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For many years, cyber security was largely viewed as a technology issue – sole responsibility often sat within IT teams, with success measured by system uptime, patching and technical controls.
Today, it is a business issue.
That distinction matters because the consequences of cyber incidents have fundamentally changed.
A ransomware attack is no longer simply a technical outage. A compromised identity is no longer just an authentication failure. These events now disrupt operations, impact revenue, damage customer trust, attract regulatory scrutiny and, increasingly, influence board-level decision making.
Australian organisations are operating in an environment where cyber risk has become a permanent business reality rather than an occasional technology concern. The question is no longer whether an organisation will be targeted, but whether it is prepared when it happens.
That shift is shaping cyber security priorities across the market.
Over the next 12-24 months, cyber security investment will continue to increase across Australia. Part of this growth is driven by necessity.
According to Moxie Research – Security Outlook: Australia 2025 / 2026 – Australian organisations will prioritise the following key security initiatives during the next 6-12 months:
High-profile ransomware incidents, identity-based attacks and supply chain compromises have ensured that cyber security remains firmly on executive agendas. Another driver is the rapid adoption of emerging technologies, particularly AI, which is creating both opportunity and risk simultaneously.
Yet increased spending does not automatically translate into improved security outcomes.
According to Moxie Research, 65% of Australian organisations are struggling to demonstrate “clear measurable impact” from cyber security investments.
Within this group, more than a third reported “inconsistent” measurement and linkage to risk reduction while over a quarter lack clear metrics and evidence, as per the research findings:
Many organisations have spent years acquiring cyber security technologies in response to individual threats, compliance requirements or business initiatives. The result is often a fragmented security environment made up of multiple platforms, overlapping tools and disconnected processes.
As budgets continue to grow, we are seeing a parallel trend emerge: consolidation.
Organisations are increasingly looking to rationalise their security estates, reduce complexity and improve visibility across environments. Rather than adding more tools, many security leaders are focused on making existing investments work better together.
This reflects a broader maturity shift in the market. The conversation is gradually moving away from technology acquisition towards operational effectiveness.
The challenge is no longer simply having security tools. It is ensuring those tools deliver measurable risk reduction.
One of the most interesting developments in Australian organisations is the evolution of board expectations.
Boards are no longer satisfied with technical updates or compliance-based reporting. They increasingly want management teams to demonstrate how cyber security investments contribute to broader business objectives.
This creates a balancing act for executives.
On one hand, organisations must respond to immediate operational challenges, emerging threats and regulatory obligations. On the other, they must continue investing in longer-term initiatives that strengthen resilience and support future growth.
The most effective leaders are learning how to tell both stories simultaneously.
Cyber security strategies that succeed at board level are increasingly framed around business outcomes rather than technical capabilities. Executives are connecting current operational decisions to longer-term strategic milestones, demonstrating how today’s investments either advance or protect future value creation.
This level of transparency helps boards understand trade-offs more clearly. It also creates greater confidence when approving strategic investments that may not deliver immediate returns but are essential for long-term resilience.
In many ways, cyber security is becoming a lesson in business leadership rather than technology management.
Despite significant discussion around AI-powered attacks and emerging threat vectors, the reality is that ransomware continues to represent the most significant concern for many organisations.
The threat itself has evolved considerably.
Modern ransomware campaigns are rarely just about encryption. They increasingly incorporate data theft, extortion and sophisticated social engineering techniques designed to maximise pressure on victims.
Identity compromise often serves as the entry point.
Attackers understand that targeting people is frequently easier than targeting technology. Human trust, urgency and behavioural vulnerabilities continue to provide opportunities for threat actors to gain access to systems and sensitive information.
While AI is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for attackers, particularly in phishing and social engineering campaigns, its role in ransomware development remains relatively limited today.
What AI is doing, however, is making existing attack methods more effective.
Phishing emails are becoming more convincing. Fraudulent communications are becoming harder to identify. Social engineering campaigns are becoming more scalable.
According to Moxie Research, 57% of Australian organisations consider phishing as the “most concerning” attack vector.
The threat landscape is not necessarily changing because entirely new attack methods are emerging. It is changing because established attack techniques are becoming faster, cheaper and more sophisticated.
If organisations were asked to identify their greatest cyber security obstacle, many would point to budget constraints, skills shortages or an increasingly complex threat landscape.
While all are valid concerns, the most significant challenge may be something more fundamental. Cyber security is still too often viewed as an IT problem.
Despite years of headline-making breaches and growing regulatory attention, many organisations continue to underestimate the likelihood and impact of cyber incidents. This is particularly evident across resource-constrained sectors such as local government and small-to-medium businesses, where operational priorities frequently outweigh long-term resilience investments.
