As 2025 draws to a close, IT channel leaders are already preparing for a pivotal year ahead.
Conversations with MSP executives, vendors, and channel strategists throughout the past year
point to a common conclusion: 2026 will test whether traditional managed services models can keep pace with accelerating AI adoption, rising security demands, and tighter customer expectations.
From vertical specialization to practical AI deployment, the channel is entering a phase where evolution is no longer optional.
Many see the evolution of partner businesses continuing in 2026
Across the channel, many leaders expect the evolution of partner business models to continue into 2026, with growing pressure on MSPs to rethink how they deliver value beyond traditional managed services.
While the fundamentals of managed services remain intact, automation, artificial intelligence, and changing buyer behavior are forcing partners to examine whether yesterday’s operating models will still be competitive in the year ahead.
What an MSP looks like in 2026
For some, like CEO Scott Chasin and everyone at cloud marketplace Pax8, that shift will require a move toward what it has deemed the “managed intelligence provider,” a nod to the systems thinking and AI-enabled workflows the company has bet will be critical in the near future.
To others, the shift might be far more subtle, with most changes to how MSPs work showing in how they communicate effectively with their customers.
“For the most part, I see MSPs staying the course. Fundamental offerings aren’t going to change overnight,” said Pia’s Chief Community Officer, James Allen. “But MSPs do need to become the strategic technical advisor to their clients, because some of the work they do now will just be table stakes soon.”
Partners are also coming to terms with the changes as they build for the future.
“Over the next three years, I honestly can’t imagine what the day-to-day will look like, because the technology is changing so much,” Xentegra CTO Phil Sellers told Channel Insider in early December.
Why managed services growth will continue in 2026 and how verticalization may unlock MSP success
There is plenty of room to grow in managed services; in fact, recent analysis from leading firms shows services spending outpacing most other areas in the years to come, and IT growth generally remains strong even as macroeconomic uncertainty threatens instability.
To some in the channel, though, the opportunity ahead will require MSPs to focus not just on specific technologies but also on particular customer bases.
“In 2026, stability will come through verticalization. MSPs that focus on vertical markets and build deep compliance expertise will stand to maintain and improve retention,” said Paul Redding, head of MSP partnerships at NinjaOne.
“To hone in on opportunities to verticalize, MSPs should look at their client base and focus on the verticals where they’re strongest, such as healthcare, manufacturing, or legal, and then double down on the compliance standards those verticals require. In a regulatory environment that shifts quickly, MSPs that lean into vertical regulations will gain a competitive advantage,” Redding continued.
Firms like Omega Systems and Integris have beaten the verticalization drum throughout most of this year in conversations with Channel Insider.
“We believe an MSP and certainly an MSSP is just better with focus,” said Omega Systems CEO Mike Fuhrman in November. “I think we are outgrowing the model where an MSP can be everything to everyone, that just doesn’t scale, and it doesn’t provide the best to our customers.”
“If an organization is looking for an MSP, the average SMB has utilized between two and four partners already in their lifetime,” Integris CEO Glenn Mathis told us in May. “Historically, most MSPs have done very similar things. This is an opportunity now to really create something different that helps SMBs succeed in their market.”
How AI is changing the role of IT channel partners
We summarized a variety of AI predictions from leading technology executives heading into 2026.
For channel partners specifically, AI remains a core opportunity, and complexity in 2026 and likely for years to come.
The challenges of adoption outpacing capability
AI is expected to be a budget priority for many IT teams in 2026, but growing concerns around data governance, security, and risk management are beginning to temper that enthusiasm.
At the same time, the market’s overall understanding of artificial intelligence continues to lag behind the excitement and expectations generated throughout 2025.
Many MSPs are still working to understand where AI delivers meaningful value versus where it introduces new operational and security challenges.
“This is still new technology to a lot of people, and they still have work to do,” said Allen. “If I was an MSP today, I’d be confused as well.”
“There’s always been a tension between being on the cutting edge and being too early when it comes to technology,” said Atera CPO Tal Dagan.
Still, most partners have embraced at least the need to understand the various forms of AI-enabled solutions on the market. That, however, doesn’t mean the industry will suddenly develop expertise overnight.
“I think the challenge in 2026 will be that capability is going to lag behind adoption, and there will be market tension because of that,” Moovila CEO Mike Psenka said.
“MSPs aren’t going to be able to hire their way out of this thing,” Psenka added. “There’s a higher-level step up to the AI technical skills needed, and I don’t think most will be able to upskill their teams fast enough.”
How MSPs can bring AI success to themselves and customers
In 2026, the most successful AI programs might not be the flashy all-in commitments many end-user organizations were demanding in 2025.
