Monday Morning Impact – July 7
Gartner Predicts Over 40% of Agentic AI Projects Will Be Canceled by End of 2027
Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls, according to Gartner, Inc.
“Most agentic AI projects right now are early stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied,” said Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner. “This can blind organizations to the real cost and complexity of deploying AI agents at scale, stalling projects from moving into production. They need to cut through the hype to make careful, strategic decisions about where and how they apply this emerging technology.”
According to a January 2025 Gartner poll of 3,412 webinar attendees, 19% said their organization had made significant investments in agentic AI, 42% had made conservative investments, 8% no investments, with the remaining 31% taking a wait and see approach or are unsure.
Many vendors are contributing to the hype by engaging in “agent washing” – the rebranding of existing products, such as AI assistants, robotic process automation (RPA) and chatbots, without substantial agentic capabilities. Gartner estimates only about 130 of the thousands of agentic AI vendors are real.
“Most agentic AI propositions lack significant value or return on investment (ROI), as current models don’t have the maturity and agency to autonomously achieve complex business goals or follow nuanced instructions over time,” said Verma. “Many use cases positioned as agentic today don’t require agentic implementations.”
Gartner predicts at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI by 2028, up from 0% in 2024. In addition, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% in 2024.
Gartner clients can read more in the report, “Emerging Tech: Avoid Agentic AI Failure: Build Success Using Right Use Cases.”
Channel Impact®
In this early stage, Gartner recommends agentic AI only be pursued where it delivers clear value or ROI. Integrating agents into legacy systems can be technically complex, often disrupting workflows and requiring costly modifications. In many cases, rethinking workflows with agentic AI from the ground up is the ideal path to successful implementation.
HPE Consolidates Partner Program Strategy
HPE has rolled out a single, unified partner program consolidating existing programs across its entire portfolio. All programs will combine under HPE Partner Ready Vantage, including HPE Partner Ready and HPE Partner Ready for Networking, promising simplified enrollment, flexible participation, and comprehensive support through various program tracks.
The unified program will roll out in phases, beginning with an initial launch on November 1st.
“The new, unified HPE Partner Ready Vantage reflects our commitment to empowering partners and making it easier for them to differentiate with customers and grow their businesses,” said Simon Ewington, SVP of Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem at HPE. “This new program is simple, flexible and relevant, accelerating partners’ ability to engage with us, and deliver innovative solutions and services that provide brilliant results for their end customers.”
As part of the unified HPE Partner Ready Vantage Sell Track, partners can now resell the entire HPE portfolio of products and services in both operational expenditures (opex) via HPE GreenLake Flex solutions, and capital expenditures (capex) models through one program membership. Partners can choose where they want to focus and effectively drive growth in discrete technology areas like Compute, Hybrid Cloud and Networking, each having a dedicated center in the Sell Track. Partners can obtain core product training and certifications based on requirements in each center, and through optional competencies can develop specialized expertise in areas like Private Cloud, HPE GreenLake Flex, Hybrid Cloud Operations and SASE.
New areas of training and competencies are also being added, as well as a new migration tool, workshops, turnkey solutions, and financing options.
HPE Smart Choice, which is intended to simplify the sales process, is now globally available exclusively through the channel, providing partners with ready-to-go data center solutions targeting small and medium business (SMB) and mid-market customers.
Channel Impact®
The design of HPE Partner Ready Vantage is intended to support every partner, from solution providers and managed service providers to systems integrators, independent software vendors, through a one-program framework, a single compensation model, and a consistent experience.
Canalys: Global Cloud Infrastructure Spending Surges in Q1 2025
Global spending on cloud infrastructure services reached US$90.9 billion in Q1 2025, marking a 21% year-over-year increase. Based on research by Canalys, enterprises have recognized that deploying AI applications requires renewed emphasis on cloud migration. Meanwhile, to accelerate the enterprise adoption of AI at scale, leading cloud providers are intensifying efforts to optimize infrastructure, most notably through the development of proprietary chips aimed at lowering the cost of AI usage and improving inference efficiency.
In Q1 2025, the ranking of the top three cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) remained unchanged from the previous quarter, with their combined market share accounting for 65% of global cloud spending. Collectively, the three hyperscalers recorded a 24% year-on-year increase in cloud-related spending.
Growth momentum diverged among the top players. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud both maintained growth rates of over 30% (although Google Cloud’s growth slowed slightly from the previous quarter), while AWS grew by 17%, a deceleration from 19% growth in Q4 2024. This deceleration was largely driven by supply-side constraints, which limited the ability to meet rapidly rising AI-related demand, according to Canalys. In response, cloud hyperscalers have continued to invest aggressively in AI infrastructure to expand capacity and position themselves for long-term growth.
Overall, the global cloud services market sustained steady growth in Q1 2025, as enterprises sharpened their focus on two strategic priorities: accelerating cloud migration—either by shifting additional workloads or reviving stalled on-premises transitions—and exploring the adoption of generative AI. The rise of generative AI, which relies heavily on cloud infrastructure, has in turn reinforced enterprise cloud strategies and hastened migration timelines.
“As AI transitions from research to large-scale deployment, enterprises are increasingly focused on the cost-efficiency of inference, comparing models, cloud platforms, and hardware architectures such as GPUs versus custom accelerators,” said Rachel Brindley, Senior Director at Canalys. “Unlike training, which is a one-time investment, inference represents a recurring operational cost, making it a critical constraint on the path to AI commercialization.”
Channel Impact®
Large-scale investment in both cloud and AI infrastructure remains a defining theme of the market in 2025.
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