Many years ago, there was a song by a man called Billy Ocean called When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going. It featured on the soundtrack for a film starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito called The Jewel of the Nile.
The song title came to mind in the wake of two separate studies published this month which made for some interesting reading regarding what vendors and cutomers expect of channel partners.
The first, entitled 2026 MSP perspectives report, was produced by Sophos. Cisco provided the second, the 2026 Global AI partner study.
According to the Sophos study, MSPs estimated nearly half (46%) of their customers rely on them to act as their chief information security officer (CISO). This role is expected to expand, with 84% of MSPs expecting demand for CISO services to increase over the next 12 months as organisations seek trusted advisors to help navigate cybersecurity risk, compliance obligations and increasingly complex security environments.
“Organisations require more than technology management to stay secure,” said Scott Barlow, vice-president and chief evangelist at Sophos. “They need trusted cyber security leaders who can help them understand their risk, navigate compliance requirements and translate security investments into meaningful business outcomes.
“MSPs are already stepping into this role for nearly half of their customers, creating a significant opportunity to deepen relationships and develop new, higher-value services,” he said. “The challenge now is delivering that leadership consistently and efficiently across a growing customer base.”
Just add AI
Meanwhile, Cisco’s study revealed that security was becoming more complex, as highlighted in a blog post by Alex Pujols, vice-president of solutions engineering for global partner sales at Cisco, who drew attention to the reduction in partners reporting high awareness of AI-specific security threats from 35% in 2025 to 29%.
“At first glance, that may sound like partners are falling behind,” he wrote. “But I see it as a reflection of a more realistic understanding of security in the AI era.”
An overwhelming majority of partners (92%) noted that some customers had raised concerns about AI running costs and less than half (43%) said customer ROI was meeting or exceeding expectations. A fifth admitted cost pressures were recalibrating customers’ appetite for additional AI investment.
According to Pujols, the findings suggested customers were realising that AI was “no longer an experiment that can be funded without a clear path to return. Customers are looking more closely at cost, use cases and measurable business outcomes”. Perhaps he could have a quiet word with President Trump and several other political leaders about that.
Anyway, he noted that consulting and advisory services jumped from 12% to 50% as a leading growth opportunity, “the largest increase of any category in the study. That shift is important. In addition to technology, customers need help deciding what to deploy, how to govern it, how to manage cost and how to measure success”.
A quarter of partners claimed AI already made up more than half their revenue today, and 55% expected to reach that goal within five years.
“Capturing that opportunity means more than deploying AI,” Pujols argued. “It means building the security, governance, cost discipline, and judgment customers need to operate AI responsibly at scale….As AI becomes more autonomous and embedded in the business, now is the moment for partners to step up as trusted guides who help customers strengthen security and resilience as they navigate that complexity.”
You’ll notice that the common thread running through both reports is the requirement for MSPs/partners to provide the consultancy, direction, expertise and leadership to help customers get what they were promised when they bought the technology, be it in cyber security or AI.
As Pujols admits, this is about more than “deploying AI”, or cyber security for that matter. You will remember Barlow identifying the roles of MSPs in helping customers understand their risk, navigate compliance requirements and translate security investments into meaningful business outcomes. For Pujols it’s about “building the security, governance, cost discipline, and judgment customers need to operate AI responsibly at scale”.
In both cases, it’s about making the technology match the promise. The people who developed the technology, Cisco and Sophos in this case, have done their part in getting it out there to customers. Make what you will of the fact that customers don’t seem fully cognisant of what’s required to run it safely and effectively. The good news for vendors and customers is that there’s someone else available to do the hard work required to make it work as promised: partners.
When Pujols writes that for customers, AI is “no longer an experiment that can be funded without a clear path to return”, you have to ask yourself why they ever were led to believe that in the first place. The fact partners have to step up as trusted guides as AI “becomes more autonomous and embedded in the business” seems a little bit unfair. I’m not saying the vendor is washing its hands of what happens when AI becomes more autonomous and embedded in the business, but I can see why some people might view it in that light.
There’s a reason why partners are being asked to do this stuff and no one else is in a rush to do it themselves. It’s hard work.
But like Billy says: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Ltd
