The past 12 months have been busy in the channel, with customers looking to upgrade their technology and harness the potential of AI – but also with an emphasis on keeping everything secure. Here, thought leaders from across the channel give their opinions on how 2025 has been for their business and the wider channel.
As another Christmas is upon us, it seems like the right time to look back at the past 12 months in the channel.
While economic conditions have continued to be trying during 2025, channel businesses have nonetheless continued to prove resilient and have adapted and changed to customer demand.
Distinct trends have prevailed this year, such as demand for increased cybersecurity – especially given the high-profile cyberattacks in the past 12 months – as well as increasing adoption of AI-based technologies.
Over the following pages, a range of experts from across the channel give their opinions on the major trends, challenges and achievements they have seen over the past 12 months.
David Watts, senior vice president and managing director, UK and Ireland, TD SYNNEX
For TD SYNNEX in the UK and Ireland, 2025 has been a year of steady and consistent advancement. Our business has grown strongly across all technologies, gaining overall market share with especially satisfying market share growth in the SMB market, which remains our core area of focus. This will be down to many things, but especially satisfying has been the progress we continue to make in the toolset we offer our customers as well as the technology expertise and service levels that we continue to improve.
In my view, the channel continues to do an exceptional job in meeting the needs of end user customers, adapting to the opportunity, and continuing to progress and develop its own knowledge, capability and reputation. Partnerships are now more important than ever – and we see these in action more and more in our channel, while partners also continue to lean harder on us.
Cloud and cybersecurity have continued to grow and become more important, and AI has started to become a real opportunity for partners with whom we offer support through skilled teams, a vendor line up that is second-to-none and our Destination AI programme.
We’ve made excellent progress with our Destination AI programme, which enables partners to develop the knowledge, confidence and capabilities to take AI value propositions to market. We also continue to utilise AI in house, to automate processes and tasks to give co-workers more time to focus on delivering a personalised service to our partners, in addition to using it to enhance training.
There have been challenges too. For partners, building knowledge and capability in complex technologies while continuing to support the everyday needs of their end user customers is a constant challenge. A major part of our role is to support partners and enable them to develop and grow. Consequently, we are evolving into an enabler and aggregator for new solutions and technologies. We’ve been investing in key areas of growth potential – in AI, cloud and cybersecurity – helping partners to develop their own business practices, and we’ll continue to do that in 2026.
Andy Kelly, managing director, MB Technology
This has been a year of meaningful growth and evolution for MB Technology. We’ve continued to strengthen our partnerships with key vendors – ZPE Systems, Vertiv, Austin Hughes, Belkin Cybersecurity and Cannon Technologies – and seen increasing demand for resilient, secure and scalable infrastructure as customers adapt to rapidly changing requirements. Our focus on being responsive, easy to work with and channel-centric has helped us support resellers through what has been a dynamic year.
Across the channel, 2025 has felt like a year of recalibration. After a challenging economic backdrop in previous years, partners have shown real resilience, refocusing on value, efficiency and long-term strategy. There’s been a noticeable shift towards vendors and distributors that can act as genuine collaborators rather than just suppliers. Enablement, education and hands-on support have become more important than ever – something we’ve prioritised with every vendor programme and reseller engagement.
In our sectors, several clear trends have defined the year. Network resilience and remote recovery have moved from ‘nice-to-haves’ to essentials, driving strong interest in out-of-band automation technologies like ZPE Systems. Cybersecurity-aligned hardware and zero-touch deployment have also gained traction as customers refine their offerings. Sustainability continues to grow as a deciding factor in infrastructure choices, especially around power, cooling and energy-efficient hardware.
Of course, the channel has faced its challenges. Budget pressure, decision-making delays and the speed of technological change have meant resellers need solutions that are simple to deploy, easy to manage and proven to reduce risk. Content saturation has also made education more difficult – cutting through the noise to help partners fully understand new technologies has been a key focus for us.
Emerging technologies, particularly AI, have had a major impact, not just in terms of workloads, but in shaping buying decisions and infrastructure requirements. Partners are increasingly seeking hardware that supports AI-related compute, automation tools that streamline operations, and solutions that strengthen security as environments grow more complex.
