75 UK channel partner leaders have revealed their views on AI, what keeps them awake at night, and how the channel might evolve in the inaugural Oxygen Partner Leaders report.
Powered by Giacom, Oxygen Partner Leaders features quickfire Q&As with leaders including Computacenter’s Mike Norris, Advania’s Hege Støre, Softcat’s Graham Charlton and Bytes Technology Group’s Sam Mudd.
Download the report for free here.
Our mission was to find out what makes VAR and MSP leaders tick against a backdrop of straitened spending and growing AI uptake.
“Customer zero”
Many of the partner leaders we quizzed are determined to make their companies “customer zero” or a “frontier firm” when it comes to AI (on this front, the newly launched Oxygen Awards has a category specifically for Best AI Project).
Asked about whether AI is being overhyped, the majority disagreed – at least when it comes to its potential for their customers.
“In the long term, AI may actually be under-hyped,” said Advania CEO Hege Støre.
Queried on their most successful internal AI project to date, our leaders variously nominated case studies in areas such as service desk, tender response, sales intelligence and customer sentiment analysis.
“We’ve seen quite an astonishing tender response assisted by AI, which has led to major wins,” SCC CEO Robert Vassoyan said.
Many predicted either that the channel will move more towards selling outcomes, or that consolidation will accelerate.
“Marketplaces, coupled with AI, will become the only route to market for many vendors, shrinking the channel further,” Redcentric CEO Michelle Senecal de Fonseca added.
Oxygen Partner Leaders also gave our three-quarter century of channel partner leaders an opportunity to show their more playful side thanks to questions on their fantasy dinner party guests, warning labels and favoured tech gizmos.
You can read what they said by downloading the report here.
