Monday Morning Impact – August 31
Gartner: Chief Procurement Officers Should Treat AI as a Dedicated Category Management Domain
As AI sourcing decisions increasingly influence where enterprise intelligence, expertise and capabilities reside, chief procurement officers (CPOs) must manage AI capabilities, not just suppliers, according to Gartner.
With AI becoming embedded in software, services, infrastructure and autonomous agents, CPOs are influencing much more than supplier selection, according to the Connecticut-based market researcher. They are increasingly shaping how work is performed, where expertise resides, and how future capabilities develop across the enterprise.
“Organizations are no longer acquiring AI through a single supplier market or spend category,” said Katarzyna Fonteyn, Director Analyst, IT Services, in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice. “AI capabilities are being purchased across the enterprise, often without a unified view of how those investments relate to one another. Treating AI as a dedicated category management domain helps organizations improve visibility, strengthen governance and make more deliberate decisions about where critical capabilities should reside.”
Traditional category management was designed around supplier markets, contracts and spend categories, but AI increasingly cuts across those boundaries. Organizations acquire AI capabilities through software, cloud platforms, infrastructure, consulting services, embedded applications and business-led purchases. This creates common challenges around governance, risk management, data rights and value realization, regardless of where the AI spending originates.
Executing this shift presents significant challenges for procurement leaders. AI spending is fragmented across internal and external stand-alone tools, embedded software capabilities, cloud services, consulting engagements and business-led purchases, according to Gartner. Effective AI management requires collaboration across procurement, IT, legal, security, risk, data governance, HR and business leaders. Procurement’s role is to provide visibility, governance and commercial discipline across these stakeholders.
Organizations also face consumption growth that can outpace governance, limited pricing transparency, inconsistent data rights protections and AI investments made ahead of the organizational maturity needed to effectively manage them.
Gartner recommends that CPOs take several steps to improve visibility, governance and control as AI becomes an enterprise capability. These recommendations focus on enhancing visibility into AI capabilities, spend, suppliers and use cases; treating AI as a category management domain rather than solely a technology category; and establishing enterprise standards for AI acquisition, governance, data rights and risk management.
Channel Impact®
As AI assistants and autonomous agents become part of day-to-day operations, CPOs have a growing role in determining how capabilities are distributed across employees, suppliers and digital workers. Partners can help client management move away from a traditional IT category management approach to a dedicated AI category management strategy.
SonicWall Expands MSP Portfolio with New Endpoint Protection
SonicWall announced the launch of SonicWall Endpoint Security, a unified endpoint protection solution purpose-built for managed service providers (MSPs) serving small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).
Available as a standalone Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tool or as a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, managed by the SonicSentry security operations center, the platform brings threat protection, automated threat response and ransomware restore capabilities.
Key features include advanced threat protection powered by heuristic scanning, one-click rollback, direct deployment without requiring third-party remote monitoring and management tools, and integration with other SIEM and ticketing tools.
“MSPs shouldn’t have to choose between enterprise-grade protection and margin viability,” said Chandro Prasad, SonicWall Chief Product Officer. “SonicWall Endpoint Security gives MSPs and their customers the same detection and response technology enterprises rely on, built into a platform that’s easy to deploy, easy to manage and priced for real-world budgets.”
For MSPs and partners without an existing security practice, the platform is also available as a fully managed MDR service. In this configuration, SonicWall’s 24/7 SOC handles deployment, threat hunting, incident response and policy management.
SonicWall Endpoint Security is available in three tiers. Endpoint Security Advanced, delivers core NGAV and EDR protection. Endpoint Security Premier adds extended telemetry retention for deeper forensic visibility. MDR for Endpoint Security adds SonicWall’s 24x7x365 SOC, managed threat hunting, and best-practice-led policy management. The platform is available on monthly or term subscriptions and integrates with the broader SonicWall Unified Management ecosystem alongside SonicWall’s firewall and cloud security offerings.
Channel Impact®
The platform promises enterprise endpoint detection and response (EDR) with optional fully managed MDR, at a price accessible to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Channelscaler Launches New Benchmark for Partner Performance
Channelscaler, a San Mateo, California-based company with a partner ecosystem platform, announced the launch of Scaler Index, a new industry benchmark designed to give partner leaders a clearer, data-driven standard for measuring partner performance and program maturity. The benchmark identifies the behaviors, patterns, outcomes, and performance levels that characterize successful partner programs.
“Partner leaders don’t need more dashboards; they need proof,” said Pam Erlichman, SVP of Marketing at Channelscaler. “For too long, fragmented systems and inconsistent attribution have made partner performance difficult to measure and even harder to compare. Scaler Index creates a common standard for understanding what good looks like, giving partner leaders credible benchmarks to demonstrate impact, identify opportunities and make better decisions about where to invest.”
For the inaugural Scaler Index, Channelscaler analyzed anonymized deal registration data from more than 30,000 partners across the Channelscaler platform between 2016 and 2025. The analysis examined the first three years following deal registration implementation to identify the performance patterns that emerge as adoption grows and deal registration becomes embedded within everyday partner-selling motions.
According to the company, the median program’s closure rate was 176% higher in year three than in year one, indicating that as deal registration programs mature, organizations see not only greater pipeline volume but also stronger conversion of registered opportunities into closed business.
Channel Impact®
The Scaler Index is designed to convert industry benchmarks into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to compare their own performance against anonymized benchmarks, identify areas of strength, and uncover opportunities for improvement using the data already generated by their partner programs.
Stay in the Know
Keep tabs on what’s happening in the channel and the impact it will have on the partner community by subscribing to Channel Impact communications.
Recent News
Search Buzz
Buzz Categories
