Component Shortages Could Impact PC Refresh: Circana

Challenges around the availability of memory and chip components could be a limiting factor in channel PC sales growth in 2026 if OEMs divert supply to AI infrastructure and system prices rise.

[What follows is a transcript of the above video]

Jennifer Follett, vice president of U.S. content and executive editor, CRN: 2026 has dawned and the channel is primed for growth. I am Jennifer Follett with CRN and I’m here with Mike Crosby of Circana. Mike, Happy New Year.

Mike Crosby, executive director, Circana: Happy New Year to you. I’m looking forward to spending a couple of minutes with you today.

Follett: Sounds good. Let’s jump right in. 2026 is here. The channel is ready to go and looking for opportunities for growth. Just before we even get into all the numbers, you guys have your forecast, but let’s just look maybe at some of the issues that you’re watching that are going to impact these economic and channel growth numbers as we head into the new year.

Crosby: Yeah, I think what we like to do, and I think it’s great for this, is we kind of like to level set again with lot of the inputs we see at the macroeconomic side. And a big part of that is there’s obviously the lingering and a lot of the uncertainty that’s come along with tariffs. So we feel like there’s still some stabilization that’s going to continue to occur.

But right now, macroeconomically, the two big areas we’re watching is inflation, because the expectation is we’re still going to see inflation continue to elevate a little bit. We haven’t seen the full effect of tariffs, and think as volumes have already now, or the channels that we work through in significant volumes, any of the buffer inventory that was brought in earlier at the lower price, you’re going to start to see that elevation of the ASPs [average selling prices] a little bit more and a little bit more. So we’re going to continue to watch that, but certainly inflation is a big one.

The other one is unemployment, another big input for us. I mean, we look at it, we had unemployment peaking at about 4.7. We think it might even come up a little bit higher likely in 2027 and start to get a little bit better and start to show expansion again in 2028. So those are the two big ones that the Feds are watching because we believe also the Federal Reserve has probably one more quarter-point cut, possibly two, but I think that’s going to be the interesting point.

The other couple of inputs that we’re watching that I think are also important is with the legislation that was passed last year, there’s some significant tax benefits and other things that should be a little bit more pro-business. And so that should help elevate a little bit the opportunity for investment. Plus with interest rates coming down just a little bit, it also makes cost of capital come down a little bit. So that should help spur some additional investment coming for all sizes, small, mid-size, and enterprise. So those are the big things that we’re watching. Again, in the general flow of it, the expectation is ’26 is likely to be very similar to ’25 GDP-wise and other.

Same with even ’27 a little bit, but then we should start to see some acceleration coming back in 2028 is what our algorithm is saying and suggesting that we’ll start to see more accelerated growth, expansion, you’re going to have inflation in line. So a lot of the things that we’re working towards we think are really going to be setting up nicely for a little bit more of an acceleration in 2028. But those are the big inputs that we’re kind of watching on a regular basis.

Follett: Sounds good. Let’s look at the actual numbers. What are you guys expecting for the overall outlook for hardware and software and services as the channel prepares for 2026 and beyond?

Crosby: Yeah, so if we combine everything in 2026, we’re up about 3 percent. And if you look at it overall, that’s more than the revenue number overall. We tend to aggregate everything, at least on revenue, for software, for services, as well as hardware. If you break it down into a couple of different pieces, if you look at IT hardware, that would be everything except services and what we talked about with software and cloud. 2026, we’re coming at about 2 percent positive, but this is the interesting thing. We’re still seeing units down about 4 percent overall, and mainly the revenue is going to be propped up by higher ASPs. So this is what we’re suggesting as well. We’ve already seen some influence of mix, so some of the mix was stepped up a little bit, and ultimately we saw that impacted as well with tariff impact. So you combine those two together and as I was mentioning earlier, most of that lower-cost inventory has been worked through the system. So any replenished product now is likely at the higher price that you’re going to feel the full effect of the tariffs. So yeah, we feel like that you’re going to see pressure there and again, elevating the ASPs, not solely on tariffs but certainly on mix, is going to continue to influence that.