The result is often reactive decision-making.
Cyber security receives attention after an incident, after a compliance requirement changes or after a breach appears in the headlines. Far fewer organisations approach cyber resilience as an ongoing business capability that requires continuous investment.
This mindset creates risk.
Organisations do not need to become cyber security experts at board level, but they do need to recognise cyber risk as a business risk. The same governance principles applied to financial, operational and regulatory risk must increasingly apply to cyber security as well.
As AI adoption accelerates, a clear priority is emerging across Australian organisations: data security.
According to Moxie Research, during the next 12-24 months, Australian organisations will increase adoption of:
The success of AI initiatives is entirely dependent on data quality, accessibility and governance. Organisations are increasingly recognising that poorly managed data not only limits AI outcomes but also increases security and privacy exposure.
As a result, technologies and frameworks focused on data protection are moving rapidly up the investment agenda.
Data discovery, classification, encryption, data loss prevention and secure data-sharing capabilities are becoming critical components of modern cyber security strategies.
This reflects an important shift in thinking.
Historically, organisations focused on protecting infrastructure. Increasingly, they are focusing on protecting information itself.
The value sits within the data. Consequently, that is where attention is moving.
Privacy obligations, regulatory scrutiny and AI governance requirements are only accelerating this trend.
Technology alone will never solve cyber security. Despite advances in detection, automation and threat intelligence, human behaviour continues to play a significant role in organisational risk.
This reality is driving renewed investment in capabilities that strengthen the human element of cyber security.
Advanced phishing simulations, behavioural analytics and insider risk programs are becoming increasingly important as organisations seek to better understand how users interact with systems, data and information.
Importantly, this is not about blaming employees.
It is about recognising that security outcomes are heavily influenced by behaviour, awareness and culture.
The organisations making the greatest progress are those that treat cyber security as a shared responsibility rather than a specialised function owned exclusively by technology teams.
Boards increasingly recognise that user behaviour represents a critical layer of defence. Security culture is becoming just as important as security architecture.
Perhaps one of the most significant shifts occurring across the market is the changing relationship between CISOs and their external partners.
Australia’s cyber security skills shortage remains a persistent challenge. Attracting, retaining and developing specialist talent continues to place pressure on internal teams.
As a result, organisations are increasingly turning to trusted partners not simply for technology implementation, but for strategic guidance. Partners are becoming extensions of internal security teams.
They are helping organisations assess risk, develop investment strategies, navigate complex regulatory environments and build business cases for cyber security funding. Increasingly, they are also participating directly in executive and board-level conversations.
This evolution reflects the growing maturity of cyber security as a business discipline.
The most valuable partners are no longer those that simply provide products or services. They are the ones capable of translating technical risk into business language, helping executives make informed decisions and supporting organisations as they navigate an increasingly complex threat environment.
According to Moxie Research, outsourcing partnerships in Australia can now be defined as:
That demand will only increase over the next 12-24 months.
The next phase of cyber security in Australia will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by governance, leadership and organisational maturity.
The organisations that succeed will be those that move beyond viewing cyber security as a compliance exercise or IT responsibility. They will recognise it as a core business capability that underpins growth, innovation and resilience.
Because while threat actors continue to evolve, the most important shift occurring today is happening inside organisations themselves.
Cyber security is no longer sitting on the edge of business strategy. It is becoming part of the strategy.
Maria Padisetti is CEO of Digital Armour. As part of Moxie Top Minds, Maria contributed to Security Outlook: Australia 2025 / 2026 by Moxie Insights. Download the report here.
“I remember one employee who operated one of our most important and money generating machines,” shared Steve Manley, leaning forward in his seat.
“If he didn’t turn up for a night shift, I’d put on my overalls, run the machine all night, deliver the products to customers in the morning, sleep for a few hours and then come back to start my shift on the afternoon.”
Today, Steve is Regional Vice President of Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at Palo Alto Networks – scaling and leading one of the most consequential cyber security vendors of a generation.
But this is a man from humble beginnings, starting his career in engineering working in the family business in South Africa. There was no master plan, just a desire to work hard, earn respect and add value.
As one of the youngest in a company of around 100 people, no role was off limits.
“One of the biggest lessons was understanding what people actually do,” Steve said.
“I spent time on the factory floor learning every role. I rolled up my sleeves and learned how to operate the machines myself. I wanted to understand how people worked, why they worked that way and what challenges they faced.
“That kind of experience teaches you respect. People see that you’re prepared to help and understand their work. That was hugely formative.”
