ICYMI: Cisco compute prices jump, AWS pays MSPs cash, and farewell to ICYMI

Hello and welcome to In Case You Missed It from ChannelBuzz.ca, your weekly roundup where we pull the signal from the noise and bring you the stories that matter most to Canadian IT resellers and MSPs. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

And this one is a bit of a milestone, because it’s the last one – at least in this format. Starting Monday April 20th, In The Channel is launching The Buzz, a daily five-minute briefing every weekday morning with three things you need to know. Same editorial commitment, sharper cadence. More on that at the end.

But first, we’re going out on a full week of genuinely important news. Let’s get right into it.

Lead story this week has a hard deadline attached to it, so let’s not bury the lede.

Cisco is implementing list price adjustments on April 18th – that’s a week from this Saturday – and those adjustments are focused primarily on compute hardware. The reason, as WBM Technologies laid out in their April 2026 procurement update, is the ongoing volatility in the memory market and broader cost pressures hitting the global IT supply chain.

And Cisco is just one data point in a picture that WBM’s Director of Strategic Procurement, Ashley Schell, paints pretty vividly in their latest update. HPE saw a 24 to 30 percent increase in list prices in March alone. HP is raising prices by at least 10 percent on personal systems and Poly products, effective April 1st. Intel and AMD have both confirmed CPU price increases for OEMs. Fortinet is implementing monthly price increases averaging around 10 percent. Lenovo is warning that custom orders are being pushed out by 20 weeks or more on certain configurations. And Dell has cut quote validity to 14 days.

The driver, as we’ve been tracking all year, is AI data center demand consuming memory capacity at a scale that’s pulling supply away from traditional commercial and channel products. Industry forecasters are now talking about this continuing well into 2027, and the chairman of SK Group – one of the largest memory manufacturers in the world – said this week that the shortage could last until 2030.

WBM’s recommendation is clear: if you have upcoming technology requirements, evaluate opportunities to pull those purchases forward now. If you have Cisco compute quotes in flight, get them locked before April 18th. And take a hard look at the rest of your pipeline – the rolling increases across vendors are not slowing down.

Shifting gears – this week AWS dropped its most significant partner program update in years, and for MSPs in particular, it changes the financial equation.

For the first time, AWS is paying direct cash to partners for delivering managed services. Not credits, not MDF – cash. AWS VP of Partner Core Julia Chen told CRN that AWS data shows MSP-supported customers demonstrate 3.4x higher cloud spend, 58 percent better retention rates, and 5.1x customer growth. The message is: managed services creates better customer outcomes, and AWS is starting to reward that directly.

But the bigger structural shift underneath this is what AWS is calling Partner Revenue Measurement. It’s a resource tagging system where partners tag workloads inside customer environments – so AWS can track and credit the revenue associated with partner-delivered work, even when the AWS seller is the one who books the deal. Chen was direct about the timeline: by the end of 2026, all AWS programs will depend on this measurement system, and she’s asking partners to have it in use by July.

The full update includes eight major changes – but the other headline items are: a revamped Partner Central platform with agentic AI that AWS says can cut admin time by 30 to 40 percent, a new AI Assessment Fund to help partners fund the initial risk of AI proof-of-concept engagements, a new Greenfield Program for incentivizing net-new AWS customer acquisition, and an upgraded AI Competency framework based on real outcomes rather than just credentials.

For Canadian MSPs on the AWS path: the program is getting more generous. But it’s also getting more measurement-driven. If you want the cash, you need to tag your work.

Nutanix held its annual .NEXT conference in Chicago this week, and the headline announcement was what Nutanix is calling a complete platform for the agentic AI era.

The Nutanix Agentic AI solution – first teased at NVIDIA GTC back in March – is now in early access, with full general availability planned for the second half of this year. It’s a full-stack platform designed to let enterprises build and operate AI applications on Nutanix Cloud Platform, integrating compute, storage, networking, and Kubernetes across hybrid multicloud environments. The timing of Nutanix’s broader pitch is not accidental – “run anything, anywhere, on whatever hardware you’ve got” is a message that lands differently in a market where HPE list prices just went up 30 percent in a month and Cisco compute is about to get more expensive. The company is explicitly positioning itself as the flexible infrastructure alternative for customers simultaneously reassessing their VMware dependency and trying to navigate a constrained supply chain.

The partner ecosystem angle at .NEXT was notable too – this is the first year with more than 100 partners at the event, and Nutanix announced a significant expansion of its hardware ecosystem, adding or deepening integrations with Cisco, Dell, AMD, NetApp, and Lenovo.

And for some Canadian content: Toronto-based Arctiq took home the 2026 Americas Reseller Momentum Award at .NEXT, recognized for exceptional year-over-year sales growth, customer success, and expanded technical certifications across the Nutanix platform. Arctiq has had a busy year on the M&A front as well – they announced acquisitions of both Verinext and Shadow-Soft in recent months, building out their hybrid cloud, security, and observability capabilities. A Canadian partner winning a global award on a stage like this is always worth noting. Well done, Arctiq.

For our closer this week – a bit of perspective on the Canadian tech ecosystem.

Various trackers now put the count of Canadian tech unicorns – companies valued at a billion dollars or more – somewhere between 30 and 35 depending on your source. And when you look at that list, a couple of things stand out.

First, you’ll find companies we cover regularly in a channel context. 1Password is sitting at a $6.8 billion valuation. eSentire is on the same list. These are not scrappy newcomers – these are mature, established companies with deep enterprise footprints and real track records. The unicorn label sometimes makes everything sound like a startup story, but what this list actually tells you is that the Canadian cybersecurity sector in particular has been compounding quietly for a long time.

Second, it’s a useful reference point. The next time someone frames Canadian tech as a branch plant, or treats buying Canadian as a compromise – this list is your answer. Thirty-plus billion-dollar companies across security, fintech, SaaS, and infrastructure. Worth bookmarking.

And that’s a wrap – on this episode, and on the In Case You Missed It format.

I want to take a genuine moment to thank you for tuning in to ICYMI over its run. The goal was always the same: surface the stories that actually matter for Canadian IT resellers and MSPs, connect the dots across a noisy week of news, and give you something you could act on. I hope it’s done that.

Looking back at the arc of just the last few weeks – the Broadcom deadline forcing VMware decisions, the memory shortage turning into a full-scale supply chain crisis, agentic AI moving from vendor talking point to actual shipped product across Ingram Micro, AWS, Rewst, and now Nutanix – it’s been a genuinely consequential stretch of time for this industry. Lots to keep track of. That’s not slowing down.

Which is exactly why we’re evolving the format. Starting Monday April 20th, In The Channel is launching The Buzz – a daily five-minute briefing published every weekday morning at seven a.m. Eastern, covering three things Canadian IT solution providers need to know that day. Same editorial standards. Tighter format. Every morning.

I’d like to thank you for your support of In The Channel and ChannelBuzz.ca. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories – and if the show has been useful to you, a rating or a review always helps more people find it.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.