Agentic AI: Where is the partner opportunity?
CRN sat down with channel pros to discuss the technology’s impact on profits, services and partner relationships
While vendors are racing to embed AI deeper into their products, a new challenger just entered the ring; agentic AI - agents capable of decision making and problem-solving, learning, and improving through interactions – may be set to reshape everything from service delivery to customer engagement.
As partners are increasingly selling these solutions, the question now becomes, where are the margin opportunities? How do you build a service proposition on top of AI agents?
To explore these new potential opportunities and challenges, CRN garnered the opinions of tech experts from Cisilion, Version 1, Pax8, and Insight, who discussed what the new tech really means for the channel, and how quickly partners must evolve from resellers and service providers to enablers of intelligent systems.---
Mini Biswas, AI and security specialist, Cisilion
CRN: Are you selling, exploring, or watching agentic AI developments with interest?
“We’re not just watching the rise of agentic AI with interest; we’re actively shaping its trajectory.
“Agentic AI is no longer a concept on the horizon; it’s gaining fast momentum and becoming an essential part of how we’re helping clients reimagine work.
“Across a growing number of our engagements, we’re enabling organisations to unlock the full potential of AI agents across diverse sectors, from legal and recruitment to public sector, education, real estate consultancy, and not-for-profit.
“In the public sector, we’ve helped streamline citizen services through agents that triage and respond to common queries.
“In recruitment, we’ve implemented agents that automate candidate screening and interview scheduling, freeing up teams to focus on strategic hiring.
“Internally, we’re also developing knowledge agents that surface insights from our documentation and best practices, accelerating collaboration and reducing time spent searching for information.
“As an AI and security specialist, I’ve had the privilege of leading several of these initiatives hands-on.
“Agentic AI is not just automating tasks - it’s enabling new levels of autonomy, decision-making, and collaboration.”
CRN: As vendors have started promoting agentic AI solutions, where is the margin or the opportunity for partners?
“The real opportunity for UK channel partners lies not in the technology itself, but in the transformation it enables.
“The margin is no longer in the license; it’s in the leadership.
“Partners like Cisilion are already demonstrating how value is created by guiding organisations through the full arc of AI transformation, from vision to value realisation.
“This begins with strategic advisory - helping customers define their AI ambition, assess readiness, and identify high-impact use cases.
“But it quickly moves into deeper territory: showcasing the art of the possible through immersive executive briefings, educating teams on prompting techniques to maximise agent performance, and embedding best practices around data security, governance, and compliance.
“These are foundational to building trust and ensuring safe, scalable adoption.
“In terms of budget, we’re seeing organisations reallocate spend from legacy automation tools, underutilised SaaS platforms, and even traditional outsourcing contracts.
“Agentic AI is being prioritised as a strategic enabler of growth, efficiency, and competitive advantage.”
CRN: How far off are your clients from exploring or adopting agentic AI solutions?
“Momentum around agentic AI is accelerating rapidly, and we’re seeing a clear inflection point in client engagement.
“Since there have been a number of AI tools becoming publicly available and there is a growing suite of out-of-the-box type of agents, organisations have begun to shift from passive interest to active exploration.
“While full-scale adoption is still emerging, the majority of organisations are now in the exploration phase - actively assessing where agentic AI can deliver the most value and how it integrates with their existing digital estate.”
Andy Readman, Data and AI director, Pax8
CRN: Are you selling, exploring, or watching agentic AI developments with interest?
“The agentic AI era isn’t just another type of technology to adopt, it’s a massive opportunity to create new value, especially in the MSP channel that serves small to midsized businesses.
“It requires businesses to pivot, evaluate their purpose, and reinvent how and what they do in the market.
“In my role, I'm actively involved in helping the Pax8 partner community embrace this with confidence and optimism, and we're already seeing tremendous results for those reinventing their value proposition.”
CRN: As vendors have started promoting agentic AI solutions, where is the margin or the opportunity for partners?
“The margin is, and has always been, where the highest value is delivered.
“What's changing is where that value is perceived reside.
“The world of services has typically tied value to human effort.
“Most knowledge workers perceive their value exchange with their employer as directly related to the time they work; something that’s reinforced by contracts and resource planning.
“With agentic AI, that economic connection between effort and outcome gets fragmented.
“Margin will increasingly relate to outcomes regardless of human effort, and that opens up huge opportunities for businesses focused on directly contributing to the success of those with whom they are partnered.”
CRN: How far off are your clients from exploring or adopting agentic AI solutions?
“We're privileged to have many forward-thinking partners, and those taking the leap to reinvent themselves are starting to shape what a new model of service provider can become.”
Brad Mallard, CTO, Version 1
CRN: Are you selling, exploring, or watching agentic AI developments with interest?
“Agentic AI is a hot topic and a major focus in the tech industry.
“While there's a lot of buzz, true agentic solutions are still emerging and there is a lot of smoke and mirrors around true Agentic solutions and deployments so far.
“Many organisations are cautious about the risks, such as the potential for AI to act inappropriately due to hallucinations from foundational models.
“Security considerations of agents also pose challenges for widespread deployment.
“However, we are actively deploying agentic AI within controlled environments for our customers and using it in our own service delivery where the technology's maturity allows.”
CRN: As vendors have started promoting agentic AI solutions, where is the margin or the opportunity for partners?
“Our focus remains on helping clients securely and responsibly integrate AI into their business transformations.
“Whether it's for new value creation or enhancing efficiency and productivity, our business model is centred on having the right skills and experience to mitigate risks.
“We collaborate with major technology partners as well as niche technology vendors to deliver value in AI and tangible business solutions and outcomes for our customers.”
CRN: How far off are your clients from exploring or adopting agentic AI solutions?
“We are already delivering generative and agentic AI solutions to our clients.
“As a progressive technology service provider, we are also using these solutions to transform our own organisation.
“This experience allows us to guide clients through the complexities of AI, delivering low-risk, production-ready use cases that make a significant impact.
“It’s this approach, leading with business and experience rather than technology that is critical to the production adoption rates that we are seeing with customers.”
Phil Hawkshaw, EMEA CTO, Insight
CRN: Are you selling, exploring, or watching agentic AI developments with interest?
“We’re doing all three.
“The possibilities surrounding the implementation of GenAI in business are increasing daily as model and intelligent application developers release updates to their systems at a high rate.
“Keeping up with this level of innovation means we’re selling, delivering, exploring, and monitoring the market with interest every day for new opportunities.”
CRN: As vendors have started promoting agentic AI solutions, where is the margin or the opportunity for partners?
“LLMs are now commodities, and they will soon become utilities.
“The value for partners lies in the refining of LLMs down to smaller language models (SLMs) using the client's own data in combination with intelligent apps, business process automation and the democratisation of creativity across their entire organisation.”
CRN: How far off are your clients from exploring or adopting agentic AI solutions?
“It’s happening right now!
“Our clients are building the confidence to use accelerated prototyping and operationalisation approaches already.
“Supporting this trend, we’re also seeing forward deploy engineering (FDE) approaches becoming a popular option.”