Working in a family business provides a grounding that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
From an early age, Steve gained a front-row seat to the realities of running a company – seeing the long hours, the sacrifices, the difficult decisions and the responsibility that comes with employing people and serving customers.
Success is rarely the result of luck alone in these circumstances. It is built through consistency, resilience and hard work over many years.
“It was probably where I learned the most in my early career,” Steve added.
“It taught me foundational things like hard work and it remains the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life. Because when you’re running a family business, you’re putting food on the table not only for your family but for many others as well. There’s a real responsibility that comes with that.”
Within a couple of years, Steve was managing teams of 20 to 30 people despite being one of the youngest – learning how to work with people who were older and more experienced.
Working in a family business alongside his father provided a grounding that is difficult to find anywhere else.
Beyond learning how a business operates, Steve gained something far more valuable – the opportunity to observe the person behind it. Seeing the early starts, the late finishes, the pressure of making payroll, the responsibility of looking after customers and the resilience required to navigate good times and bad.
These are lessons that cannot be taught in a classroom or business school.
“Definitely from my dad – a lot of my early leadership lessons came from him,” Steve continued.
“The hard work came from him. The importance of understanding what people do, respecting their role and appreciating their contribution came from him as well. Even today, I love having people around me who are better than me in different areas.
“In the family business there were people who could operate those machines far better than I ever could. But they valued that I understood what they did, why they did it and how they did it. What mattered was understanding their craft and respecting it.
“I think that experience shaped the way I’ve led ever since.”
In looking back on the early days in a family business, to today leading a market pace-setter in cyber security – and every experience in-between – Steve can condense many decades of success down to three core attributes.
The world of work will continue to change but some principles remain timeless. Because careers are rarely defined by a single opportunity, they’re shaped over time by consistent choices, perseverance and character.
“Be intentional,” Steve advised.
“Think carefully about what you want to do and where you want to go. I probably didn’t do enough of that in the first half of my career, but I’ve certainly done more of it in the second half.
“Be resilient. There will be periods where your career is flying and periods where it feels like a grind. You need the resilience and self-belief to keep going.”
In other words, accept that setbacks and disappointments are part of every worthwhile journey, and view them as opportunities to learn rather than reasons to stop. Most importantly, stay true to your values and be genuine in how you deal with people.
“Be honest with yourself,” Steve recommended.
“There will always be areas where you need to improve. You need the self-awareness to recognise those areas and the humility to ask for help when necessary. There are things on my own roadmap today that I need to learn to be successful in my role. That never stops.
“Too often people avoid confronting the areas where they need to grow. The best leaders are honest about what they don’t know and willing to do something about it.”
When Steve left South Africa at the age of 23, he was leaving for opportunity. Having worked in the family business – and despite learning a “huge amount” particularly from his father – career growth was always going to be restricted if he stayed.
In holding a British passport through his mother who is English, Steve moved to London in the mid-1990s with a medium-to-long-term plan in mind – spending six years in the UK building his career in technology.
In the family business, Steve was tasked with setting up a network to share CAD diagrams and some basic systems. It was a small requirement and as the youngest, company consensus was that he had the best chance of understanding the technology.
“To be honest, my school success probably hasn’t matched my career success,” Steve acknowledged.
“But technology was something I found quite easy and something I genuinely enjoyed, so I was naturally drawn towards it. It was only when I moved overseas to London that I transitioned fully into technology.
“The industry I was working in didn’t really exist in London, so I thought I’d had a good run looking after technology in a small environment and got my first job on a help desk, starting at the bottom.”
Perhaps the ‘bottom’ in terms of position but not in terms of company prestige. This was HMV, the iconic music store embedded into British culture.
In 1898, Francis James Barraud painted His Master’s Voice, one of the most famous commercial logos in the world which depicted his late dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a wind-up gramophone.
“What made HMV special was that everyone loved what they did,” Steve recalled. “Most people were passionate about music first and their function second. Whether it was music, games or video, people genuinely cared about the industry.”
Steve started on the help desk and worked his way through several promotions into network and infrastructure leadership roles, eventually managing teams and moving into management positions.
“It was an amazing environment,” Steve shared.
“We had incredible leaders. Andrew Clarke was our CIO and an amazing leader. Brian McLaughlin was the CEO at the time and was genuinely inspirational. You’d get into a lift and Brian would know your name. As a young employee, that had a huge impact.”
Few retailers experienced disruption as dramatically as HMV during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
For decades, this was one of the world’s leading music retailers, built around a simple model: consumers visited stores to browse and purchase physical albums, CDs and singles. The business thrived because access to music was largely controlled through physical distribution.
