Strategy & Disruption
Competitive dynamics, vendor plays, and the forces reshaping the channel.
Cato Just Broke the 'Buy the Whole Platform' Sales Pitch. Here's Why That's the Right Move.
Cato Networks just introduced a modular adoption model for its SASE platform. That's a bigger channel shift than it sounds — here's what it means for partners selling network security.
SonicWall Just Told You Why Your Clients Keep Getting Breached. Are You Listening?
The 2026 SonicWall Cyber Protect Report reframes the whole conversation around protection outcomes — and names seven gaps that MSPs keep letting slide. None of them are sophisticated.
Cisco just broke the first rule of Cisco 360. Partners are not okay with it.
Two months after launching its most ambitious partner program overhaul in years, Cisco eliminated deal registration on compute. Partners say it contradicts everything Cisco 360 was supposed to stand for.
Liberation Day Is One Year Old. The Channel Is Still Paying the Bill.
April 2, 2025 reset hardware economics for every IT partner in America. A year later, the Supreme Court struck down half the tariffs, $166B in refunds are pending, and the channel is left with something worse than high prices: permanent uncertainty.
Oracle just cut 20,000 direct sellers. That's not a gift to channel partners. It's a test.
Oracle's massive layoff wave eliminates thousands of direct sales roles. Partners are calling it a huge opportunity. Jaxon Navarro explains why the opportunity is real — and why most partners will fumble it anyway.
Palo Alto Rewrote Its Partner Program for the First Time in a Decade. Read the Fine Print.
The NextWave overhaul brings more rebates and MSSP expansion — but higher bars and platformization pressure. Here's what the new model actually means for security partners.
SentinelOne's CEO Just Handed You the Best Sales Pitch in the Channel. Are You Using It?
At RSAC 2026, Tomer Weingarten said MSSPs are 'the hyperscalers for generative AI governance and security.' He's right. The problem is most managed security providers haven't built the practice to back that claim up.
Your Cybersecurity Stack Is Your Margin Problem
MSPs are drowning in security vendor tools post-RSA. The ones making money aren't adding more — they're cutting to a defensible core and charging for the expertise.
SMBs Are Running Ahead of Their MSPs on AI. That's Your Problem to Solve.
Pax8's March 2026 survey shows 62% of small businesses already using AI — with a 14-point gap between what functional leaders see and what owners believe. MSPs who don't show up with a strategy are getting cut out of the decision entirely.
a16z Just Told You What It Thinks of Your MSP
Andreessen Horowitz led a $25 million Series A into Treeline, an AI-native MSP built to challenge how 40,000 solution providers deliver IT services. This isn't flattery. It's a competitive move.
Channel Convergence Has a Unit Economics Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
Everyone talks about channel convergence like it's inevitable. The unit economics say otherwise. Distributors, MSPs, and marketplaces make money in fundamentally different ways — and trying to merge them breaks all three.
Google Cloud Lost Its Channel Champion. The Timing Could Not Be Worse.
Colleen Kapase built the Google Cloud Partner Network from scratch. She's gone. A Microsoft veteran is stepping in. And partners are mid-migration to the new program she designed.
Your MSP's Headcount Model Is the Strategy That's Killing You
AI doesn't eliminate MSPs. It eliminates the MSP that staffs like it's 2019. The vendors are squeezing margins, AI is compressing labor costs, and the math that built your practice no longer works.
Your Clients Expect Enterprise Uptime Because You Sold It to Them
A 114-upvote r/msp thread this week captures a frustration every MSP owner feels: clients demanding five-nines availability while paying for two-nines infrastructure. The problem isn't the client. It's how you priced the deal.
Google Cloud Just Hired Microsoft's Channel Boss. That's the Story.
Colleen Kapase built Google Cloud's new partner program. Now she's gone, replaced by David Smith — a 30-year Microsoft channel veteran. What Google is really buying with this move.
Microsoft Is Killing the License Resale Model. The Math Says You Have 12 Months.
Microsoft is cutting CSP resale margins by 15-20% and boosting managed services incentives by 30%. If you're still a transactional reseller, your business model has an expiration date.
The 'Managed Intelligence Provider' Is a Trap Most MSPs Aren't Ready For
Pax8's new survey says 62% of SMBs are already using AI. It also says those businesses can't govern it. The channel's rush to rebrand as 'AI advisors' is going to end badly for the unprepared.
Barracuda just collapsed its partner program into one model. It's the right call, and everyone else is watching.
Barracuda's Partner Success Program now treats MSPs, resellers, and hybrid partners identically. It's the third major security vendor to do this in Q1 2026. The era of separate MSP tracks is ending.
Cisco just handed MSSPs a new business model. Most won't recognize it.
Cisco's RSAC 2026 announcements aren't a product refresh. They're a full rewrite of the security partner playbook — identity, AI agent governance, and SOC automation are converging into something MSSPs can actually monetize.
Your Clients Want Enterprise Uptime on a Startup Budget. Here's How to Stop Losing That Argument.
