This week, along with around 80 other solution provider/MSPs, I have been attending CRN XCHANGE EMEA at the Hauge in the Netherlands.
During the keynote CRN shared insights from their extensive UK and EMEA research on the ongoing forces shaping and changing the IT channel right now. What caught my attention the most wasn’t just the individual trends, but how they interlock and are accelerated by one inescapable reality – significant execution constraints, including the return of component and memory pressures which is pushing parters to pivot and change their approach, offerings and GTM.
Whilst this was primarily addressed to Channel Partners, the trends outlined apply to any organisation and as such I wanted to share my takeaways.
The key takeaway from the research presented was one of constrained optimism. Customer demand, particularly for AI, security, and cloud, hasn’t collapsed. Far from it. Yet, partners like Cisilion, are operating in a much tougher environment where margins are squeezed and delivery is more complex whilst customers want more simplicity.
This tension between strong demand and the stark reality of execution is what is reshaping the IT channel today.
CRN laid out six core trends that every channel leader and business leader needs to be thinking about.
Six Interlocking Trends for 2026 & Beyond
Here’s a breakdown of the key shifts identified, and what they mean for channel parters and the customers/businesses we serve.
1. AI Becomes Structural, Not Experimental
There was of course no surprise that AI is top of the list.
But the crucial shift is that it’s moving from a product or license that is sold to a fundamental change in how partners need to operate. CRN shared a great example of an MSP that had built an internal HR chatbot. The interesting part was that used generative AI to give the chat bot a personality – a name, a backstory, even a favourite type of music. It might sound a little trite, but the story was it massively increased employee engagement and successfully reduced the load on their HR team.
This “eat your own dog food” approach is critical. As partners, how can we credibly advise customers on building AI workflows, adopting AI tools if we, ourselves have not successfully used that same AI to transform our own business functions like marketing, sales, or service delivery? At Cisilion this is something we are doing every day. We are seeing people who have never thought about writing a line of code or business flow – helping re-imagine and create the future of how we work. It is happening quickly and we believe that by leading with real examples, we can help innovate our people and our customers.
The message from CRN was that those partners gaining traction are those who have real-world experience, moving the conversation from a product-led pitch to an advisory, outcome-based model. These partners are the ones most likely to succeed in helping their customers do more.
2. Services-Led Growth Becomes Durable
The move to recurring and managed services isn’t new, but CRN research described it as a “durable” trend that continues to outperform transactional models in both predictability and, crucially, profitability. Across the UK and the US, it’s the services-led partners who are dominating the growth charts. This doesn’t mean the Professional Services are dead, but Professional Services is fast becoming discovery, advisory, design with a clear path to a recurring service stream – whether that is adoption, management or strategic advisory.
Businesses need help from trusted partners and want to shift more “management” of IT to partners while they focus on their re-transformation, AI Strategy and AI Execution.
This means competitive advantage no longer sits just in what we sell, but in how reliably we deliver and retain customers. It’s all about the operating model and the consistency of our service delivery. The question to the room was “are your operations built to deliver consistent, high-value services at scale and are you building our chargeable discovery and design services into your Professional Services engagements?“
3. Security and Governance are Amplified by AI
AI has a dark side, and it’s forcing a convergence of security and governance. The research highlighted a cautious but real adoption of AI in Germany, heavily shaped by compliance and data protection.
Businesses do not want tech partners or their own IT teams to position security as a blocker to AI, but as the very thing that enables its adoption at scale. Security needs to be part of (and lead) every AI conversation because without robust security and governance, scaling AI is simply too risky and will fail just at the wrong stage.
The conversation is shifting; security is no longer separate; it’s an integral part of the AI strategy. We need to re-think security, re look at our vendors, partners and MSPs and consolidate, extend and plan security around our AI strategy and enablement plans.
4. The “AI Halo Effect” Drives Foundational Spending
One of the most powerful second-order effects of AI is what it exposes underneath. Businesses of every shape and size are quickly learning that AI is useless without clean data, modern infrastructure, and resilient networking. This has created what The Channel Company calls an “AI halo effect.” and it’s an area where businesses need help and where the channel partners play a vital role.
This says that whilst a customer conversation might start with AI and an AI project, product or service, but through expanding the account, asking questions – it often leads to foundational projects in security, data cleansing, cloud migration, cost optimisation and infrastructure modernisation.
This is a massive opportunity. Every organisation is “doing” or “trying to do” AI. Most need help. It allows us to start with the exciting topic of AI but expand and land a sale for the essential, underlying services that make it all possible. Recurring advisory services was the biggest “what we are building” cited in CRN’s research.
5. Go-to-Market Becomes AI-Assisted
AI is also reshaping how we as businesses find and engage customers.
The message was Marketing needs to change and change fast. AI is being used for everything from market segmentation and insight generation to personalised content creation. This impacts channel partners like us, but also every organisation.
CRN go on to say that there is also capability gap which is widening across every organisation. Larger, more mature businesses with the resources to invest are moving faster, while smaller partners can struggle to keep pace and demonstrate a return on their AI investments.
The key takeaway is that execution matters more than ever and partners need to create the right noise, drive intent and make sure their brand shines
6. Resilience and Sovereignty are Board-Level Issues
Resilience has been elevated from a technical detail to a strategic, board-level conversation. This reframes public cloud and managed infrastructure as business outcomes, not just IT choices. This is amplified by the growing importance of data sovereignty and localisation; a trend they are seeing gain pace everywhere from UK to Europe to Australia. CRN see this as a gift to partners as it allows “us” to tie services, security, and cloud together into a single, compelling value story for the C-suite and what is more it is something global organisations need to address.
The So What?
It would have been easy to look at these trends individually and nod along. But the real insight is how they reinforce one another, all under the accelerating pressure of a tough execution environment.
A fact he noted is that the demand for memory, storage and CPUs is under immense strain from AI data centres. With chip fabrication plants sold out for years, this pressure isn’t a temporary blip; it’s a long-term reality.
This hardware squeeze pushes us away from low-margin transactional business and accelerates the shift towards services, cloud consumption, and architectural flexibility. It exposes weaknesses in businesses still dependent on hardware sales but massively rewards those with strong delivery models and the ability to pivot.
For years, we have heard people inindustry say, “when the market gets back to normal.” I think we have to accept that this is the new normal. Volatility is the steady state. As I heard someone say at CRN when talking about how do we navigate and build a new roadmap they said, “we don’t need a roadmap, we need a compass.“
Success won’t come from waiting for stability. It will be forged by those of us who (re) design our businesses for volatility and those that can pivot and shift quickly.
The winning organisations, whatever the sector will be those who combine deep credibility (earned by using these tools ourselves), operational rigour, and a relentless focus on delivering outcome-led value for our customers, partners and our employees.
The market is optimistic, change is rife, AI is here but at the crux of it, it’s the next wave of digital transformation and the same basic rules apply.
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