“MSPs are already starting to see that, at this stage, the true value of AI is not coming from huge transformation projects, it is coming from the small, practical benefits AI tooling can enable. Automating repetitive work, tidying up workflows, reducing noise, helping teams to work more efficiently: these are just a few of the benefits many businesses are already seeing,” said Christian Nagele, chief strategy officer at inforcer.
“We predict that MSPs and vendors who stop selling a broad ‘AI revolution’ and start talking about real, bite-sized business improvements with AI will be the ones who actually see revenue from AI in 2026,” Nagele continued.
How vendors will enable their channel partners to succeed in 2026
While partners consider what they will need for their customers in the future, they are also weighing how their vendors will support that growth.
For both legacy players and emerging companies vying for market share, partner success is a crucial component of their growth.
“We’re not winning unless our partners are winning,” Allen said.
That’s easy enough in theory, but in practice, it means many vendors are strengthening enablement programs, education and training resources, and wraparound support offerings to help their partners bring their solutions to market.
“We heard from partners that they loved our technology but wanted more support from us, so we came to the table to determine how we could provide more incentives, specific protections, margins, and the resources they need to be competitive,” ThreatDown’s General Manager, Kendra Krause, told us this year as the company announced a new program.
This also means the vendor ecosystem will need to be purpose-built for success, not in volume but in outcomes, according to several leaders.
“In 2026, the ecosystem’s success will hinge not on partner volume, but on the core vendor’s ability to act as a strategic curator to help deliver seamless AI-powered experiences for customers worldwide,” said Matt Brandt, the SVP of global partners at Workday.
“This means focusing on partners who deliver specific, deeply integrated value—the kind that enables us to solve the unique and evolving customer problems that surface across industries and geographies. Growth will ultimately be won by the ecosystems that are intentionally designed, solely for the purpose of serving the customer and becoming an indispensable source of trust,” Brandt continued.
“In an enterprise environment increasingly shaped by the capabilities of AI agents, data is especially valuable. Relationships will become key growth drivers in 2026 because when an organization’s internal AI agents can work together with external AI agents, creativity and productivity get supercharged for both internal teams and customers,” said Rakesh Duggal, chief technology officer for the Workday Alliance at Deloitte.
For that to happen successfully, enterprises need to invest in their own data quality and sharing capabilities to ultimately build trust with the strategic ecosystem of alliances they go to market with,” Duggal continued.
Another common theme we explored this year is the sheer number of products entering the market promising AI-enabled outcomes at scale. To partners, it can easily become overwhelming, if not nearly impossible, to determine what to use and when.
“The vast majority of IT processes are prime for automation,” Dagan said. “I also think, though, that providers, when they look at the market, have a hard time finding the tools that do work and that will bring a return on investment in the short term.”
Determining which tools will bring the best outcomes to customers is, in many ways, the core job of partners.
“The role of the channel, as ever, is to identify the mix of solutions from vendors that can solve for both the (AI-supercharged) threat and the ability to recover in the event of the ransomware attack. There’s lots of talk about agentic AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) and how to extract value from them, but channel partners need to be mindful of the existential threats to their customers and present mitigation solutions to them throughout 2026 and beyond,” said Ian Rothery, EMEA channel manager at Index Engines.
For many, those “tools that work” that Dagan references will need to include solutions purpose-built for MSPs and their customers.
To some, that means focusing on the unique needs of SMBs and delivering AI tools that most impact their workflows.
“In the year ahead, there will be a major shift toward ‘AI in a box’ solutions: ready-to-adopt tools that help SMBs automate repetitive tasks, strengthen cybersecurity posture, and gain actionable insights without needing to reinvent their operations,” said ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo.
“The partners and service providers who embrace this mindset early—focusing on practical, consumable AI rather than abstract innovation—will define the next wave of business growth. The opportunity is massive, but only if we make AI understandable, attainable, and valuable for every business, not just the largest ones,” Rivelo continued.
What all these trends mean for the IT channel in 2026
Perhaps all of this is to say that in many ways, nothing will really change next year.
Partners will still seek ways to continue to support their customers, customers will still demand more technology with less available spending, and everyone will have a whole lot to say about AI.
Within all of that, a tension between advancement and the fear of replacement will likely continue as well.
“Technology is inevitable, and the fear of replacement has always been a worry,” said Dagan.
For MSPs and other partners who can wrangle all of these complexities into actionable business planning, 2026 might also be a year of significant growth for the channel.
“2026 will be the year MSPs shift from being dazzled by AI to delivering it. It’ll be the year identity security becomes non-negotiable. It’ll be the year Microsoft pushes harder into SMB than ever before. And it’ll be the year unmanaged AI chaos forces MSPs to take the lead on governance,” Nagele said.
“It’s going to be a noisy year, but for those who can cut through that noise, it’s also going to be a very, very big one,” he continued.
