The Buzz: Zoom readies MSP specialization, SentinelOne builds AI security services, Dell expands AI Factory

Robert Dutt:

Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt. Today is Thursday, October 22, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today.

We begin with Zoom, which is preparing a new specialization for managed service providers as part of a broader overhaul of its partner program.

The changes were announced Tuesday at Zoomtopia Partner Connect, and they reflect Zoom’s continuing effort to make the channel a larger part of how it sells, implements and manages its expanding portfolio.

The headline for MSPs is a new specialization expected to launch in December.

Zoom says the specialization will recognize partners that deliver managed services, with anticipated benefits including advanced delegated account access, direct Tier 2 support, enhanced service levels and additional incentives.

Those are potentially important changes for partners looking to manage Zoom environments on an ongoing basis, rather than simply selling licenses and moving on.

The company is also simplifying how partners earn points within its program.

Under the new structure, partners will receive one point for every thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue growth during the applicable assessment period, while new-customer revenue will continue to be measured separately.

Zoom is also planning new incentives for longer customer commitments next year.

Other changes include expanded self-service access to not-for-resale licenses and a new business process outsourcing program for Zoom Contact Center.

And Zoom says the channel is now its largest source of new enterprise business, accounting for 90 percent of its ten largest customer experience deals in its second fiscal quarter.

There’s an interesting services story underneath all of this.

Speaking with Channel Dive, Zoom’s global channel GTM leader Nick Tidd said more than 300 partners had signed up to deliver professional services over the previous two quarters.

But Tidd also suggested that implementation is only the beginning.

The next challenge is helping customers actually adopt and use more of the platform.

For MSPs, that potentially means a larger role in ongoing administration, integration, optimization and customer adoption.

And as Zoom moves further into AI-powered services and consumption-based pricing, how partners participate in that recurring business will become an increasingly important question.

Our second story comes from SentinelOne, which is giving partners a more structured path into AI security services.

At its OneCon conference in Las Vegas yesterday, SentinelOne announced a major expansion of its PartnerOne program.

The goal is to help VARs, MSPs and managed security providers build services businesses around AI security and autonomous security operations.

There are several components.

First, SentinelOne is introducing new implementation certifications covering its Prompt Security offering, endpoint and identity protection, and AI SIEM.

Second, partners will have access to an AI Recon Assessment Service, designed to help them identify customer risks and create consulting and implementation opportunities.

There’s also early access to Singularity Agentic Detection and Response, which focuses on discovering AI agents, monitoring their behaviour, enforcing policies and responding to potentially malicious activity.

On the security operations side, SentinelOne is introducing additional certifications and assessment services covering data pipelines, AI-assisted investigation and automated response.

And perhaps most practically, certified partners will receive delivery packages containing scoping guides, statements of work, project plans and deployment runbooks.

Those resources are intended to make it easier for partners to turn technical capabilities into repeatable services.

The initial launch partners are LevelBlue, GuidePoint Security and World Wide Technology, with a broader rollout planned over the coming months.

That’s an impressive group, but it also raises an interesting question.

How accessible will these opportunities be to smaller MSPs that don’t already have sophisticated security practices?

SentinelOne clearly wants partners to own more of the services layer. The question is how broadly that opportunity will extend across its partner ecosystem.

The company also announced an expanded relationship with Lenovo, bringing SentinelOne Prompt Security into Lenovo’s ThinkShield portfolio.

That extends their existing endpoint security relationship into visibility and governance of enterprise AI use.

Our third main story takes us to NVIDIA GTC Berlin, where Dell Technologies has announced another substantial expansion of its AI Factory with NVIDIA.

Dell says more than 6,500 organizations have now adopted the platform, up from 5,000 last quarter.

The latest announcement is focused on helping enterprises move agentic AI beyond experimentation and into production.

That includes new validated software solutions and deployment blueprints involving companies such as Mistral, Dynatrace, Fogsphere and Reflection.

Dell is also expanding its deskside agentic AI offerings.

New reference templates are intended to help organizations move from an individual developer running AI locally to deployments involving more than a thousand systems.

The hardware additions include new Dell Pro Precision configurations built around NVIDIA processors.

And at the larger end of the market, Dell is introducing modular data-centre infrastructure based on NVIDIA’s DSX POD reference design.

These containerized systems are designed to combine compute, storage, networking, power and liquid cooling in factory-integrated deployments.

Dell also announced new PowerEdge systems designed for agentic workloads and high-throughput inference.

There are services implications here as well.

Dell Managed Services for AI, expected in the first quarter of next year, is intended to help organizations manage AI resources, access, consumption and costs.

For channel partners, the broader opportunity is in helping customers choose, deploy, integrate and manage increasingly complex AI infrastructure.

But it’s also worth watching how Dell balances the services it delivers itself against the work available to its partners.

Now, a few other developments worth watching.

New Canadian research from Ricoh suggests businesses may be considerably more confident about their technology investments than their employees are.

In Ricoh’s survey, 85 percent of Canadian business decision-makers said their workplace technology systems were connected.

But 76 percent of employees said their jobs would be easier if those systems worked better together.

And 43 percent of Canadian employees reported using non-approved tools at least once a month to get their work done more easily.

For solution providers, that’s a reminder that deploying technology and making technology useful aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Integration, adoption and governance remain significant opportunities.

Meanwhile, Barracuda has released new research suggesting the cybersecurity workforce problem is increasingly about expertise rather than simply head count.

In its international survey of organizations with between 100 and 2,000 employees, 94 percent reported cybersecurity skills gaps.

AI-related risks and advanced identity and phishing threats were among the most commonly identified challenges.

For MSPs and security providers, that reinforces the potential value of specialized expertise, particularly as customers struggle to keep up with increasingly complex threats.

And finally, Tanium is extending its endpoint management capabilities to NVIDIA’s local AI infrastructure.

The collaboration includes support for systems such as DGX Spark and RTX Spark, with capabilities for inventory, patching, compliance and visibility into AI workloads.

Tanium is also developing ways for IT teams to monitor and control AI agents running on those systems.

As AI compute moves beyond the data centre and onto deskside systems, managing those machines as part of the broader endpoint estate is becoming an increasingly important operational challenge.

Later today on In The Channel, we sit down with OpenText’s chief product officer and chief technology officer, Shannon Bell, to talk about the company’s approach to creating the context and information layer for agentic AI, how partners can build services around – and using – its platforms, and what OpenText learned from its own AI journey so far.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s episode features my conversation with Todd Cione from OpenText World.

We discuss OpenText’s shift toward partner-led growth in the midmarket, the role of implementation and delivery partners, and some of the questions surrounding the future of its existing MSP business.

You can find that conversation at ChannelBuzz.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.