We do see then revenue, if you look at it for IT hardware in 2026, start to show a little bit more acceleration. We’re going to 4 percent but still seeing higher ASPs, 4 percent in revenue gain. And then when you get to ’28, we’re ultimately going see us accelerate again with about a 4 percent gain, but you’re starting to see units recover a little bit.

So this is that weird dynamic as we look at units and dollars. Look at ’26 and ’27 where units are going be declining a little bit, down in single digits, down between 3 percent and 4 percent.

But ultimately as we get to ’28, the expectation as units should start to elevate a little bit.

There’s a couple of other things too I want to call out that we are watching closely for this year that I know is pretty critical is access some core components like DRAM and if you look at SSDs as well for storage. There’s a couple of challenges that have been going on. If you look at the three primary manufacturers that are creating that, there’s already been a pretty good transition to a newer technology, DDR5 versus DDR4, for the RAM side. But we’re seeing a lot of their supply being allocated more to the higher margin sides of AI and AI infrastructure and server. So the challenge with that is we still see a pretty good momentum continuing on PC refresh. What we saw mostly led by enterprise last year, there’s still room for enterprise to continue. So there’s going to be kind of a longer tail, but mid-size and small business have still some pretty good growth to come. And that’s when we thought the lion’s share of the PC refresh was going to be in ’26, more oriented towards small and medium. But I think there’s still an element of that. But I think the question will be, will some of these core components ultimately impact availability and will it also impact pricing and potentially elevate it even higher?

So there’s some volatility in the number, but that gives you hopefully a high level on at least what we’re expecting over the next three years.

Follett: I remember when we saw the chip shortages around the pandemic time that the manufacturers, the OEMs, had to make some choices because of that as to where were they going to allocate and were there maybe less desirable systems that actually were going to now be pushed forward because they had chips for those and not for others. What types of impact do you expect the OEMs to have to look at as far as making these kinds of choices in their portfolios for PCs?

Crosby: Yeah, very similar. I think you’re going to see very similar things, whereas they’re looking at their own P&L and say, we know there’s significant demand still for PC-related components that are going into PCs. At the same time, when you look on the AI side, you can see a significant growth opportunity on higher margins.

So this is going to be moved out. And again, I think it can’t be a binary all in or all out, but you’re likely to still see a little bit of a thinner kind of a supply line for the lower-margin products. And you’re going to see that expand and be allocated a little bit more towards the higher margin. So that is where I think we have some concern ultimately on this timing of this. Now there will be, I think, opportunities where there’s going to be availability on higher-end products. So it may also have here B2B end users ultimately look at, or organizations ultimately look at stepping up configs. Maybe the availability is a little bit stronger on higher end, but that also means they’re going be spending a little bit more.

So I think this is all in the balance of where all this is going, but it’s going to be interesting. One other thing I think I mentioned earlier was on the size of the workforce. We are anticipating, and basically some of the modeling that we’re seeing, you’re actually going to see likely a little bit of a contraction on the overall workforce. And what we saw, most of the PCs that were refreshed in ’25 were more replacement, not for net-new hires, so you didn’t see the attach rate with monitors and docking stations and other things at the time, because it was more of just refreshing a device to a new device. What we’ll start to see, trailing this a little bit is you should start to see a little bit more activation around monitor refresh and docking refresh as well. So that might come as a little bit of a secondary refresh to these PCs because most docks and monitors have a much longer life cycle. They operate on a five-to-seven-year life cycle where PCs tend to operate more on that functional kind of four-year [cycle].

So we were kind of in between last year, but now that we’ve got a lot of the devices refreshed on the enterprise side, that’s when we think we might see a little bit of an acceleration also coming potentially on the monitor and on the docking station side. So anyway, they’re very much aligned with what’s going on with this regular refresh of devices.