Then the internet changed everything.
“It was fascinating because we experienced that disruption firsthand,” Steve noted.
For HMV, the challenge was not simply competition from another retailer. The entire market was changing beneath its feet – customer expectations, distribution models and revenue streams were all being rewritten simultaneously.
HMV’s experience remains a powerful lesson in disruption. Market leadership offers no guarantee of future success when technology fundamentally changes how customers consume products and services.
“As a technology leadership team, we saw the dot-com challenge coming and built systems to support it,” Steve expanded.
“Looking back, we effectively replicated the bricks-and-mortar model online. While others were building lean internet infrastructure, we were building on enterprise platforms and mainframes. It was never going to compete effectively, but I learned an enormous amount from the experience.”
Steve always knew that London was going to be a medium-term chapter in his career.
With two sisters in Canada – and much of his family already overseas – it seemed logical that North America would be the next and final destination. That was the original plan until friends in London relocated to Australia, creating a reason to at least visit and experience an alternative option.
Sydney quickly moved from a pit-stop to a permanent home, however. About a year later he met his wife, Philippa, and the rest is history.
“Until I arrived in Australia, my career was largely opportunistic,” Steve acknowledged.
“I often describe my career as a bit of snakes and ladders. You work your way up, then you move somewhere new and start at the bottom again before working your way back up. Every relocation has been a little bit like that.”
Steve’s first role in the country at Trilogy came through relationships built on the supplier side while still in the UK. There was never a deliberate move in terms of company type or switching from customer to supplier.
“There was a point during that period where I realised the only person who owns my career is me,” Steve recalled.
“That was a major shift. I had conversations with my wife and started thinking seriously about where I wanted to go. I decided that, ultimately, I wanted to work for a vendor.
“Once I made that decision, I became very deliberate. I realised I needed experience in distribution and the channel. I needed to build relationships. I needed to understand the ecosystem. I spoke to Gavin Lawless, who has been a great influence in my career, and explained exactly what I wanted to do.”
Through those conversations, Steve moved into distribution with Avnet – now Tech Data – before eventually switching into the vendor side of the industry with NetApp in early 2008 as an account executive.
“From that point onward, I became much more intentional about my career,” Steve stated.
For many people, the trigger comes when they realise that careers don’t progress by accident.
Early on, it’s easy to focus on doing the job in front of you and assume opportunities will naturally follow. But periods of disruption, industry change or seeing once-successful businesses struggle can create a different perspective.
That realisation often sparks a more intentional approach to career development. Instead of simply working hard, people begin actively building skills, expanding networks, seeking new experiences and taking ownership of their future direction.
“Absolutely,” Steve said.
“I’ve got some anchors. I love my family and it’s family first – my wife and four children. I say that to my team as well, it’s family first. A lot of my purpose is making sure that I’m a good dad and a good husband and providing for them.”
At the time, Steve was sponsored by his company and felt trapped. He had all the reasons in the world why he couldn’t pursue opportunities – he was still on a working visa and too stubborn to go on a spouse visa.
“Looking back, I had a victim mindset,” Steve admitted.
“I’d speak to people about potential roles and immediately come up with reasons why I couldn’t do them. I had 20 reasons why I didn’t take jobs – such as I’m not sponsored etc.”
Eventually, Steve realised that he could control more than he thought. He went through the permanent residency process and suddenly the barriers he thought existed weren’t really barriers at all.
“I also do have a sense of loyalty,” Steve qualified.
“There was a part of me as well that felt like I needed to stay for a certain period of time. But that became a major turning point because I stopped thinking about what was controlling me and started focusing on what I could control myself.”
At NetApp, Steve participated in executive training for leaders guiding people through their careers and individuals on owning your career and assuming responsibility for the way your work life works – delivered by Beverly Kaye who authored:
Both books are Wall Street Journal best-sellers with the parallel coaching programs used by the largest companies in the world.
“It’s amazing training and I’d strongly recommend the books for anyone,” Steve advised.
“How as a leader can you guide people through their careers? How as an individual can you make conscious decisions about your own career? That’s when I recognised that I was being reactive and realised the direction that I wanted to go in and then put the steps in place to achieve that.”
At this time, Steve’s career was not only moving with purpose but also at pace – assuming the role of Vice President and Managing Director of A/NZ in early 2013, followed by the addition of ASEAN in late 2016.
“My career was growing really fast at that time so I didn’t have too much time to think about it,” Steve recalled.
“But I was very fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing team and leaders such as Simon Green and Rob Salmon who provided strong support.