As we look to 2026, our priority remains the same: empowering partners with the technology, expertise and support they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving market.
Richard Eglon, CMO, Nebula Global Services
This has been an exceptional year for Nebula Global Services, marked by strong growth and industry recognition. The company was ranked among the UK’s fastest-growing firms in the UK Fast Growth Index and placed number 32 in the FEBE Growth 100 for founder-led UK businesses.
Sustainability has also been a major focus, with Nebula achieving an EcoVadis ‘Committed’ rating for ESG performance, alongside an ISO 14001 environmental certification.
The technology channel has undergone a significant transformation in 2025, shifting from a technology-centric approach to one focused on delivering measurable business outcomes. This transition has had significant impact on companies of all sizes as they look to pivot their business models. This evolution is reflected in Nebula’s ‘as-an-outcome’ service model, which aligns with the growing demand for solutions tied to tangible results. Consumption-based pricing and remote managed services have become increasingly prevalent within channel services, driven by customer expectations for predictable and scalable service delivery, coupled with MSPs not having the resource to solely facilitate the demand.
Additionally, the convergence of AI and ESG initiatives has been a defining trend. Nebula’s latest ‘ESG Unwrapped’ report highlighted how AI is enabling faster data analysis and smarter sustainability strategies. The demand for remote managed services has also surged, prompting Nebula to launch a new global remote service for security and networking that aligns with subscription-based models and changing buyer behaviour.
Outcome-based services have also gained traction, with partners increasingly seeking solutions tied to efficiency gains, cost optimisation and security improvements. Furthermore, channel consolidation and the push for flexibility have continued, as channel firms realign around outcome-driven solutions to remain competitive.
Despite progress, the technology channel has faced challenges. Delivering global, 24/7 remote managed services has introduced significant operational complexity, requiring deep technical expertise, round-the-clock support and coverage across diverse platforms. Another challenge has been navigating the hype versus reality of AI adoption. The AI landscape remains a minefield, with organisations working to identify practical use cases while balancing sustainability trade-offs and strategic priorities. It seems the short-term benefit of AI is utilising its power to make output more efficient while ensuring the outcome remains a human directive. Additionally, integrating sustainability into core offerings has become a pressing requirement, with firms investing in certifications and ethical sourcing to meet growing ESG expectations from end clients.
However, while many organisations have embraced AI pilots from agents through to AI-enabled sales support tools, only a minority have successfully scaled these initiatives to achieve full transformation. The gap between piloting and scaling remains a challenge, but the trajectory suggests that AI will continue to play a central role in shaping the channel’s future.
Jason Chibnall, managing director, Hammer Distribution
This year has been one of significant, positive change for Hammer Distribution. We successfully underwent a major transformation, decoupling the business from Exertis and relaunching under our new ‘old’ name, Hammer Distribution. This involved building new teams and refining processes across every department. Crucially, we have also expanded our capabilities, taking the Hammer brand and portfolio into Europe. Furthermore, we formally launched our AI specialism through a new, exciting partner platform called A.I.Works, complementing our existing strengths in solutioning.
Overall, the channel has fared well, demonstrating year-on-year growth, primarily driven by the significant uptake in AI-ready client technologies. We see a clear polarisation within the market, distinguishing between highly efficient, transactional distributors and those, like Hammer, that focus on true value-added solutioning. Across the board, teams in the channel are working harder, that’s for sure!
The major trends across our core categories, infrastructure and cyber, have been profoundly influenced by the AI revolution. Businesses are aggressively moving to AI-enable their entire infrastructure stacks, demanding higher performance hardware and specialised solutions. Concurrently, the need to protect these evolving infrastructures from increasingly sophisticated threats has fuelled robust growth in the cybersecurity sector, making infrastructure resilience a top priority.