Follett: So where, as you mentioned, some of these higher-level specs might be the ones that are available, do you think that that’s going to be a way for the OEMs to push people toward AI PCs? Maybe those are the ones that are going to have memory and storage available?

Crosby: Yes, and we’ve already seen it and we’re seeing in AI PC, as we track it uniquely at Circana, in that we segment AI PCs both from an on-device capability and from a cloud-oriented. And cloud tended to be more legacy, more Chromebook and more older Windows devices without an NPU. So what we really spent most of our time now is on on-device capable with the NPU. And we’ve already seen a pretty good acceleration moving forward, and we’re expecting that to continue. Part of it is attrition. The older devices without an NPU are going away. But also you’re seeing higher levels of adoption. And certainly people with AI, I think they’re starting to get a little bit more of a sophisticated view of what they can do with it and how they can use it effectively. I mean, the technology was a little bit out in front of the use cases as we knew when AI PCs first launched. That’s starting to catch up in a pretty reasonable way now. And so I think organizations are not just looking at it as general productivity kind of at a very base level. They’re really starting to now to create and leverage and implement some of these use cases that will drive the ASPs higher, will drive those higher-end configurations. So I think the benefits of both of those, to your point, may help justify that additional cost tied to maybe what ultimately is more available. We’re also seeing, I think what’s going to be interesting for OEMs is consumers are also, well, they’ve been also doing their own refresh, and we’ve seen the consumer slow down a little bit. We hear lot of references on the K-shaped economy where the higher incomes are driving the majority of the refresh of devices and the low- and middle-income consumers are still struggling, don’t have a lot of available dollars, discretionary [dollars], to be buying PCs. So I think you’re going to see a little bit more towards the B2B side than the consumer side because it’s a little bit healthier. There’s more, I think, established pent-up demand, and they tend to buy up a little bit higher end in devices. So I think even as OEMs are trying to allocate not only within B2B, will there also be maybe some elements there tied to between a consumer mix and a commercial mix, because I think it’s going to lean a little bit more towards the commercial side.

Follett: OK. One of the PC refresh drivers we were talking quite a bit about through 2025 was the sunset of Microsoft Windows 10. And so I’m just curious, how did that end up in 2025? What percentage of businesses did go ahead and make the switchover to 11 and how many are still left to go?

Crosby: Where we are now, the good news is that the majority, so if you look at the majority over, it’s over 50 percent, but more of it we saw, more success with Enterprise. They had larger fleets in the field, and they had a little bit longer window of time to refresh. We saw that near about 80 percent was the migration over towards Windows 11 versus Windows 10, which is very good. There’s still about 20 percent though, again, of a very big part of the pie that still has to migrate over. And even where they were leveraging the bridge that Microsoft provided for that from a security standpoint, you’re still going to see that trail. It’s going to be that longer tail, I’m suggesting, on that last 20 percent of enterprise. If you go to mid-size business and smaller businesses, it was a little bit less established. Mid-size was pretty good, around 60-some percent, so there’s still a range there that still has some work to do. And most of the trailing was on small business, and that’s where we’re anticipating it is going to be bigger part of what was to be, again, this continued refresh in 2026 and likely even a trailing in 2027. So you really have to look at it not all in one, but you have to look at it from each of the different sizes of businesses.

One thing that’s been interesting though is, especially within those highly regulated sectors like health care or banking and finance, that’s where there was some real pressure to migrate over within that timely perspective of the Windows 10 sunset because part of that regulation in each of those industries was tied to having a full-functioning operating system. And that had to be not just the bridge or the patch, but it had to be the full operating system with all the support, all the updates that are required by that. So those regulated sectors really put a lot of pressure on a lot of those larger businesses to make that move and make that migration timely within the sunset date.

Follett: Right. What about on the software and services side? What are the numbers that you’re expecting to see there through 2026 and beyond?