“I’m competitive by nature and enjoy getting into ‘just go and do it’ mode. NetApp was an opportunity to rebuild the business and kick-start a tremendous run by implementing practices that were replicated globally.”
Aligned to being more intentional from a growth and career standpoint – Steve had also completed his MBA having started studying during his time at Trilogy.
“The MBA was a deliberate decision,” Steve added.
“As I moved from sales leadership into broader business leadership roles, I wanted to think more strategically. I wanted to develop different tools and frameworks.
“I found it incredibly valuable. It helped shape how I think. It exposed me to different people facing similar challenges and gave me new perspectives. I thoroughly recommend it.”
An MBA can provide valuable preparation for aspiring leaders because it broadens perspective beyond a single function or discipline. This helps connect those disciplines, developing a deeper understanding of strategy, leadership, organisational behaviour and commercial decision-making.
Although experience remains the greatest teacher, an MBA can accelerate learning, challenge assumptions and equip future leaders with a stronger foundation for executive responsibility.
“I remember completing one of my assignments while sitting in a hospital room on the floor when my eldest was born,” Steve shared.
“I probably took on more than I should have at times. But if the timing is right and your reasons are right, it can be incredibly valuable.
“I don’t think an MBA is for everyone. Timing matters. Capacity matters. Why you’re doing it matters.”
After more than 10 years at NetApp, Steve joined Palo Alto Networks in mid-2018 and boarded the security rocket ship.
Starting out as a single product vendor with 50-60 people locally to a platform player now armed with many acquisitions, housing more than 400 people on both sides of the Tasman.
To put that into dollars, this was a $2.3 billion global business in 2018 and totalled $9.2 billion in 2025 with a current market capitalisation of $240 billion.
“I saw a huge opportunity coming into Palo Alto because it had those key ingredients – the technology was good and the market reputation was good,” Steve said.
After leaving NetApp, Steve had allocated 12 months to find a new opportunity in market but when Palo Alto Networks presented itself, mindsets were aligned from the outset. Upon joining, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a one or two-year project.
“At the time I said I can see a five-year career here and we’re now at eight years,” Steve continued.
In a high-growth security business, success is determined by technology and the quality of the team behind it. That requires leaders to build teams that can scale without compromising culture, customer experience or execution.
The challenge is finding people who combine technical capability with commercial awareness and a customer-first mindset. Skills can be developed, but attitude, curiosity and collaboration are often what separate good teams from great ones.
“We’ve been very deliberate in building a team housing different levels of skills and experience,” Steve explained.
“We have an even amount of people who have come through some of the growth from carrying a bag all the way to director level. People like Alberto Rivai who was employee number one here and is now running a big team, as well as Mauricio Sabena and Martin Harris among others.
“Plus, people who joined from outside of the organisation with senior experience and then, a number of us that have actually ran bigger businesses. Those conscious decisions and mix of talent have helped us get through problems we’ve never seen before.
“Collectively, the diversity is incredible.”
For leaders, every hire shapes the future organisation. The right team creates momentum, drives innovation and earns customer trust.
In a market where talent remains one of the most valuable competitive advantages, building the right team is not just an operational priority, it’s a growth strategy.
“Palo Alto Networks has reinforced the importance of a genuine growth mindset,” Steve added.
“We operate in an industry that changes every day so continuous learning isn’t optional. One initiative I’m particularly proud of was encouraging our team to spend an entire day each week learning.
“We didn’t care what they studied as long as they were developing. It could be technical training, leadership training, presentation skills, communication skills or strategic thinking.
“We tracked it, measured it and encouraged it. The results were incredible.”
The best leaders rarely experience growth during periods of comfort. Growth often comes from challenge, uncertainty and exposure to situations that stretch thinking beyond familiar territory.
Ultimately, leadership growth comes from remaining curious. The leaders who continue to evolve are those who actively seek new experiences, embrace discomfort and view every challenge as an opportunity to learn.
“I’m fascinated by mastery in all forms,” Steve shared.
“Personally, I learn from many sources. I read books, listen to podcasts and learn from people around me. I’ve learned from sport. I’ve learned from medicine. We participated in a leadership program where we spent time with surgeons, triage nurses and police leaders, learning how they operate in high-pressure environments.
“You might only take one or two lessons away from those experiences, but those lessons stay with you forever.”
A few years ago, Steve and the team completed an exercise where they had to identify their core values. Most people choose six or seven values but each executive within the group was only allowed to choose three.
“Family was obvious,” Steve expanded.
“Loyalty is important to me. Fairness was interesting because, growing up in South Africa, I saw a lot of unfairness.
