mean, if you think back to, I guess the classic old school example would be, you know, we required a smarter password than the basics. Right. Not your dog man. One workaround is put it on a yellow sticky note on the monitor.

Dave Baggett: Yeah, totally. And I think we’re there. It is far too complicated to administer all this stuff. And that’s something that the tool vendors like us have to do better at. MFA really was an interesting one because, you know, from a user standpoint, it is really annoying to constantly have to do multifactor auth all day, multiple times. And yet that’s probably the most important control you can have. And in fact, we often debated pre-Kaseya at INKY, should we even let a customer buy our stuff if they don’t have MFA turned on? Because we would tell them, look, yes, we can, we can find cases where your account’s been taken over your email account. Like we can look at outgoing mail and see why is this account sending out huge amounts of phish right now? Or why is it sending out a giant burst of spam?

But that’s not the way to deal with that problem. The way to deal with that problem is MFA to prevent the account from getting taken over. So that I thought was quite interesting because clearly what MSPs are reporting is they’re having lots of issues with users needing help, or maybe just complaining about MFA. And yet MFA is kind of the most important control. I think the other interesting thing is you’re starting to see some user experience improvement and security like passkeys instead of every website having passwords. And if we can escape the tyranny of the password, I think that would help a lot. Because even us, we have to rotate our passwords. And what sometimes happens is the laptop password will be out of the sync with the Entra password. So then you need to know two passwords. They don’t sync up immediately.

Some Microsoft sync issues. So yeah, this stuff is still really hard to use for users. And I think some of this is just we’re going to be stuck with it for a long time. But I do see some evidence that things like passkeys give me some hope that it’ll get better.

Robert Dutt: So especially when it’s showing that security teams are being pulled away from the higher value stuff for the routine requests and these kinds of, you know, the customer who needs support for those kinds of basic issues that you describe there. For an MSP that’s already stretched pretty thin, you know, how do you reclaim some of that time without compromising the security of your customer or yourself ultimately?

Dave Baggett: Yeah, I mean, we think of it in, I guess, two ways. One is moving more towards managed services where we’re doing a lot of the management for the MSP. And one of the things that we’ve done with the design of our SIEM product and our MDR product is making visible what the rules are and allowing admins to edit them. But only if they want to. So they don’t have to. If they want us to manage everything, we can. We heard that there are two types. There are some MSPs that really want to be doing this themselves. And there’s others that are like, “I don’t have time to do all that. You guys just do it.” So I think that’s one trend. Managed everything is kind of the way I see the world heading.

The other thing we discovered at INKY is if you can move things that are normally resolved by tickets into a self-serve workflow, that is a huge win for the MSP. So an example is if a user gets a spam, they can just click spam. We put a banner, right? And we put links below the banner and the link is either report this mail and then we ask them, “What do you think it is, save spam or phish?” Or you can actually set it so there’s just a link, spam, save phish. So if they click spam, we ask them, “Do you want to block this sender?” Which means they can make it so they don’t get the spam anymore. They can also say, “I want to get this, but I want it to go to my graymail folder.” Just that user experience alone massively cuts down on email-related tickets.

Because every MSP knows you get tons of tickets, like, “I don’t want to get this mail anymore and I keep reporting it as spam and it doesn’t go away.” Make it stop, right? So I think in areas where you can make this accessible to a normal user, you make the MSP less burdened with all these nuisance tickets, number one, and number two, actually end users are happier. That’s important.

Robert Dutt: The survey says that, well, everyone says, internal IT departments, MSPs themselves say customers are under-investing in cybersecurity. Is the problem that there’s not enough funds going into it? Is it an insufficient budget issue, or is it how it’s being distributed? Are organizations just not making effective use of the budget they do have?

Dave Baggett: It’s probably some of both, but I think there is a human nature element that MSPs have to deal with, which is, we kind of see two kinds of approaches. There’s the MSP approach of, look, we make bundles for you. Maybe we have good, better, best. You don’t get to pick what you have. You’re going to get what we tell you. Then there’s the other ones that basically allow customers to pick and choose. In the second model, there’s always this kind of human nature of hope springs eternal. We really need to spend money on this. We’re probably not a target. That’s one of the things I’ve heard for a decade is, “Well, we’re a small company. We’re not a target.” I’ll tell you something.

We have evidence that people, bad guys, use bots to scrape LinkedIn to figure out when someone changes jobs and then send a phish to that person pretending to be their boss. It’s totally automated. You don’t have to be a company that matters to anyone to get targeted this way. Getting the message across that, “Hey, you are at risk like anybody else. In fact, if you’re smaller, you might be more at risk.” You’re now being targeted with things like AI. I think that there’s a constant challenge of getting the MSPs and customers to understand you really need to invest in protecting yourself. It’s things like backups too. Don’t figure out you don’t have backups after the ransomware.

