Monday Morning Impact – November 2
Gartner: Nearly Half of CEOs Struggle to Demonstrate AI Financial Returns
Forty-four percent of CEOs struggle to demonstrate AI-driven financial returns to stakeholders, according to Gartner. Yet CEOs are not retreating from technology investment, according to the market researcher. Instead, they are looking to AI and technology to help redesign how their organizations operate, compete and grow.
The 2027 Gartner CEO Survey, conducted in April and May 2026 among 203 global CEOs and senior business executives, found that 62% cited revenue/business growth as a top strategic business priority, while 75% plan to increase technology investment.
“The AI value problem will not be solved by simply adding more AI to existing ways of working,” said David Furlonger, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “CEOs increasingly need technology to create strategic freedom: the ability to enter markets, reshape offerings, reconfigure operations and respond to disruption faster than competitors. For CIOs, that means shifting the conversation from deploying AI to redesigning how the enterprise creates value.”
Eighty percent of CEOs said technology has become strategy, putting technology decisions at the center of conversations about growth, competitiveness and enterprise direction.
At the same time, CEOs are navigating significant disruption. Ninety-three percent said they expect economic volatility to have a high or medium impact on strategic business objectives through 2027, 79% expect that level of impact from persistent conflict, and 77% from AI industrialization. High readiness for these disruptions is considerably lower at 24%, 11% and 20%, respectively.
“The objective is not technology for technology’s sake; it is strategic freedom,” said Furlonger. “Technology creates options for the enterprise: to change direction, pursue new sources of growth and respond when market conditions shift. CIOs who remain downstream implementers risk being excluded from the decisions that increasingly define competitive advantage.”
CEOs are also signaling that greater AI returns will require more than individual productivity improvements. Sixty-three percent identified radically redesigning the operating model as a top power move to accelerate tangible financial returns from AI through 2027. Fifty-two percent cited aggressively deploying AI agents as employees, while 47% cited unlocking or reallocating capital through significant business restructuring.
“The lesson from earlier technology transformations is that value accelerates when organizations redesign around the new capability rather than simply bolt it onto existing processes,” added Furlonger. “AI needs to be built into how workflows, how decisions get made and how the enterprise competes.”
Channel Impact®
Partners can leverage this information by helping their clients to prioritize AI investments that change how workflows; create modular architectures and reduce rigid dependencies so the organization can pivot, switch providers and scale new capabilities as conditions change; and establish clear financial and operational measures.
TD Synnex Launches Space Tech Initiative for Partners
TD Synnex has rolled out a new initiative in North America designed to help reseller and vendor partners identify, pursue and scale opportunities across the rapidly expanding space economy. The intended objective is to give partners a clearer path to build capabilities, align solutions to space-specific requirements and convert emerging demand into repeatable growth.
The Space Tech Initiative brings together the distributor’s technology ecosystem with other industry organizations that offer domain expertise, training, certification and market intelligence to help establish credible Space Tech practices. Current partners include Nova Space Inc., a professional development organization, plus The Artemis Group, All Points, and Florida Institute of Technology.
New specialized training offered in partnership with training leader Nova Space Inc. is now available to help enable IT resellers to understand and be better positioned to take advantage of the various opportunities in the space industry. This includes three specialized courses offered by Nova Space covering all three segments of the space economy: civil, national security and commercial.
“Space is no longer a niche market, and many of our partners are already supporting the technologies that power it,” said Eddie Franklin, Senior Vice President of Vertical Markets and leader of the Space Tech Initiative at TD Synnex. “Through training, market intelligence and strategic partnerships, we’re helping partners understand where demand exists, develop differentiated solutions and turn opportunity into action.”
“The space industry has spent the last decade proving it can get to orbit,” said Bill Weber, Senior Partner at The Artemis Group. “The next challenge is scale, and scale happens on the ground. Every launch, satellite and ground station depends on the same IT infrastructure that runs any fast-growing business, and too many space companies are building it on the fly. Bringing the reach of TD Synnex into this market means space companies can spend less time managing technology and more time on the mission.”
TD Synnex plans to continue expanding the initiative through additional technology, education and industry collaborations, helping partners develop repeatable Space Tech practices and connect emerging customer requirements with solutions from across the technology ecosystem.
Channel Impact®
By combining the distributor’s technology ecosystem and channel expertise with specialized space-industry partnerships, partners can build market knowledge, develop differentiated solutions and translate growing demand into new business opportunities.
Sophos Launches Security Strategy Platform
Sophos, a UK-based cybersecurity company, has launched “Sophos CISO Advantage,” an agentic AI-enabled solution that connects security operations to security strategy. The solution is designed to give organizations a clear picture of their cyber risk, a prioritized plan to reduce it, and measurable proof of progress.
The offering builds a security assessment unique to each organization’s environment and threat profile, maps controls against frameworks including NIST CSF, CIS v8, Cyber Essentials Plus, and NCSC CAF, and turns the results into a prioritized, budget-aligned roadmap of what to fix first, and at what cost.
“Good security strategy has always required expertise that’s too scarce to scale, so it’s stayed a luxury only the largest enterprises could afford.” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president, product management, Sophos. “Sophos CISO Advantage changes that. We built it around the question every board is now asking its security team: are we safer than we were last quarter, and can you prove it? Putting a credible answer within reach of any organization, not just the ones that can staff a large security team, is how the industry starts to close the resilience gap.”
Sophos CISO Advantage can be run in-house or through MSPs delivering a billable service. The program is available as an annual term license or as a monthly subscription. Global availability is expected by the end of calendar year 2026.
Channel Impact®
The MSP-available offering assesses an organization’s environment, maps it against industry frameworks, and turns the result into a prioritized plan.
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