“I’m very conscious of being fair as a leader, although I’ve also learned that life isn’t always fair. You can’t always give everyone the same opportunities or outcomes. What matters is being thoughtful, caring and making decisions with integrity.”
Leadership is ultimately measured by decisions. Every choice a leader makes has the potential to impact employees, customers, partners and the broader organisation.
While speed and decisiveness are important, strong leaders understand the value of considering the wider consequences of their actions. They balance commercial realities with their responsibility to people, culture and long-term trust.
Integrity becomes most visible when decisions are difficult. It’s easy to uphold values when circumstances are favourable; the real test comes under pressure.
“One of the biggest lessons is that you have to genuinely care about people,” Steve concluded.
“I believe leadership starts with trust and care. You need to understand what matters to people and create an environment where they can succeed.”
For much of the past two years, the AI conversation in Australia has been dominated by excitement.
The arrival of generative AI (GenAI) triggered a wave of experimentation across the industry, with organisations racing to trial copilots, automate content generation and explore productivity gains.
Boardrooms wanted AI strategies. Executive teams wanted use cases. Vendors wanted urgency.
But beneath the noise, something more measured is now emerging.
The local market is entering a more pragmatic phase of AI maturity – one less focused on novelty and far more concerned with operational value, governance and measurable business outcomes.
That shift matters because it signals a broader evolution in corporate thinking.
AI is no longer being viewed as an isolated technology initiative. It is increasingly being assessed through the lens of business transformation, workforce pressure, process efficiency and organisational accountability.
And that changes the conversation entirely.
As a market, Australia is still relatively immature in its AI adoption compared to other parts of the world, particularly larger international markets moving aggressively at scale.
However, the reasons are more nuanced than a simple lack of ambition or capability.
Australia has adopted a far more cautious posture around AI governance, ethical use, privacy and risk management. While some global markets have prioritised speed-to-market and competitive advantage, local organisations have generally taken a more conservative enterprise approach – particularly in heavily regulated sectors.
That caution is influencing adoption velocity.
There remains significant uncertainty around data sovereignty, intellectual property exposure, privacy obligations and accountability frameworks. Executive teams are increasingly aware that deploying AI into enterprise environments without strong governance controls introduces risks that extend well beyond technology itself.
For CIOs and business leaders, the challenge is no longer simply whether AI can deliver value. It is whether organisations can operationalise AI responsibly, securely and sustainably.
This creates a natural tension in the market.
On one side sits competitive pressure to accelerate AI adoption. On the other sits the reality that most businesses are still grappling with fragmented data estates, inconsistent governance frameworks and unclear ownership structures.
As a result, many organisations remain caught between aspiration and readiness.
One of the clearest indicators of market evolution is how rapidly business priorities are changing.
The initial AI wave was heavily centred around co-pilot style productivity tools. Organisations focused on individual efficiency gains – summarising meetings, generating content, improving search capability and assisting employees with day-to-day administrative work.
Those use cases were accessible, low risk and easy to deploy.
But the market is now moving beyond that first phase. The real focus is shifting toward embedding AI directly into business processes.
That distinction is critical. There is a significant difference between AI assisting an employee and AI becoming embedded within operational workflows that influence customer outcomes, automate decision-making or fundamentally reshape how work is performed.
The second scenario is materially harder.
Transformation has always been slow-moving, particularly inside organisations with legacy systems, entrenched processes and complex stakeholder environments. Introducing AI into those environments only amplifies that complexity.
What many organisations are now realising is that AI transformation is not primarily a technology challenge – it is an operational redesign challenge.
It requires organisations to rethink workflows, redefine accountability, modernise data structures and reassess how humans and technology interact inside the business.
That is why many of the most mature AI conversations are no longer centred around capability demonstrations. They are centred around ROI.
Agentic workloads are one of the first areas likely to scale meaningfully across Australia. The reason is straightforward: they align directly to measurable commercial outcomes.
Unlike earlier AI implementations that often focused on experimentation or productivity assistance, agentic AI introduces the ability for systems to execute defined tasks autonomously, reducing human intervention across repetitive operational processes.
That becomes highly attractive in environments facing labour shortages, rising operational costs and increasing pressure to scale efficiently.
Importantly, the market is beginning to separate ‘interesting AI’ from ‘commercially valuable AI.’
The use cases gaining traction are not necessarily the most sophisticated from a technical standpoint. They are the ones capable of delivering clear operational efficiency quickly and at relatively low deployment complexity.
