Not a concept, not a pilot: GTIA’s Innovate Awards are looking for AI that’s earning its keep

Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show.

The IT channel has spent a couple of years now convincing itself it’s an AI industry. The data from GTIA’s own research tells a more complicated story. 98% of IT service providers say they’re using AI in some form, but when you drill down on that, you find a channel that’s mostly tinkering. Individual employees experimenting with ChatGPT, engineers using Copilot for coding. No formal strategy, no governance, nobody in charge. Real AI maturity is still the exception, not the rule.

The Global Technology Industry Association is responding to that gap with a new program, the Innovate Awards – and the framing is deliberate: deployed, in production, with measurable results. Not a concept, not a pilot, not a Copilot rollout. A real AI solution that’s generating real revenue or saving real money today.

Applications for these awards are now closed, and the finalists are heading to ChannelCon in San Diego in August, where they’ll have to stand in front of expert judges and defend their results. As my guest put it: it’s a shark tank, except you’re pitching the end result, not the idea.

My guest today is Carolyn April, vice president of research and market intelligence at GTIA, and the person behind the State of the Channel research – with the best view in the industry of where the channel’s AI maturity actually stands.

Let’s get right into it, my chat with Carolyn April.

Carolyn, thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it.

Carolyn April: Happy to be here.

Robert Dutt: Before we get into the program details of the Innovate Awards, I want to understand what you’re actually responding to here. When you look at where IT solution providers are with AI right now, what’s the problem or the gap that the Innovate Awards are designed to address?

Carolyn April: I think what we’re trying to do with the Innovate Awards is to show the average ITSP out there – the general population – what is currently happening on the cutting edge with AI. Right now, I think I can safely say that AI is still in its infancy in terms of real, monetized, revenue-generating solutions for the average ITSP. But there are those on the leading edge who are doing innovative things that are generating revenue for their companies. So it’s a way to sort of dangle in front of them – see that you can get there. This is happening. We like to showcase the folks who have gotten ahead of the game with AI, which is where the channel needs to go. It’s not a negotiable direction for many in the channel today. They need to be taking this seriously. It is a thing, and it’s not going away. So let’s showcase the folks who have gotten ahead of it and be a window into what is possible.

Robert Dutt: And I think it’s meaningful that the focus is on – and I think the language used is “deployed and in production” as opposed to “conceptual” or “experimental.” It feels like a pointed statement that the goal is to find what’s actually making or saving money today.

Carolyn April: Yes, that’s absolutely true. And we can look at our data here. When you ask ITSPs “Are you using AI?” – 98%, so pretty much universal, say yes. When you drill down a little more and ask how they’re using it, you can clearly see it isn’t in any strategic way. They’re using it internally, but most of the use is among individual users. People are experimenting with ChatGPT, experimenting with Copilot. Some engineers are coding with it. But there’s no formalization around that AI. There’s nobody in charge of AI within their organizations. They don’t have process, policy, or any of the governance things that really need to be in place for you to take something you’re doing internally and externalize it – start to sell it as a product or a service. So we’re really in that phase right now where we need to move from experimentation and informal usage to strategic usage, and then to revenue-generating usage. The folks we’ll showcase through the Innovate Awards are those that have already made those steps.

Robert Dutt: You’ve got two categories – an internal AI solution and a customer-facing AI solution. As you’ve been talking to people and deploying this program, where are you seeing more genuine, production-grade work happening right now? Are MSPs building this internally in their own operations, or delivering it to customers first?

Carolyn April: MSPs are definitely going the route of internal first. And they should be. It’s not a wise idea – and this is true of cybersecurity as well – to go to market as the expert in either of those disciplines without having your own house in order. You need to have deployed AI internally to do automation and create cost and process efficiencies within your own business. You don’t want to get in a situation where you’ve overpromised, or worse, delivered poorly, and lost the customer. So most of the work today among MSPs is internal.

