To what extent will AI enable channel partners to carry out the same services with fewer staff?
That was a key question tackled in our recent Oxygen 250 podcast, Episode 2 of which is now live (see highlights above, and full video, bottom).
AI-related job cuts are sweeping through vendor land, with Marc Benioff recently revealing that Salesforce has replaced 4,000 support roles with AI agents, and Satya Nadella linking Microsoft’s 15,000 job cuts this year to its “messy” AI transformation.
But is AI also coming for jobs in the UK IT channel?
Alastair Rudman, CEO of Natilik, said he’d be “amazed” if there isn’t a channel partner CEO right now looking at AI to achieve productivity gains.
“Does that mean we should be able to scale the revenue and growth of our businesses at a faster rate than scaling headcount? Yes,” he said.
“But we’re not vendors. We don’t create the source code, the software and the products, so proportionally it might be slightly different in the channel.”
Ross Teague, CEO at Nebula Global Services, said a big US channel partner customer of Nebula’s is currently reducing headcount via natural attrition rather than job cuts – a formula he predicted could be adopted more widely.
“I’m not seeing channel partners make swathing redundancies… but I am seeing them not replace [staff] when they go,” he said.
“By natural osmosis, people are leaving the organisation and not being replaced by humans – they’re perhaps getting another member of the team to pick up their role and using a bit more automation and effectively getting two for the price of one.”
Candice Arnold, CRO at Wanstor, highlighted recent reports suggesting AI has dented graduate hiring.
“First-line type roles are being almost cannibalised by a little bit of technological unemployment, so deploying AI in certain functions within the business does mean that there’s less to go around,” she said.
“I’m seeing us growing in areas that are making an impact for our customers, and that does need to be human led.
“There may be parts of a role that need to be almost outsourced to technology, but that leaves you in a better space to create revenue-generating activities, so growth will come in exciting ways.”
Sponsored by Nebula Global Services, the Oxygen 250 2025 profiled the UK’s largest channel partners by revenue. It is free to download here.
View episode 1 here of the Oxygen 250 podcast here.