Crosby: Yeah, software again, we’ve seen software kind of bounce around a little bit. We did see it come in, I think our numbers, the latest established [for 2025], did come in about 4 percent gain in revenue on a year over year basis. We’re anticipating for [2026] to come in about the same, again, roughly about 4 percent, but we do see some additional acceleration that’s expected in ’27 and in ’28. They’re going to go from like 6 percent growth, even to 8 percent growth, and that’s kind of where we’ve been trending, and I think that’s going to be, again, primarily driven by security is going to be a big part of it. Content collaboration continues to be a significant part, but those two areas for the most part are where we see it. And security is even more so than ever continues to be paramount with not only largest businesses, but also small businesses. And with AI being introduced in some of these, you’re going to see, again, additional expansion and growth there where that investment continues to occur.

On the services side, we saw it a little bit flatter. We came in on the services side, if you look, we were in ’25, down about 4 percent, but we think that’s going to narrow a little bit. We think in ’26, it’s going to get a little better, roughly about a down at 2 percent decline, but the expectation is we’re going to round that and start to show growth and expansion. So as the economy starts to flex a little bit and grow, we’re going to see services again elevate. And that should be around that 2 percent gain likely in 2028, 2027, maybe a little flat to maybe a 1 percent growth.

Follett: What role do you see the subscription and services-led models playing in that future growth?

Crosby: You know what’s interesting is, I was just having a conversation on this with another analyst the other day. There’s a couple different things and I’ll tie it back to the PC refresh. As we see AI being introduced more, more integrated into certain of these sectors, there are certain sectors out of the 20 that we track are more AI-centric and less AI-centric. And the more AI-centric, they’re likely going to refresh devices faster and faster.

And so if you start to see now PC refresh go from like a four year on average to maybe a three year on average, now you’re starting to hear on the hardware side, very similar to what we see on the software is looking at as a service and software subscription-based would be more of an operating expense rather than a CapEx expense on the hardware. So you’re seeing it not only on the hardware side begin to emerge that as more AI is integrated in, we’re refreshing devices faster.

Many big companies are saying, why do we need to use CapEx and procure these? Why don’t, as my organization is flexing, either growing or declining, if I move to an OpEx model, where I’m more subscription or as a service, it gives me flexibility. So I definitely think that is going to be continuing, leaning a little bit more on the hardware.

Software continues to be there, but I think what’s going to be interesting about software is we’re ultimately going to start to look at different consumption models. Like is it a pay-as-you-go rather than a monthly subscription license? And I think that’s where, or a monthly billable or an annual, they’re going to look at different ways that some of these subscriptions are operating. Again, trying to align a little bit closer to maybe how businesses work, how they grow, how they expand or decline. I think it’s that flexibility.

So that as a whole, I think subscriptions are probably going to continue to change a little bit, a little bit on the software that we just talked about, but also on the hardware side. I think you’re going to start to see that being more of a dialogue and a consideration than maybe it has been in a while. I think it’s starting to emerge.

The other thing that I didn’t finish on my comment on the refresh, on those other sectors that are maybe less AI-centric, you may see refreshes take longer. You may see now people carry devices now into five years, maybe six years.

And so what you’re going to see is maybe what we saw in this refresh might be one of the last that you see kind of a traditional, four-year cycle, and every four years we see the devices refresh, you’re going to see it broken up a little bit. And maybe you see a little bit different cadence depending on the vertical that you play within and depending on how they choose to procure their IT, both hardware and software.

Follett: Yeah. I mean, the software and the services pieces, those are obviously the areas where channel partners tend to get higher margin. Should they be concerned that there’s not higher growth outlook there?