In moving to external manifestations of that, it would be taking some of those lessons learned from internal automation and applying them to how customers can also automate services and processes. There’s a lot of work being done around the stack. If you’ve got customers on Office 365, you’re talking Copilot rollouts – that’s one of the very low-hanging-fruit beginning stages. And then there’s vendors infusing AI into existing products, so MSPs are continuing to work with the same products they already sold, only now they have an AI component.

A lot of this can all be wrapped around consulting. Customers today are saying: “I’ve heard about AI, I can’t avoid hearing about AI, but do I need it in my company? How do I use it? Please help.” They’re throwing up their hands. It’s a huge opportunity for smart MSPs to go in, be that expert, and hold their hand through it. The old saying about the channel – “where there’s mystery, there’s margin” – and there certainly is a great deal of mystery around AI, and there will continue to be for some time.

Robert Dutt: Can you give me a sense of what kinds of use cases you’re hoping to see come through with the awards? Not to telegraph the judging, but just to help MSPs understand what award-worthy looks like in practice today.

Carolyn April: There’s a lot of interpretation there, obviously, because we’re dealing with a new technology. Something that may not seem completely off the charts in terms of innovation might actually be very innovative and generate a lot of revenue and profit.

In terms of solutions – anything that elevates AI to a specific use case of the customer would be something I’d deem award-worthy. We talk a lot about vertical industries and vertical focus. An MSP or ITSP that can apply an AI technology solution specifically to the vertical their customer lives in – whether that’s healthcare, retail, or manufacturing, customizing that – there’s a unique aspect there that our judges would be very interested in.

Anything to do with cybersecurity is going to be a giant area. AI is both friend and foe when it comes to cyber – it’s a great new defensive tool, but the bad guys have those same tools at their disposal. Anyone who has figured out a good way to use AI within the cybersecurity defenses they’re setting up for customers would be a strong use case example.

And then there’s application development. AppDev has never been a big area for a lot of channel companies – they don’t typically have software engineers on staff. But with AI, it’s made it a lot easier for them to do coding themselves, so they can create their own intellectual property, their own applications. Customers can say: “We need something very specific to our company and the way we do things – how can we spin up an application quickly without a six-month software project?” ITSPs that have started to use AI in a coding context might be another standout. Those are just three examples – there are probably a lot more.

Robert Dutt: The flip side of that – what do you see as not qualifying? What’s the line between genuine innovation that’s meeting the mark for customers and something that’s still in the proof-of-concept, dipping-your-toe-in-the-water kind of phase?

Carolyn April: We’re really looking for solutions that have been deployed and are earning – generating revenue right now – and where you can measure the results. The big measuring stick is that this solution needs to be truly operational. That’s the important thing. Proof-of-concept, pilot projects – all important, because operational solutions all started there. But those are going to be less interesting to the judges who are really looking for things that are in the field right now.

And there are solutions being adopted more widely already – like helping customers AI-ify their productivity tools – that are going to be probably less exciting to the judges because they’re being done more universally. Now, if they’re customizing that in some way to create a vertical solution or an integration on top of Copilot – now that could get the interest of the judges. That’s taking it to the next level we’re talking about.

Robert Dutt: So rolling out Copilot – not so much. Doing something new, innovative, business-changing on top of it – yes.

Carolyn April: Absolutely.

Robert Dutt: A lot of MSPs and ITSPs are smaller shops. Is there a scale dimension to this? Or are we still early enough in the game that a genuinely impactful deployment from a 10-person MSP can compete on the same footing as something from a much larger player?

Carolyn April: They can compete, but right now we are seeing a gap. And it’s not necessarily because of the size of that ITSP. Just because you’re a small company doesn’t mean you can’t blow it out of the water with AI. But one of the things that’s a hindrance to companies of that size right now is not having the resources and capacity to look at AI in a strategic way. It’s a side project for a lot of these small companies.