The 'they won't invest in their own infrastructure' problem isn't a budget problem — it's a conversation problem. Here's the exact framing that changes the outcome.
SD-WAN hit 90% enterprise adoption. Now buyers want out.
87-90% of enterprises have deployed SD-WAN. Dissatisfaction is rising. The channel's opportunity isn't selling more SD-WAN — it's managing the transition to SASE and cleaning up the mess that standalone deployments left behind.
AT&T's open-access fiber play is bigger than the Lumen deal. Channel partners are sleeping on it.
AT&T closed its $5.75B Lumen acquisition in February and announced a $250B investment commitment in March. Most coverage treated this as a carrier story. It's not. It's a channel play in slow motion.
The FCC Just Ended Your Foreign Router Strategy
The FCC's ban on new foreign-made routers eliminates 60% of the US market overnight. MSPs standardized on TP-Link, Netgear, or Asus need a new hardware playbook — and a new service pitch.
Microsoft Just Told You the Resale Business Is Dead. Did You Hear It?
Microsoft's 2026 CSP overhaul cuts margins on license resale by 15-20% while paying more for services and Copilot adoption. The partners who don't adapt won't get a warning.
Google Cloud Just Hired Its Best Argument Against Microsoft
Colleen Kapase's sudden departure and the arrival of 30-year Microsoft channel vet David Smith tells you everything about where Google's partner strategy is headed.
84% of SMBs Want an AI Advisor. Most MSPs Aren't Positioning as One.
Pax8's inaugural SMB survey reveals a yawning gap between AI adoption speed and strategic readiness. The MSPs who win aren't the fastest deployers — they're the trusted advisors.
Your CMMC Work Doesn't Cover What GSA Just Changed
The GSA's new CUI security requirements diverge from CMMC Level 2 in ways that will catch MSPs off guard. One-hour incident reporting. A different NIST baseline. And self-attestation is gone.
March 31 Isn't a Partner Program Change. It's a Forced Architecture Decision.
Broadcom's VCSP deadline hits in eight days. Hundreds of cloud providers are being pushed out. For partners still running VMware through a terminated VCSP, the clock isn't about partnership paperwork — it's about where your customers' workloads live after April 1.
Cisco and Microsoft Are Selling Security Together Now. That's Your $163B Opportunity.
Cisco and Microsoft announced co-engineered security integrations for Azure and M365 environments, with Cisco products now resellable through Microsoft's Marketplace. For channel partners, this is worth understanding before the vendor reps show up to explain it.
AT&T, Comcast, and Spectrum Just Turned Their Networks Into AI Computers
At GTC 2026, six major operators announced AI grid deployments that monetize their distributed infrastructure — not their pipes. The channel implications go deeper than anyone is covering.
PE Bought the Cybersecurity Sector. Now They Can't Sell It.
$96 billion in cybersecurity M&A in 2025. But 92% went to strategic buyers, not PE. The exit playbook that backed a thousand MSP and MSSP rollups quietly broke — and most of the firms sitting on those portfolios haven't said so publicly.
Your MSP Tools Are Someone Else's Attack Chain
Interlock ransomware used ConnectWise ScreenConnect as a persistence mechanism after owning Cisco firewalls via a zero-day. The toolstack problem is structural, and most MSPs have no answer for it.
Fortinet Raised Prices 20%. Its Partner Program Got Harder. Both Are the Right Move.
Fortinet's Accelerate 2026 event confirmed FortiOS 8.0, 5-20% firewall price increases, and a partner program overhaul tied to customer lifecycle value — not transaction volume. Here's why this matters more than the sticker shock.
Salesforce Is Now Paying Partners for Results, Not Hours. Here's What That Actually Means.
Salesforce's March 2026 update to its Consulting Track eliminates traditional implementation rewards and anchors partner incentives to verifiable AI outcomes. The channel conversation about this is missing the vendor's logic — and without it, partners will make the wrong bets.
Nvidia Just Turned T-Mobile's Network Into an AI Platform. The Channel Should Pay Attention.
At GTC 2026, Nvidia and T-Mobile announced physical AI applications running on AI-RAN edge infrastructure. This is what the carrier-as-platform future looks like in practice.
The PE-Backed MSP Churn Problem Is Worse Than Anyone Is Admitting
New Service Leadership data shows 54.6% of PE-owned MSPs lost more than 10% of their workforce in 2025. That's not a staffing story. It's a strategy failure with a math problem underneath it.
Anthropic's $100M Channel Bet Isn't About AI. It's About Who Sells It.
The Claude maker launched a $100M partner network with Accenture, Cognizant, and Infosys at its inaugural Partner Summit. The channel implications go deeper than the headline number.
Huntress just opened the door to resellers. That sound you hear is the MSP-only security model cracking.
Huntress expanded its partner program to include resellers for the first time. The company that built its identity on MSP exclusivity just admitted the addressable market is bigger than MSPs. Here's what that means for every partner in the channel.