Crosby: I don’t think so because I think there are still, and again [those growth expectations] are an aggregate of looking at everything, I think as you look at areas, there are still very clear and strong pockets of growth. And as I’ve talked to a lot of service providers on what their focus is, their rapid education and adoption of AI and understanding and being knowledgeable, that’s going to continue to bode well for them, certainly right now, because we’re seeing a lot of larger businesses, rather than hire their own talent, in many cases, they’re tapping into existing talent that can flex again accordingly. So rather than keeping their businesses flexible by accessing through contract, I can leverage these third-party organizations that really specialize in some of those areas.

So I’ve talked to so many partners that really embraced AI, they continue to embrace it, and I think looking for areas of growth and opportunity, certainly more specialized than general, but within those areas of specialization, I think there’s huge opportunities still. And I think it’s like with any other, any one, right, as change is inevitable, as we know, and it’s accelerating. And I think as long as channel partners and service providers continue to try and stay out in the forefront of this a little bit. And they’re responding to this in a proactive way. I think they’re set up to ride that wave. And again, I think, while we’re suggesting a flat number in 2027, I think that’s still a very healthy number. And as I said, I think there’s core pockets that are going to do very, well, certainly around security will continue to be reinforced there.

Follett: Let’s talk a little bit more about AI and the expected adoption in 2026. Can you give any highlights on how you think that’s going to play out as far as across the different market segments like enterprise versus mid-market versus SMB? How are these segments going to be changing and shifting their adoption of AI compared to what we saw in 2025?

Crosby: Yeah, think in 2025 it was still very, very early. There was still a lot of learning that was going on, on just kicking the tires on AI and understanding where and how does this really fit within my organization. One area that you’re going to see AI become really, really hyper critical, in fact, I just posted a LinkedIn article on this now, is on agentic AI, specifically around procurement. What you’re going to likely see, and this is already accelerating now, where you’re going to see agent to agent now, both in identifying inputs and understanding where things are, proposing an action, and then potentially running in parallel with digital twins, try these potential solutions, find the best one. But then the next step is taking the action and going. And that’s going to compress a lot of what’s going to go on significantly. And I saw a recent stat that suggested by 2030, there’s going to be a huge portion of the way that companies are going to be transacting with suppliers within B2B that will be very similar to this, where agentic AI is going to drive a significant part of this process, specifically within procurement as one area.

But again, that’s one area. So I guess what I’m suggesting is last year was more a general kind of a horizontal view of what AI can do. And let’s just get an idea. And then more importantly, how does that integrate within my business or my organization, my business model? And then you started to see splintering off of vertically=oriented solutions. You’re seeing AI now activated in product development, where they’re looking at all kinds of additional inputs that are coming in from surveys and other results and assessing and ultimately suggesting and build modeling around, “Here’s what the next-gen product should look like.” So it’s taking something that was so manual and compressing it very, very quickly. And then you can run, again, these digital twins and say, “Hey, here’s the new product at $1,000, how do you think the market would respond to it?” And you’re getting active response back and making these determinations. And I think just that alone, if you can improve the success of new products that are launched, because so many don’t do well, and that significant cost that’s lost, you’re going to start to see this where this is going to refine this more and more. And it’s like a sharpening edge. This is going to continue to get sharper and sharper. But everything from horizontal and general productivity to these vertical-oriented pieces around functions, new product development, services, how they service their clients, how they procure product. All of these things are starting to develop. So I think ’26 is going to be and still continue to be, again, a lot of learning because AI is evolving very, very quickly. But at the same time, I think you’re starting to see some real roots put down relative to what are some values that we can see. And companies are embracing it and recognize the clock is ticking, that if they lag in looking at ways to adopt AI and integrate into their organizations, they potentially are going to be left out. And I think there’s a real pressure to make sure, are we doing everything that we should be doing? Are we thinking in this the right way? And it’s becoming much more part of the strategic thinking around where AI is going to be in five years, which will be miles ahead of where we are now. But I think AI has gone from, “This is really new and interesting, and I think there’s real possibility here,” to, “OK, we’re already seeing more implementation, more measurement, and we’re going to see this broaden and expand as we go.” So yeah, think it’s definitely, this is not something that’s, you know, that was a one and done kind of a thing and we saw it as just the tip of the iceberg still. So I think it’s going to be significant.