What larger companies that are doing this well are able to do is devote the resources to formalization – assigning somebody internally, whether full-time or part-time, to be the AI maven of their organization. The one that’s really in charge of creating the AI structure, determining what the process and policies are going to be, and building governance. Until you can create governance within your company, AI will remain a side project. And as long as it remains a side project, you’ll see that gap between larger and smaller companies.

When smaller companies are able to make that strategic shift, the sky’s the limit in terms of margin and revenue. But it’s really about having the resources to get there right now.

One example: pricing models. AI is going to upend current pricing models – especially for MSPs, it’s going to change the way everybody figures out how to price things. And delivery models too. Until those things are figured out, AI will remain a side project for a lot of smaller companies, because they’re not going to be able to go to market until they’ve sorted out those bigger-picture questions. And you don’t sort those out until you have a process, a policy, and governance – and somebody strategic inside the company who’s driving that.

Robert Dutt: And there’s a real challenge too for the folks deploying – whether it’s a pure-play AI tool or baking AI into what they’re already doing – around what their economics look like. So the partner economics model kind of has to wait and react to how that shapes out.

Carolyn April: Always. That’s 100% true. And I’ll speak a little on that, because we are actually seeing in our State of the Channel research this year a decline in vendor satisfaction. It’s been very steady and very high for years – it’s still high, in the 70% range overall. But the percentage of partners who are “very satisfied” – that most superlative category – went down significantly this year. A big, double-digit decline. And the reason really has to do with some of these AI questions. As vendors are trying to figure out their own partner programs and pricing models, and until that alignment takes place between what vendors have figured out and how partners are going to react to and consume it – a lot of the partner community right now is a little bit on the fence. They’re looking around, trying to see who’s doing it best, who’s figured it out first, or whether they should move from their tried-and-true vendors and start looking at some of the newer AI vendors. There’s a huge amount of uncertainty in the vendor-to-partner relationship right now.

Robert Dutt: Can you walk me through how the judging process actually works? You’ve got both the expert evaluation and then peer voting at ChannelCon. Why that combination, and what does it do for the credibility of the outcome?

Carolyn April: I’m not in charge of the Innovate Awards itself, but I’ve sat in on meetings with the people who are, and they’re selecting very good experts from across the channel – a range from vendors to distributors, different representation – to make sure that this is a serious program that we’d like to gain traction with and do annually. These experts have a lot of experience with AI. Their companies are doing a lot with it. They’re going to be looking critically at what these ITSPs put in front of them and making sure that it’s measurable. It’s not just about a good idea – it’s about whether your good idea translated into something we can actually look at from a revenue and profitability standpoint. That’s what’s going to give it credibility.

In this first year of the awards, the goal is to have a serious critique of what’s happening among some of the more cutting-edge ITSPs doing AI, and to make sure we’re awarding those awards to those who are creating measurable solutions. The experts are going to be taking a really sharp look at what’s put in front of them. And the good thing is they get to showcase those solutions at ChannelCon – a good forum for anyone who wants to throw their hat in the ring.

Robert Dutt: It’s an interesting measuring stick, isn’t it? I think there’s a way to use the application criteria as a practical tool for MSPs who aren’t necessarily going to apply themselves – to look at those questions, look at the winners, and see what they themselves couldn’t answer confidently. If you can’t point to measurable outcomes, if you can’t describe the business impact, what does that tell you about where you actually are on your AI journey?

Carolyn April: Yes – those applying are going to have to validate and defend their solutions. They’re going to have to shark tank it as best they can. But they’re not pitching a new idea – they’re actually pitching an end result. So I’m eager to see the types of solutions that get put in front of these judges, because we are so early on right now, and I haven’t come across a huge wealth of demonstrable business cases from the channel community that are generating a lot of revenue and profit. So I’m very eager to see what these folks show up with.

Robert Dutt: For an ITSP who’s sitting on something genuinely strong – with real deployments and real results – what’s the case and the benefit for going through the effort of the application beyond the chance to hold up their hands in victory at the end?