AI and emerging technologies are shaping the channel landscape with a twofold impact. Firstly, AI creates significant opportunity and technical momentum across nearly every product category we represent. Secondly, it is revolutionising our internal sales motion. By leveraging AI to empower our teams with real-time market and customer intelligence, we are becoming far more effective. In fact, we find that our most successful sales opportunities are now initiated by those using AI tools to sell AI!
While demand remains strong, the channel has faced increasing external complexities. We’ve seen ongoing challenges in supply chain predictability, with the pace of logistical constraints changing frequently due to geopolitical factors. Furthermore, the immense growth in demand from hyperscalers, OEMs and dedicated AI factories has placed pressure on component supply. This environment has necessitated deeper collaboration with our vendor partners to strategically manage constraints.
Sohin Raithatha, CEO, Redsquid
2025 has been transformational for Redsquid: our headcount has tripled, and our revenue has doubled. With the six acquisitions we’ve achieved this year, we’ve strategically added capability. It’s been evolutionary from a tech and geographical reach perspective as well. It’s incredible how much has been achieved in 11 months.
Overall, for the channel 2025 was challenging. Customers now expect far more from their providers than the traditional break–fix model; they want MSPs that can demonstrate real capability in security, automation and AI. We’ve been able to meet those expectations through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. That said, M&A activity is down across the industry, and the wider business environment hasn’t been particularly supportive.
Cybersecurity has been a priority for years, but the recent high-profile breaches at organisations like M&S, JLR and the Co-op have shifted the conversation. Customers no longer ask if they should invest in security, they ask how much and how fast. We’re also seeing a strong push toward automation, with businesses wanting to understand how to adopt it in a way that enhances efficiency without adding complexity. These trends may help stabilise some of the falling valuations across the industry, as only certain segments have held steady this year.
Elsewhere, the national insurance increase has put pressure on businesses across the board, making recruitment particularly challenging. With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, having a skilled workforce is essential to delivering the outcomes customers expect, and these cost pressures aren’t helping.
Emerging technologies such as AI are impacting business in the channel significantly. The pace of change is extraordinary, and MSPs that can truly differentiate themselves will be the ones that thrive. That differentiation starts with living your own standards and practising what you preach. Surprisingly, this isn’t always common practice, but if you can’t secure your own environment, it becomes very difficult to credibly secure your customers’. The traditional break-fix model simply isn’t enough anymore.
Hayley Roberts, CEO, Distology
Like most years, 2025 has been a year of lots of change. Some big, some small. In all, it has been a positive year, and we have gained ground in some significant areas including our tech strategy and service delivery.
I feel the channel has gained more momentum this year, albeit in stages and not a steep trajectory. There are some good partners that we are working with that are locked in and committed to re-energising their security portfolio and this is great to see and needed with an ever-changing threat landscape.
Ransomware and managing risk have gained momentum this year and we are proud that we have domain expertise and good technology in these areas to service the market with skill and high value.
However, budgets and awareness continue to be the main challenges for cybersecurity in channel and while we can sometimes do less on budgets, we can and are doing more on education of new security technology, which makes it easier for our partners to adopt and sell on the technology we represent.
AI is a hot topic. An area that will be more buoyant in a couple of years is the security around AI adoption, and I believe that this will be an increasing commercial opportunity. Like anything that is new, the market awareness takes a while to build so it is always worth having a stance on where this will fit and when is the right time to invest.
Jeremy Keefe, CEO, Kubus
2025 was all about showing resilience in a challenging marketplace. Notwithstanding the company’s new investment and strengthened leadership team, 2025 proved to be a demanding year, characterised by geopolitical instability and uncertain economic headwinds. Across the IT channel, budget holders faced significant hurdles, including internal pressure to freeze spending due to economic uncertainty, sudden budget changes and short notice business reprioritisations, often disrupting sales negotiations.
In addition, market ambiguity regarding the practical application and value of AI couple with inflationary pressures drove up the pricing structures across the supply chain.
Despite this landscape, Kubus has thrived by remaining a flexible, specialised service provider. We continued to deliver excellence in networking, data centre, and security integration, offering end-to-end solutions ranging from strategic advisory to 24×7 support. As a result, we secured several major global enterprise clients while simultaneously deepening our ‘trusted advisor’ relationships with existing accounts.