Follett: One of the age-old challenges of solution providers that sell hardware is the idea that they go in, they make the case, they convince somebody that they need this new hardware, and then it goes to procurement and they get shuffled out of the deal or the margin disappears. In an era where you’re about now AI agents talking to AI agents in procurement, is that fear heightened?

Crosby: I think it can be. I think because you’re re-evaluating now and even think about the basic selling process and the value of relationships and the human element in this agent-to-agent kind of procurement. Does it devalue all of that and now it’s just simply a transaction? And I think this is where businesses can’t just go all in. This is where I think there’s going to be some learning in the way. So it might do some of the homework and some of the other efforts, but then we’re still going to need and require kind of that trust level relationship and the inputs that go on. But I think what potentially you’re going to see is these relationships are going to change. And certainly at the transactional part may become agent to agent, but the value proposition of the knowledge and understanding of the market, the trust and the relationship, all those things are going to continue to carry forward. So it just may change a little bit. But yeah, think it’s been very interesting as I’ve started to dig into to agentic AI specifically around procurement, and it’s such the early stage, but it is accelerating very, very quickly.

And there’s got to be some real governance too that goes on with companies on how do they want to adopt AI and implement it? They just don’t want to plug it in and let it run? I think there’s going to be expectations of what are the guardrails within AI? How much can they leverage on the automation part of it and the speed? At the same time, there’s still going to be some accountability with AI, and that’s obviously where people come in.

I think it’s going to be an emerging thing, and I’d love to have this conversation with you again in another year relative to where we’ve already seen it kind of move because it is moving at lightning speed.

Follett: You touched on earlier the workforce, the size of the workforce and how that might shift. Through 2025, we saw so many companies with layoffs and one of the major themes that emerged was, “We’re reallocating because of AI.” And it was a little hard to tell how real that was vs. that saying it was because of AI was a more attractive or more palatable shift for the market to absorb. What’s your take on that and how much will AI really truly impact the shape and size of the workforce in 2026?

Crosby: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think, to your point, I think it was an easy answer to provide the media that suggested that it’s all AI, but there were obviously other things that were factoring in. AI, where we are seeing as I’d suggested earlier, we are seeing AI being integrated into mostly a lot of taking up what would have been operating expense tied to new entry, new hire, new headcount. So typically, normal employees that they have found ways and means to leverage AI that basically has the ability to take on a lot of that general responsibility.

The problem with that is where it looks good on the P &L short term, the problem is longer term, you start to develop some gaps within your organizational structure and the hierarchy and your bench and your bench strength and where does it go? So right now, will it hurt? It’ll probably look great for a year. OK, we’ve not hired all these people. We’ve integrated AI that P &L looks stronger.

At the same time, two, three, four years, when now you’ve got employees leaving and you want to try and promote within your organization, who are you promoting from? Where’s the bench that you’re tapping into? So that’s again, back to I think there has to be some strategic thinking organizationally around that AI should be augmenting what we have rather than replacing. And I think that’s the common thing that I’m hearing more and more is that our intention isn’t to just wholesale gut the organization; the intention is how do we make employees even more productive and more efficient. But with that productivity now, Jen, now maybe it means where I had a team of five people doing all these jobs, now I can have a team of two people leveraging AI, so the net effect is I am seeing a smaller organization.