Carolyn April: You get the victory lap, obviously, but it’s really about exposure and validation. One of the biggest knocks on channel companies since I’ve been in this business is poor marketing. They’re often not great at it. They don’t typically have a full-time, devoted marketing person on staff. Great at technical stuff, learned sales on the go – but marketing can be a weak spot. So winning an award is a key opportunity to gain exposure and promotion for your company.

It’s also an opportunity to become part of GTIA – a way for channel firms who haven’t worked within the association before to become part of a community that’s valuable in so many ways. Not just as an award giver, but as a way to meet your peers, exchange ideas, meet vendors and other members who can help elevate your business, and get access to research. You come to ChannelCon and showcase your innovation in front of companies and people you may not have known before. It’s a win-win, especially for smaller companies that don’t often get an opportunity to be in that kind of forum.

Robert Dutt: With GTIA’s global footprint – it’s right there in the name – and especially with your lens on research, what are you seeing in the North American MSP and ITSP community when it comes to AI adoption that shapes what you’re expecting to see in the submissions?

Carolyn April: I don’t think North America is really any different from some of the other things going on globally. We just had our big communities and councils forum – our event that brings together our most engaged members under the umbrella of their various global, regional, and discipline communities. And all the talk at that event really centered around AI. These are very focused, engaged companies, and they know this is an area they cannot ignore.

A lot of these companies have dug in. They are the leaders in their space. If you’re not yet involved at that level, the North American community is a great place to start, because these firms are very much pushing the envelope when it comes to AI – getting involved in understanding how cybersecurity and AI are going to relate to one another, and the consulting part of AI. That to me is really the initial big opportunity for many in the channel: to become that expert for customers who are a little at sea right now figuring out what AI means and how to apply it to their company.

Robert Dutt: My last question – as you’re thinking about the evolution of these awards over time, what does success look like for the inaugural year? What would tell you the Innovate Awards did what you hoped?

Carolyn April: Getting a good number of submissions would be number one – since it’s a new program, getting awareness out there and attracting submissions that make this a valid assessment of what’s going on. That’s always the first hurdle. And then the quality of the solutions, the quality of the companies presenting them, and the quality of the judges we can attract to sit there and determine whether a solution is truly innovative.

And then how much buzz we receive after the fact. If the people who win these awards go on to gain some cachet – that should promote it again next year. “I want to submit our solution because look what happened to Company X last year – they took off.” If it ends up being a springboard for some of these companies, that’s great for everybody involved. Those are kind of the markers of success.

Robert Dutt: It’s certainly an interesting concept for an awards program – and one that’s well-timed. As you say, it’s still nascent, but we are at the point where there are starting to be those real wins, those real material stories that can be told. I’m looking forward to seeing what stories emerge when the awards are announced at ChannelCon. Carolyn, thanks for taking the time.

Carolyn April: I had a great time. Thank you so much.

Robert Dutt: There you have it – Carolyn April from GTIA.

I’d like to thank Carolyn for her time. Links to the Innovate Awards program and the State of the Channel 2026 research are in the show notes.

A few things stayed with me from this conversation. The “deployed and in production” standard sounds obvious – but Carolyn was candid that we’re early enough in this that there isn’t yet a wealth of demonstrable business cases from the channel actually generating revenue from AI. These awards exist partly because GTIA needs to find those stories – not just to hand out trophies, but to hold them up to the rest of the industry to show what’s actually possible.

The internal-first point also landed hard. The same discipline that good cybersecurity practice demands – don’t go sell something if your own house isn’t in order – applies directly to AI. Overpromise, underdeliver, you lose the customer. Get your own operations working with AI first, then take it to market. That’s the sequence.

And as I said during the conversation: where there’s mystery, there’s margin. There’s a lot of mystery around AI right now. The question is who’s building something real with it. Watch for the finalists when they’re announced – those case studies are worth your attention.

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