Techaisle Blog

A study by global IT research firm Techaisle found that PC maintenance and support consumes 77% of SMB IT staff time. Digging deeper into time spent on PC lifecycle management, the research finds that 57% of the time is allocated to deployment and repairs, with an additional 15% allocated to software-related management issues and 9% to OS migrations. These statistics indicate that basic PC-related maintenance tasks consume more than one in every three SMB IT staff hours.

The rise of AI is revolutionizing workplaces across industries. As AI capabilities continue to evolve, businesses are increasingly adopting this technology to enhance productivity and gain a competitive advantage. A key area of this transformation is the emergence of AI PCs. According to Techaisle data, AI PCs are poised for significant growth, with 14% to 28% of all PC purchases in 2025 expected to fall into this category, depending on the business size. This rapid adoption presents both challenges and opportunities for channel partners, MSPs, and PC OEMs responsible for supporting and servicing AI PCs. While 48% of SMBs and midmarket firms anticipate reduced support needs with AI PCs, they are also concerned that new service requirements are emerging. This necessitates a shift in service offerings to effectively address the unique needs of AI-powered devices and their users.

A recent Techaisle survey of 2,000 businesses revealed some key insights into the evolving needs of SMB services in the age of AI PCs. Most respondents (64%) believe performance optimization will be a critical service requirement. This is not surprising, as AI PCs often handle complex tasks and large datasets, demanding high levels of processing power and efficient resource management. IT service providers will need to develop specialized expertise in AI performance optimization to ensure that these devices operate at peak efficiency and deliver the expected business value.

The introduction of Dell AI Studio, Lenovo AI Now, and HP AI Companion marks a significant shift in PC capabilities, creating new demands for specialized support and services within businesses. These AI-powered tools are designed to enhance productivity, streamline tasks, and provide personalized experiences, but they also introduce complexities that many organizations may not be prepared to handle. As businesses adopt these AI-enhanced PCs, IT departments will need to develop new skills and expertise to manage and troubleshoot AI-related issues. This includes understanding how to optimize AI models for specific business needs, ensuring data privacy and security when using local AI agents, and managing the integration of AI tools with existing enterprise applications. Additionally, SMBs and midmarket firms may need to create new roles or teams dedicated to AI PC management, focusing on AI model curation, performance optimization, and user training. These changes will likely lead to an increased demand for AI-specific IT support services, specialized training programs for staff, and potentially new partnerships with AI consultancy firms to help businesses fully leverage the capabilities of their AI-enhanced PC fleets.

To get a clear picture of how a channel adapts to market change, Techaisle interviewed 2,115 channel firms. Survey data shows dramatic year-over-year changes in channel business priorities. At the top level, last year’s channel was mainly worried about handling uncertainty, while this year’s channel is focused on growth. In 2024, worries about uncertainty have almost dropped out of the top 10 channel business issues, overtaken by agility, competitiveness, and business process improvement goals. The second-highest priority for the 2024 channel, “developing AI offerings,” was not even a choice in 2023. AI is creating a strong attraction for the channel because it is changing the market that the channel serves. Channel firms that thrive through the transition to AI-inclusive technology and business infrastructure must quickly abandon legacy assumptions about how they operate, the services they offer, and the buyers they serve within client accounts.

Techaisle’s landmark survey of 2,115 channel partners, representing a cross-section of the partner community, indicates that while pressure for change is mounting, partners have not yet coalesced around a path forward. The Techaisle channel survey shows that the partner community members are searching for a roadmap to success. That roadmap will vary across partner models, as will the opportunities and requirements for suppliers. In this time of transition, effective channel collaboration will determine growth and viability for both individual channel businesses and their vendor suppliers.

The early years of this decade have been challenging for individuals and businesses in all sectors. In some cases, the pandemic – or, more recently, rising interest rates and declining consumer confidence – have caused tremendous upheaval, with suppliers finding that traditional definitions of the market, sales motions, and fulfillment no longer applied.

The current decade has brought an even thornier set of challenges to the IT channel. In addition to the macro conditions that apply to all businesses, and against a backdrop of changing business models, shrinking product margins, and the need to build profitable services practices, channel members need strategies to cope with:

• A shift in core customers – from technologists to an organization-wide mix of personas, including businesspeople who define technology in terms of business rather than IT functionality.

• A shift in buying and selling models – from fee-for-product/service to approaches that involve outcome-based evaluation and contracting or shared risk agreements that tie payments to achieving defined business goals.

• A shift in solution composition – from monolithic systems to modular stacks that address target functionality via APIs – as well as a corresponding change in the underlying business approach, from “design once, deploy many” to a need for individualized solutions tailored to a fluid set of customer needs.

These conditions have combined to place the channel under tremendous stress. Channel members have explored different business models, different product mixes – accompanied by demands for new skills and service capabilities – and other marketing, selling, and partner relationship configurations.

Both channel businesses and their vendor suppliers are vested in understanding how solution portfolios are changing and how the channel and vendor communities can best work together to bring solutions to market. These are complex questions, but their answers are at the heart of a wide range of sales, marketing, and executive imperatives. This study provides valuable input to those discussions.

Aligning to Changing Solution Portfolios

The starting point for an analysis of alignment to changing solution portfolios is the portfolios themselves – what is the channel selling, and how fast is revenue associated with these offerings expected to grow? Data shows that more than 80% of partner firms are selling cloud and/or collaboration, and more than 60% sell customer experience, employee experience, or analytics solutions. From a growth perspective, 80% or more of channel members anticipate growth in cloud and 5G, and 70% or more expect growth in collaboration, analytics, SD-WAN, virtualization, and/or SD-WAN.

A Techaisle SMB and Midmarket adoption trends study of over 5100 SMBs and midmarket firms found that managed services are a priority for 79% of SMBs and 97% of upper midmarket firms. Worldwide spending on managed services by SMBs and midmarket firms is estimated to reach US$104B in 2024. Data from the last five years also shows an increasing overlap between managed and cloud consulting services, with a growing need for cloud cost optimization, security and compliance, and cloud and storage optimization. In the final analysis, Techaisle expects strong growth for managed services as it directly supports critical business and IT needs.

The adoption of managed services is driven by several key factors. These include improving IT security and management processes, proactively identifying and fixing problems, reducing IT and business risks, and enhancing disaster recovery and business continuity readiness. However, the focus of demand for managed services is shifting from infrastructure management to areas such as core security and application management, business process automation, cloud management, analytics, AI, edge and observability management.