Kubus enters 2026 with anticipation and a clear strategy: making the complex simple. We remain committed to enabling customers to maximise the value of their IT investments. In the coming year, we will evolve our portfolio to further complement our clients’ internal IT functions, reinforcing our position as a premier managed service provider. This commitment to quality is evidenced by our recent Net Promoter Score of 81, a testament to the value our customers place on our service.
Working closely with our vendor partners, we are poised to drive further growth and secure additional large enterprise wins.
Rachel Rothwell, Regional vice president, Zyxel Networks
It’s been a challenging year, but we are pleased with the results we’ve achieved. We’ve been really pleased with the growth of our Nebula cloud platform through managed services partners and the positive response we saw to the launch of our USG FLEX H series and extended range of WiFi 7 access points. We’ve also been pleased to see further uptake of multigig switching.
Overall, in the channel in 2025, partners have done fantastically responding to the needs of their customers and helping them to address the twin challenges of managing complexity and keeping networks secure.
In terms of the main trends over the year, networking and security have become more interdependent and inseparable, and managed services are now the clear direction of travel. More of our partners have become MSPs and we expect that trend to continue.
Elsewhere, a lot of focus in 2025 has been on upgrading client devices and that’s meant some investment in network infrastructure has had to wait. But every challenge presents an opportunity, and we’ve been encouraging partners to build up their managed services capabilities and start talking to customers about that as an option. That’s going to pay dividends in the coming year, especially as we start to see higher levels of investment in in infrastructure upgrades.
AI is enabling partners to do more with the same resources and scale up their managed services business. We’ve been using AI to enhance the fault identification and remediation capabilities with our Nebula cloud platform, and that’s had a significant impact. It’s now much easier and faster for partners to identify and address network and security issues, saving time for MSPs and enabling them to do more with the same resources.
Anthony Dobson, regional director, sales for enterprise computing solutions business in the UK&I, Arrow
We’ve had another memorable year of bringing the channel ecosystem together through events and other opportunities to connect, because those conversations are vital to collaboration and deepening relationships.
Alongside this, we’ve continued to evolve our cloud aggregation, services and go-to-market models to support channel partners and create new opportunities for their businesses and end customers.
We’ve strengthened our channel enablement through platforms, services and specialist programmes, including the rollout of the Cloud Amplification Program across EMEA and the global launch of our AI Accelerator. Together with ArrowSphere Cloud and ArrowSphere Assistant, these initiatives reflect our ongoing commitment to helping channel partners build capability and grow sustainable, service-led business models.
Cloud marketplaces have become a core operational layer for many channel partners. For example, through ArrowSphere Cloud, our channel partners are managing multi-vendor provisioning, billing and lifecycle activity at scale, gaining the visibility and control needed to run more efficient service models. Enhancements such as the SecOps, DevOps and GreenOps dashboards are providing deeper insight into security posture, operational performance and sustainability, helping them to support end-customers in a more informed and proactive way.
For channel partners, cutting through complexity remains a key challenge. They are supporting end customers across cloud, security, data and AI-enabled services, often across multiple vendors and different consumption models. That places real demands on skills, integration and cost management. This is where working with a distributor adds significant value – through their expertise, technical support, training and structured enablement that help channel partners build capability and confidence.
In a market full of AI noise, our focus is on helping channel partners cut through that and apply automation where it genuinely adds business value. Through ArrowSphere Cloud, AI supports how cloud environments are monitored, managed and optimised, while ArrowSphere Assistant’s AI-driven insights is freeing up time for channel partners to move beyond day-to-day management and focus on more strategic conversations with end customers.
Through our programmes such as AI Accelerator, we are also educating and supporting practical skills development and real-world use cases for channel partners to build into their own and end customer environments. Importantly, AI is enabling higher-value engagement and stronger long-term service models.
Mark Wilkinson, regional vice president – UK & Ireland, ACCO
This year has certainly been a challenging marketplace to operate in, though it was not without opportunities for growth.