We’ve been saying this stuff for multiple decades, but there’s also a sense, I think, that we hear this fairly often like, “Oh, well, if I have Microsoft, I’m all set.” Well, not really. You need multiple layers.

Robert Dutt: What are the things in this area that struck me about the report? We’ve talked a lot in recent years across the channel community on selling on business outcomes and that sort of thing. We’re talking about only, I think, 11% of MSPs in your research say that their customers invest on cybersecurity primarily because of a clear business case and just 9% say demonstrated risk reduction is the main driver. Those seem catastrophically low, aren’t they? Business to incidents are much higher, compliance is higher. I suggest I think that MSPs have a lot of work to do when it comes to selling security as business investment rather than IT expense.

Dave Baggett: Yeah, and one of the things that we really try to do is show improvement, show value. So we’ll do a quarterly business review with an MSP and show them here’s all the stuff we found. We actually have tools that let the MSP create reports that show the value. Like here’s what we blocked in the last month to constantly remind customers, the MSPs customers, hey, it’s important that you have this stuff. So it is an investment that’s paying off. And that’s another thing that I think AI can really help with because you can basically pose to the AI query, find all the interesting stuff we blocked over the last month and it’ll go off and do it, presuming that you have this unified data layer and you have a data lake that has all the information in it.

And then the other aspect is that the information is organized well, according to some sort of taxonomy, so that it’s not just a big pile of data. It’s actually organized in a way that can be queried in a structured way. I think compliance as a motivator is not a bad thing, actually. Compliance drives a lot of behaviors. Even like 20 years ago, it was the thing that led to phishing awareness training, security awareness training generally. It was like cyber insurers started to say, look, if you don’t train people, you’re not going to get a policy, or we’re going to reduce the policy cost if you do security awareness training. And look how much that’s just, I mean, that’s now ubiquitous, right? Everybody has it. So I think compliance is not a bad thing.

One thing that the report found, which I found quite interesting, is the fact that you passed an audit previously doesn’t mean you can now. And MSP self-reported that, right? And the other thing that they self-reported is configuration drift is a problem. So maybe you passed the audit six months ago or three months ago, but someone went in and disabled MFA, and nobody noticed, right? Like on some account. So one of the things that we’re seeing is there’s now this kind of configuration enforcement area of cybersecurity, and there are multiple products in this area. Like for us, we have a component called Fortify, which is in SaaS Alerts, essentially makes sure you don’t drift this way. You can say, here’s my settings, here’s the defaults, and if they change, let me know. And in fact, if they change, put them back, right?

So I think this, you know, compliance as a driver is really good, but passing an audit doesn’t mean you’re secure. And even if you pass the audit two months ago, it doesn’t mean you pass it today. It’s a point in time thing, right? Right. Yeah.

Robert Dutt: One thing that struck me in the research is the difference between high-performing and low-performing MSPs with performance defined as revenue and growth goals met. Yeah. High performers more likely to have incident response plans, test them, and be a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of more advanced security technologies. What’s, I’m curious, and I imagine it’s going to be at least somewhat a little bit of both, but you know, what’s your interpretation of the relationship? Is stronger security making MSPs more successful businesses, or are successful MSPs better positioned to invest in more advanced security in technology and process?

Dave Baggett: That’s a really, that’s a really good question. I mean, and to your point, don’t just have backups. You should test the backups too, right? Don’t find out your backup wasn’t really good when you have an incident, right? So I would kind of lean towards the second scenario, I think the more sophisticated MSPs are probably able to grow faster, have more budget, able to sell more expensive tools maybe with even higher margins. So that kind of argues for kind of a virtuous cycle. I mean, I do think that, you know, there, we actually see like, we actually see some really interesting patterns. So we’ll see MSPs that are regional, you know, like I’m the MSP who handles Oklahoma. That’s my thing. And then we’ll see like more vertical focused ones. I’m the MSP that does dentist offices.

And it’s interesting because there’s, and of course there’s other models too, and they all can be very successful. But one of the things we try to think through is how do we do enablement for MSPs? How do we help MSPs grow? So we’re not just relying on organic growth from them or them being experts at sales. We feel like we need to help make that easier, even providing things like collateral that people can tailor. So for us, since we’re so MSP focused, it’s better for us if MSPs generally grow and generally grow faster. And like there’s sort of a, if you look at the industry for the past 15 years, 20 years, I mean MSPs have grown like crazy, not just individual MSPs, which now we’re seeing them get aggregated by private equity through giving these mega MSPs, but also just the number of MSPs.