So I think you’re going to continue to see those efficiencies that drive that. That’s what you’re also hearing, too, a lot of companies are really advocating for reskilling aggressively and are pushing that hard. But I think as I looked at some of the data, which was interesting, we don’t really see the significant job creation that we saw earlier for a while. We don’t really get back to job expansion until probably 2028 that we were suggesting. So while you’re not seeing massive layoffs, but you’re still seeing maybe not significantly higher layoffs, but we are seeing really slow down in hiring. Just to give you a quick stat, if you look at college grads age 20 to 24, right now the unemployment rate is anywhere between 9 and 10 percent. So the real challenge is that new-in-the-entering the workforce. They’re educated, but yet they don’t have any more practical experience. And so the challenge is, they’re finding AI today is a better investment, maybe short term, because again, you’re not going to reap the rewards on an entry-level employee for a little bit of a time. But ultimately, again, the longer-term challenges that ultimately starts to get your bench like we were talking about. So it’s going to be interesting where it goes. I do think you’re going to continue to see companies try and do more with less and augment more and more with AI. And that will be the reality of what we’re seeing. But hopefully, as we’ve seen with lot of other really significant technology changes, new jobs emerge. And I think right now we’re in that weird in-between place where the new jobs aren’t emerging, and you’re seeing AI start to augment and, again, and start to impact it here. So there’s going to be a little bit of a certainly a transition, and that’s going to be difficult for some.

Follett: Are you anecdotally seeing solution providers ingesting these same trends into their own workforces? Are we seeing, for example, fewer help desk positions because we’re using AI to handle some of those level one issues? Are other areas of the solution provider workforce following these same trends?

Crosby: I think you’re going to see that naturally because as they start to lose, I think, some of those opportunities that maybe were core to them. And that’s again, as we were talking about where I think the solution provider, again, the general thing is general, right? Kind of on a horizontal, typically it’s more commoditized and the margin is less.

And those are the areas that think AI is attacking first, that horizontal, general productivity. You’re going to see a lot of leverage again around help desk and intelligent help desk that’s more efficient, more effective, and likely even more cost-beneficial to companies. So if a solution provider is doing more of those general horizontal services, that really puts them at risk. When they start to narrow it up and go a little bit more vertically oriented, that not only preserves a little bit of longevity on the opportunity, but also the margin opportunity is stronger. So there’s better margins and I think more growth and opportunity.

This is where I think, as we said, if you’re a laggard within the solution provider community, that’s where you’re putting yourself at risk ultimately because like in anything, as it gets commoditized out, there’s less brand loyalty to that and ultimately anybody that can provide that service either equivalent value or better overall at a lower cost is going to win. And I think that’s where we’re seeing and I’m hearing more and more that really a lot of those solution providers are being much more proactive around, we’ve to get in the front of this train a little bit relative to where this is going and understand where those core areas that problems are and where the challenges that companies are facing, and that’s the area that we’re going to take advantage of and exploit. And we’re going to reinforce the training, the education, the solutions, that really help address that, but that’s not a static thing. They’re going to have to continue to skate up front and move on to the next thing.

And I think that’s where the, what I’ve always experienced in my career being the channel as long as I have is that it’s the agility of the channel that continues to keep them relevant. And I think if they stop being quick and agile and being able to move and try and anticipate where things are going, that puts real pressure on everybody’s business. And so I think this is where the channel tends to excel. Again, that agility and the ability to get out in front of this a little bit and then create an opportunity. And that’s where a lot of them are being successful now. And it’s early. It’s early stage.

Other areas I will tell you that I’m seeing a lot of opportunity with solution providers too is on the energy side, because, again, energy is so critical to what’s going on with data centers and certainly with where the spend is.

And there’s still real challenges right now. There’s going to be accelerating demand, but we still have a little bit of a delta between what the grid can support. There’s new expansion constantly going on. And I’m hearing and seeing more solution providers add an element of energy, along with technology, along with security, that is in those environments that are really making kind of an interesting opportunity out of it. And again, that’s all a good high margin. That’s all where the momentum is right now if you look at a lot of the technology buy.

Follett: Well Mike, that’s some solid advice to end on, so why don’t we call it here. I appreciate your time so much. Thanks for walking us through what partners can expect for 2026 and where they should be spending their time and energy. Really appreciate it.

Crosby: You got it. Thanks for the time. Great seeing you.