DH2I’s Don Boxley on AI, Security, and 2026 Channel Bets

As artificial intelligence investments push enterprises to rethink their infrastructure stacks, channel partners are increasingly being pulled into complex refresh, migration, and security conversations. 

To understand how those shifts are unfolding, Channel Insider spoke with Don Boxley, CEO and co-founder of DH2I, about the technology and market forces shaping channel opportunity in 2026.

AI infrastructure demand is accelerating refresh cycles in 2026

As we’ve covered before on Channel Insider, demand for AI technologies is also fueling a rise in wraparound services and needs. Among those is a renewed focus on the infrastructure and data structures in place to support AI deployments.

“The AI conversation is moving from tests and experiments to now people needing to be able to build the infrastructure that can stand the workloads and the projects they’re deploying AI for,” Boxley said.

Boxley says he has seen an increase in the number of clients seeking ways to migrate from Windows to Linux and container systems, like Kubernetes, as they pursue SQL servers for AI-related data storage needs.

“From a business standpoint what really excites me is the trailing opportunity with a lot of this work,” Boxley said. 

Linux, containers, and SQL migrations create new partner opportunities

To Boxley, that refresh cycle, and related AI demand, is an opportunity for resellers and other partners to meet their customers’ needs at scale.

“Resellers likely have a lot of customers right now who are interested in moving to Linux or to containerized systems,” Boxley said. “This is a real opportunity to guide those customers through that journey.”

“This refresh is exciting for us, and then for our partners, because this work is going to require the high availability we offer, and our solutions are best-in-class across the industry,” he continued.

Agentic AI adoption raises new governance and security concerns

Part of this refresh cycle is due to the ongoing adoption of agentic AI technologies, which have hit the market quickly and loudly as companies try to unlock business value and ROI through automation.

Boxley, though, remains cautious about the ways in which some companies are embracing these technologies due to the permissions AI agents require. He says the security and governance required to ensure agents act appropriately will, in some cases, cause concern for leadership.

“They are spending massive amounts of money now to refresh the infrastructure, and they will complete that project and have everything all new and shiny, and then they’ll go, oh wait, this is kind of scary,” Boxley said.

Boxley likens AI agents to a junior employee, and as he says, most companies do not hand over the keys to the kingdom to a junior employee their first day on the job. To leverage AI appropriately, Boxley says, organizations will need to be strict with the guardrails they place on the systems.

Even with all that in mind, Boxley and the DH2I team aren’t shying away from the potential value agentic AI can provide its partners.

“I do think we’re going to be able to deliver some agents this year that make it easer for our reseller partners to deploy our solutions to their customers,” Boxley said.

How DH2I is positioning partners amid rising AI complexity

DH2I works with value added resellers (VARs) and a variety of strategic consultants to bring its solutions to market. Boxley says the partners within its ecosystem are committed not just to supporting mutual customers but also to forming a deep partnership with DH2I.

“The partners who succeed with us, they work with our products, of course, but they get deep with us,” Boxley said. “The partners who make the resource commitment and learn how to talk with customers about us, who bring us in at the right times, those partners are great for us.”

The company also works with OEMs across the technology industry who need the availability DH2I offers to bring their own solutions to market. Among those partners are Microsoft, AWS, Red Hat, Nutanix, and others.

“They look at us and go, ‘you’ve done something here.’ This isn’t sexy, necessarily, but it is necessary technology for their customers to then go and use the solutions those vendors bring to market, so it makes sense to partner with us,” said Boxley.