I think there’s something like 40,000 in North America now. And arguably it would be impossible to be a small business now without an MSP because it’s just imagine, imagine you’re a 50 person accounting firm and you’re supposed to figure out how do I protect myself from cybersecurity threats? There’s 3,500 products at least. There’s probably 25 different areas of concern. How would any IT person at these companies make any sense of all that? And by the way, it constantly changes. And that’s something that came up in the survey about compliance too. Well, how am I supposed to be compliant? They keep changing the rules every quarter. So MSPs are absolutely essential to the functioning of small businesses now. And I actually think there’s an opportunity similarly with AI. How does the 50-person accounting firm figure out how to use AI?

Just for their everyday business. I think MSPs can play a role in that. Like essentially be the experts on this really, really difficult, complicated domain like security.

Robert Dutt: So, you know, you touch on backup testing and that’s something that your report found that higher performing MSPs are nearly twice as likely to test their client’s backups monthly, which seems like a pretty fundamental practice. Yeah, I guess what I’m curious here is what would you think are the things that a smaller MSP who’s maybe not in that higher performing group could start doing relatively easily, inexpensively, quickly to start moving towards what that higher performing group looks like?

Dave Baggett: I mean, a few things come to mind. One thing I’ll mention is that we actually recently put into our backup infrastructure screenshot verification. So we literally take a screenshot of the machine and use AI to analyze it to verify the backup completed. And the error rate is like 0.01% or something, it’s very, very accurate now. And so using AI to do these sorts of verification tasks automatically is a big opportunity, I think. But in terms of practices that MSPs who are early in their maturity could do, I mean, number one, like we talked about MFA, like don’t even talk to me if you don’t have MFA turned on. That is like your accounts are going to get owned if you don’t have MFA. Yes, it’s annoying for users, but you got to have that.

And don’t use SMS for it, use an authenticator app because the scary thing we’re starting to see is people can intercept these SMS messages. So even if you have MFA, you can still get your account owned, right? So that’s the number one. It’s near and dear to my heart and maybe I’m biased, but number two would be email security. If you look at every single report, not just ours, but like the Verizon report that comes out every year, every year for the past forever, email security has been, email has been the number one breach point. Like if you, if you, if you look at almost every breach that happens, something like Verizon says something 91% start with an email. It’s been declining a little bit as email security, I think is getting better. It’s still by far number one, like it’s by far number one.

People are not sitting there writing, you know, CVE vulnerabilities to get into someone’s browser. That’s, that’s, yes, people do that, but that’s not the volume. The volume is phishing people, right?

Robert Dutt: Take a look inwards at MSPs own operations, you know, MSPs spend obviously a lot of their time advising customers on security best practices, making it real, but they’re also businesses with their own employees, systems, credentials, vulnerabilities. So I guess the, the physician, heal thyself question, Yeah. Are MSPs generally as disciplined about security for themselves as an organization as they are about securing their customers?

Dave Baggett: I would say yes. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t see many MSPs that are not securing themselves. I don’t, I haven’t seen that as a big problem. And actually one of the, one of the things that I really like about working with MSPs and not just at Kaseya, but even at inky prior to the acquisition, we decided around 2022 to focus really entirely on MSPs. And one of the things I really liked about and like about the MSP community is it is entrepreneurial, it’s founders, you know, and that’s, it’s a very different thing. Selling into that cohort than it is selling to some giant enterprise, right? Now at Kaseya, we kind of do both. We do certainly mid market direct sales to companies, but the vast majority is MSP. And I think, you know, MSPs typically I would say are several things sort of characterized MSPs for me.

One is entrepreneurial spirit, willingness to try things because there got to be somewhat, you know, accepting of some change in the world to be a business owner, right? So but then also like incredible overwork, like not enough time to get everything done. And so one of the things that our CEO Rania is focused on, all of us focused, focused all of us on essentially is figure out ways to enable MSPs to do more with less, spend less and do more figure out how to increase their margins. And if we just do that one thing, we will win because that’s the thing that’s so hard for MSPs. There’s too much to do. I’ve never met an MSP that was bored or idle. MSPs aren’t going out playing golf every Friday, right? I mean, this is not, this is not the lifestyle if you want to be a golfer.

Robert Dutt: No, no, definitely not. To bring this all together, We talked about human error. We talked about sort of the complexity behind security and operational complexity. We talked about constrained budgets, the difference between those who are performing the best and their peers. If I’m listening to this as an MSP owner and I want to take a meaningful step towards improving my own or my customer’s security resilience this week, you know, what’s the most likely first step?