This is particularly relevant in industries where repetitive administrative workloads consume large amounts of human capacity. In many cases, organisations are discovering that augmenting a process can deliver more immediate value than attempting wholesale transformation.
That represents a major mindset shift.
For years, digital transformation programs were often framed around large-scale reinvention. AI adoption is increasingly becoming more surgical – focused on removing friction, compressing manual effort and improving decision velocity in highly targeted areas of the business.
While the market remains heavily focused on models, platforms and tooling, a more foundational issue will ultimately determine AI success or failure: data governance.
Most organisations significantly underestimate the extent to which AI outcomes are dependent on data quality, accessibility and consistency.
Without mature governance structures, businesses struggle to establish trust in AI-generated outputs. Poorly governed data environments create inaccuracies, inconsistencies and reliability concerns that quickly undermine confidence across the business.
This becomes especially problematic once AI begins influencing operational or strategic decisions. At that point, inaccurate outputs are no longer merely inconvenient – they become business risks.
For many Australian organisations, this represents the uncomfortable reality beneath current AI ambitions.
The challenge is not simply deploying AI capability. The challenge is whether enterprises possess sufficiently mature data foundations to support AI at scale.
Many do not.
Years of technical debt, siloed platforms, duplicated information and inconsistent governance policies are now colliding with the demands of modern AI systems.
The result is that data maturity – not AI maturity – is rapidly becoming the defining factor separating successful deployments from stalled initiatives.
Another emerging issue within AI strategy is unclear objectives.
Too many organisations remain fixated on finding opportunities to ‘use AI’ rather than identifying the underlying business inefficiencies they are actually trying to solve. That distinction matters enormously.
When AI becomes the starting point, organisations often pursue technology-led experimentation without clearly understanding the operational problem, success metrics or transformation pathway.
The more effective approach is the reverse.
Leading organisations are increasingly starting with business friction points – high-cost processes, repetitive workflows, resource bottlenecks and scalability limitations – and then assessing whether AI can meaningfully improve those outcomes.
This creates a far more commercially grounded adoption model. It also explains why some of the most successful AI deployments today are relatively simple in concept.
Complexity does not automatically equate to value.
In many cases, straightforward AI implementations focused on repetitive operational tasks can generate substantial efficiency gains with lower risk and faster time-to-value than large-scale transformational programs.
One of the most immediate areas of business investment is front-line workforce augmentation. Customer-facing operations represent one of the strongest near-term opportunities for AI adoption due to the combination of labour constraints, rising training costs and workforce turnover pressures.
This is particularly evident in high-volume enquiry environments where organisations struggle to scale human capability efficiently.
AI introduces a different operational model.
Rather than continually increasing headcount to manage demand, organisations can use AI to absorb repetitive interactions, streamline information retrieval and support employees with contextual intelligence during customer engagement.
The commercial drivers are significant.
Businesses are under increasing pressure to maintain service quality while simultaneously controlling operational expenditure. AI provides a mechanism to improve scalability without proportional workforce expansion.
Importantly, this is not solely about replacement.
The more immediate priority is augmentation.
AI allows organisations to elevate the capability of existing employees, reduce administrative burden and redirect human expertise toward higher-value interactions that require empathy, judgement and contextual understanding.
For CIOs, this is becoming less of a technology discussion and more of a workforce strategy discussion.
While privacy and data protection remain immediate concerns, market focus will increasingly shift towards transparency and explainability.
As AI becomes embedded within enterprise decision-making processes, organisations will demand greater visibility into how outcomes are generated. This is particularly critical in regulated industries or environments where AI recommendations may influence financial, operational or customer outcomes.
The business question is evolving from: ‘Can AI provide an answer?’ to ‘Can we trust how that answer was reached?’
That evolution fundamentally changes governance requirements.
Organisations will increasingly require explainable AI frameworks capable of providing transparency around reasoning, data sources and decision pathways. Without that transparency, trust becomes difficult to sustain – particularly at board and executive level where accountability ultimately resides.
This is where Australia’s more cautious approach to AI may eventually become a strategic advantage. The same governance-first mindset currently slowing aggressive adoption may ultimately create stronger long-term foundations for enterprise-scale AI deployment.
Because in the end, AI success will not be defined by how quickly organisations implement technology. It will be defined by whether they can operationalise it responsibly, govern it effectively and align it to genuine business value.
And that is a far more difficult challenge than simply deploying a model.
Andy Magee is CIO of Geocon Group As part of Moxie Top Minds, Andy contributed to AI Outlook: Australia 2026 by Moxie Insights. Download the report here.
“Why didn’t you share this, Sojung? This is important. Don’t be ashamed of your story.”