The most profitable MSPs pay less and fire more. The data finally says so out loud.
Service Leadership's 2026 compensation report confirms what veteran channel operators have known for years: the lean, high-churn model isn't a bug. For PE-backed firms and top-quartile MSPs alike, it's the feature.
SonicWall just made the smartest move in its partner program's history. Here's why most partners will miss it.
SonicWall killed individual technical certifications, moved specializations to the company level, and removed deal reg size requirements on cloud and managed services. This is a platform play disguised as a program refresh.
Half of Every AI Deal You're Working Is Stuck at the Pilot. Here's How to Be the Rep Who Closes It.
Dialpad just named the real reason AI deals stall — not technology, but execution. Their new Agent Studio tools give channel reps a concrete ROI demonstration path that turns pilots into closed contracts.
How Channel Partners Make Money
Commission models, residuals, SPIFs, and MDF — here is exactly how telecom channel partners get paid, with real math and real numbers.
Master Agent vs TSD vs Distributor: What's the Difference?
Master agent, TSD, distributor, advisor — the channel uses four terms for the same thing. Here is what each means and why the terminology keeps changing.
The Profitable MSP Plays a Different Game. Here's the Data.
New Service Leadership data reveals that the most profitable MSPs pay less, churn more staff, and still outperform — because they've built systems that don't depend on retaining any single person.
When 85% of Telecom Deals Include IT Services, Pure-Play Telecom Is a Sunset Business
Omdia's 2026 telco GTM predictions are blunt: carriers are building IT into their channel DNA, M&A activity is about to accelerate past 100 deals, and partners who haven't converged are running out of runway.
What Is the Telecom Channel? A Plain-English Guide
The telecom channel is a $100B+ ecosystem of agents, MSPs, and distributors selling business communications. Here is how it actually works.
The channel spent a decade selling deflection. That era just ended at Enterprise Connect.
Amazon Connect said deflection is the wrong goal. The industry is shifting from call avoidance to AI accountability. Here's what that means for partners.
AT&T just committed $250 billion to rebuilding America's network. Here's what it actually means for partners.
AT&T's $250 billion infrastructure commitment isn't just a capex play. It's an AI positioning move that changes the partner conversation.
10% Growth Sounds Healthy. Half the MSP Industry Is About to Find Out It Isn't.
New Omdia data confirms the MSP market will grow 10% in 2026 — but that headline number masks a widening split between providers building next-gen capabilities and those stuck on commoditized 2019-era services. Jaxon Navarro breaks down which half you're in and what it costs you to stay there.
The agentic AI race has an accountability problem
Every major vendor at Enterprise Connect Day 1 shipped agentic AI features. The question nobody on stage answered: are enterprise buyers ready? And who picks up the implementation gap?
Salesforce Gutted Its Partner Program and Rebuilt It Around Agentforce
Four tiers collapsed to two. 170 badges replaced with 28 competencies. Salesforce is telling its consulting ecosystem: pivot to AI or lose your seat.
Your Perimeter Is Gone. ConnectWise's Threat Report Proves It.
Attackers stopped breaking in. They're logging in. ConnectWise's 2026 threat report shows why the MSP security playbook needs to start at identity.
Zoom just declared war on Microsoft 365
AI Companion 3.0, AI Services APIs, and AI-native Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Zoom is no longer a video company.
Anthropic Just Showed You Where to Build Next
97% of AI usage maps to tasks rated as theoretically feasible. The gap between what AI can do and what people actually use it for is the biggest business opportunity in a decade.
The channel needed PE's money. Here's what the alternative looked like.
Danny's right about Brian from finance. But before Brian showed up, half these companies couldn't tell you their gross margin within 10 points. A counterpoint from the other side of the table.
Broadcom's VMware purge: the partner massacre nobody recovered from
Broadcom looked at thousands of small VARs and MSPs who built their businesses on VMware and decided they weren't worth the support cost.
Microsoft's telecom AI play is bigger than you think
At MWC 2026, Microsoft offered to replace the entire carrier customer interaction layer with AI agents.
CoreWeave went from crypto mining to a $23B IPO
A crypto mining company pivoted to GPU cloud, IPO'd at $40/share, and tried to buy Core Scientific for $9 billion. The deal collapsed. The ambition didn't.
Can we stop saying 'outcomes'? Nobody knows what it means
Cisco said it. Microsoft said it. Google Cloud said it. VMware said it before Broadcom killed the messenger.
The generalist VAR has about 18 months left
If your pitch is 'we do networking, security, cloud, and UC,' you don't have a specialty. You have a list.
The quiet trend: MSPs are buying VARs, not the other way around
The most underreported channel trend: MSPs with recurring revenue are using their valuation premium to acquire VARs.
Starlink's direct-to-device play is the channel disruptor nobody's pricing in
Direct-to-device means any phone, anywhere, has connectivity. No tower required. The channel hasn't priced this in.
Your 2019 channel playbook is costing you money
60% of partner organizations are running strategies designed for a market that no longer exists.