Looking at the channel, the market has had a challenging time in 2025. Many players have reported on mixed performance in the year and generally saw soft demand, particularly for legacy core OP categories.
The E-tail channel has probably done best, though likely not as well as in previous years, as consumers and end users still feel the impact of economic uncertainty and ongoing inflationary pressures.
Beyond E-tail, many resellers in the channel are moving away from trad OP to more diverse categories, such as san jan and cleaning, furniture, workwear and catering and hospitality.
Demand has been softer than previous years, driven in part by continued digitisation of the workplace, impact of more direct Chinese competition on UK marketplaces (as they pivot away from the US due to tariffs), lower consumption in the workplace due to residual impact of hybrid working and less demand generation by channel players, as the market consolidates. More positively we have seen some fantastic growth in new categories, such as sustainable tech, like our Kensington EQ range and exponential growth in our Leitz Ergonomic category, alongside solid performances in several other categories.
In addition, 2025 has presented challenges, such as the impact of the Budget in April on the market as well as the uncertainty around US tariffs and wider geopolitical issues, which reduced confidence and investment in general. Cost-of-living pressures remained real for many consumers putting pressure on price points and leading to some trading down. Opportunities to sell good quality brands workplace solutions remained, so value was key, not price.
I believe AI is having an impact in many areas and personally use AI tools most days to try and be more efficient and save time. However, results in our industry are still quite mixed: I don’t think yet we have seen a true shift in productivity in our industry or wider, i.e. companies reducing costs or growing sales as a direct result of AI. I think 2026 we will more companies seek to achieve tangible results in terms of growth or productivity as a direct result of systematic AI use in their organisations.
Mike Barron, UK managing director, SYNAXON
It’s been a really positive 12 months. We had ambitious targets, which we are close to achieving. The team has delivered really high levels of service, and we’ve attracted more customers and business. We have doubled our sales resources to ensure we can maintain high standards and serve more customers.
Overall, channel businesses have fared well. Most are quite resilient and accustomed to the fast pace of change. In the channel, all businesses need to be flexible and adaptable as you never know what’s around the corner.
In the past few months, we’ve seen a massive surge in laptop sales as businesses upgraded to Windows 11. That’s not finished yet and there will be more opportunities to upgrade the peripherals and devices that connect to these new devices over the coming months. The other significant trend we have noticed is businesses shoring up their digital protection and resilience. As well as cybersecurity, they are investing in backup services, in local storage and power protection.
The economy and lack of business confidence have been the main challenges for the channel this year. Some projects have been held, or budgets have been changed. Hopefully, we’ll start to see some confidence starting to build over the next few months.
A lot of businesses are using AI to help with everyday tasks, and it is being built in to just about every product and solution. But I think many partners are still scratching their heads over AI and are not quite sure how it’s going to generate any real business for them. AI seems to have quietly slipped into the so-called ‘trough of disillusionment’, and it remains to be seen how swiftly it climbs towards wider enlightenment and productivity.
Ruth Patterson, UK&I MD, HP
2025 has been a transformative year for HP UK&I. We are leading the charge in shaping the future of work, driving innovation and security across every aspect of our print business. Our “One HP” approach unites hardware, services, and solutions to deliver a seamless ecosystem that empowers organisations to thrive in new working models.
The print sector has proven its ability to adapt and lead in a rapidly changing workplace landscape. As organisations embrace hybrid and flexible working, print is now a strategic engine for secure workflows, compliance, and productivity. Our partners are leveraging the full HP ecosystem to unlock new value for customers, delivering managed services, advancing sustainability, and integrating print seamlessly with digital processes.
Security is front and centre, with HP setting new standards for hardware-level protection and risk mitigation. Sustainability is driving competitive advantage, as our partners use HP programmes like Amplify Impact to differentiate and deliver measurable results. Innovation is accelerating, with AI-powered tools transforming document management and workflow automation.
AI is revolutionising the print sector, and HP is at the forefront of this change. Our on-device AI delivers smarter, more secure document handling, driving productivity and protecting data in distributed environments.