Dave Baggett: Well, and I mentioned some specific things. I think, you know, AI is going to change everything. So we have some MSPs that are already using AI to automate our products and solutions. before we’ve even made it possible to do it in a first-class way. They’re just doing it. And some of it’s really, really impressive. I got an email from an MSP yesterday that was like, here’s this AI agent that we wrote. Here’s what it does. And I’m like, wow, that was like really, really impressive. And so we’re going to make it possible for people to create their own agents. We’re going to make it possible for people to share the agents with each other, potentially monetize them. So the more people can start using AI in their day-to-day work.

And I’m not saying everyone should go and write a whole bunch of stuff that automates our thing, but I feel like, you know, and we see this a lot with coding because obviously the code assistants are where you’re getting a huge amount of leverage. It takes a while to figure out how to use these LLMs effectively. We now have an LLM that triages events in our SOC. And it’s going to take a while for us to tune that and figure out how to make it as good as it can be. It’s a learning experience, just learning how to use this new technology. I know that sounds a bit facile, but in my own experience, just trying to play with these things in a coding context, the answer is not, you know, one-shot code something and vibe code it, never look at the code. That’s not the right answer, right?

The right answer is something like constantly challenge the LLM. Did you make tests? Like, did you make sure that the abstraction barriers are maintained between the different components? Like almost treat it like a junior developer. And so I’ve sort of come away with this feeling like, man, you need to have a lot of experience just using this stuff. Even though, yes, it is magical in a lot of ways, it still requires, you know, finesse and taste to use it well. I think that’s going to be true for the use of these tools in a security context. Also, like you’re not just going to say AI fix, fix security now, please. Like that’s not going to ever be right. It’s going to be, did you verify that MFA is enabled for these accounts? Did you, like, and challenging it, right? And making it iterative.

Robert Dutt: So if I’m an MSP, start playing with it today. And if I have already started playing with it, think about what that next level, that next layer that I can start thinking about how to add on is and kind of build from there. And you’ll probably find your own path along the way as you identify what it’s good at, where it helps, et cetera.

Dave Baggett: It’s also funny because talking to developers who are new to using LLMs for coding, it’s like they don’t realize, I often tell them, like, why are you trying to do this yourself? Just ask the LLM to do it, right? No, I need to go and make sure they file. No, just ask. And it’s such a mindset change that even the way you approach work has to change, I think. And this is, I’m sure, equally true for sysadmin, DevOps kind of stuff, right? You know, I need to go and make sure all my VMs are, nope, nope, you don’t. You just ask Claude, right? And so, at least for me, it’s like I’ve benefited a lot from just using this stuff thoughtfully, which is why I share that. I mean, maybe this is not, maybe it’s more me than anybody else, but like, I just have found every day I’m learning something about how to use these things.

Robert Dutt: Yeah, no, I think that’s, I think it’s good advice and it’s, you know, it’s fundamental to doing it and the more you use it, the better you get at using it and the more you discover that you can do. So I think it’s sage advice.

Dave Baggett: It’s also funny because when people start using them in the beginning, they’re really polite and say please and stuff and you don’t need to.

Dave Baggett: Well, maybe the robot overlords will be mad at me in the future, but right now I’m pretty blunt with my LLMs.

Robert Dutt: Just do it. Yeah. All right. Dave, I appreciate your take the time. Thanks for walking us through the survey and some ideas on how MSPs can get the most out of their client’s security spend.

Dave Baggett: Absolutely. A lot of fun. Thanks.

Robert Dutt: Thanks again to Dave Baggett of Kaseya for joining us today and thanks to you for listening. Few things stood out for me from that conversation. First, I think there’s an important distinction between trying to eliminate human error and building security that can withstand it. People are going to make mistakes. They’re going to click things they shouldn’t, overlook warnings or struggle with complicated security requirements. The goal has to be making sure those mistakes don’t turn into major incidents. Second, I thought Dave’s comments about operational complexity were particularly interesting. We’ve spent years encouraging MSPs to add layers of security and for good reason, but every additional tool, control and management interface also creates work. If security becomes too difficult to administer, that introduces its own risks.

That’s where some of the opportunities around automation, integration and AI become particularly compelling, not necessarily replacing security professionals, but making their expertise go further by reducing the amount of time they spend on the tools themselves. And third, there’s the relationship between security maturity and business maturity. Kaseya’s research suggests that commercially successful MSPs are more likely to have mature security practices. That doesn’t necessarily mean one causes the other, but it reinforces the importance of treating security as an ongoing operational discipline, rather than simply a collection of products. I also appreciate Dave’s point that MSPs need to help customers understand the value of security before an incident or compliance requirement forces the issue.

That’s a business conversation as much as a technical one. You can find more about Kaseya’s 2026 Cybersecurity Report, along with links to the full research in the show notes at ChannelBuzz.ca. If you enjoyed the episode, please do subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a moment, a rating or review helps other people in the channel find the show. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.