Profound words from Ginni Rometty, one of the most consequential CEOs of a generation.
Imagine sitting opposite such a force of nature? A titan of technology as CEO of IBM, the first woman to head up Big Blue and widely recognised as one of the most influential leaders on the planet.
That conversation not only changed the leadership trajectory of Sojung Lee but more importantly, transformed how she viewed herself as an individual.
“I still remember waiting outside Ginni’s office for the first time – I so was nervous because her aura is immense,” Sojung recalled.
“It felt surreal – gigantic office, security everywhere, a private helicopter on standby. The scale of IBM at that time was unbelievable.”
Based in New York – some 11,000km from home in Korea – a young Sojung was rising through the ranks having joined via the General Manager Leadership Development Program.
Each participant was assigned a mentor from the Senior Leadership Team, which in this case was Kelly Chambliss. The program itself was directly overseen by Ginni and afforded each participant 15 minutes of one-on-one conversation yearly – in a business housing 320,000 employees, this was a coveted spot.
“That one conversation with Ginni stayed with me forever,” Sojung recalled.
Sitting there with a one-pager on all things Sojung Lee, the backdrop of the conversation was a relocation to Africa on corporate assignment to support increased investment in the region. The time may have been short but the questions were intuitive and on point.
“I looked at Ginni and said – ‘I’m a single mother, I have a son and I’d like to go back to Asia’,” Sojung shared.
Ginni stopped, scanned the notes and asked… ‘Sojung? There is no information here that you have a son.’
Whether summer or winter, annual leave was always reserved for travel back to Asia to see her young boy but nobody knew the true reason for the visits beyond generic family time.
In uttering the words ‘I’m a single mother’, that was the first time that Sojung had shared her personal circumstances within the walls of IBM – to the CEO moments before an international relocation.
Cue Ginni – line after line…
Only then did Sojung take a breath, relax the shoulders and start to feel comfortable.
“That’s when she looked at me and said those words,” Sojung continued.
“Ginni taught me that inclusive cultures only work when people feel safe enough to share who they are. That conversation completely changed how I viewed myself.”
The second lesson imparted by the ninth Chairman, President and CEO of IBM – who transformed the 100-year-old company by reinventing 50% of its portfolio and building a $25 billion hybrid cloud business – also continues to resonate today.
“I still repeat it constantly today – ‘growth and comfort don’t coexist’,” Sojung recalled.
“IBM pushed me every day. My English wasn’t perfect. I was far from home. I was trying to prove myself constantly. But looking back, that environment gave me confidence because every single day forced me to grow.”
Today, Sojung is President of Asia Pacific at TeamViewer, based in Singapore. But to understand the unique journey that shaped this leader, it’s best to start at the start.
After graduating from law school in Korea during the late-2000s, the new university graduate joined STX Corporation – a shipbuilding company – and was placed into the legal department.
“But I got bored very quickly,” Sojung admitted.
During a new employee orientation, an executive presentation of international sales captured the attention. Travelling to New York, negotiating with buyers, working with customers and coordinating large-scale projects across shipyards.
“I found it fascinating and that was the first moment I realised sales was not just about selling,” Sojung said.
“It was about understanding customers, connecting people internally, coordinating outcomes and solving problems. Compared to reviewing contracts in legal, it felt incredibly dynamic and multi-dimensional.”
The presentation ended with an opportunity. STX was building a larger international sales team and invited people to apply internally.
In a traditional Korean conglomerate, that kind of movement almost never happened – people joined one function and stayed there for life. Especially after graduating law school and joining the legal department.
“But I raised my hand anyway,” Sojung shared.
Less than six months later, the fledging lawyer transferred from legal into international sales. The original plan was to study law in the US so working for two years in sales before leaving appeared logical.
Because of that mindset, Sojung wasn’t afraid to try something different – “I’m leaving anyway, so why not?”
Joining the sales organisation kick-started an obsession with learning, however. The business unit leader would send weekly emails with a recommended reading list, one being by Lee Kun-hee – former chairman of Samsung.
“I read every single book on the list,” Sojung said.
“After each one, I wrote a short essay and sent it back to him with my reflections. I later discovered that his executive assistants monitored those emails, and he became very aware of my attitude and curiosity. Eventually he took me to New York for a major negotiation.
“The funny thing is, my actions accidentally created extra work for the rest of the sales team because he then told everyone they also needed to read one book a month and write essays. They hated me for it.”
While delivered with a laugh and smile, Sojung’s actions offered an important early career learning… “curiosity matters, initiative matters.”
That philosophy extended to China as Seoul was swapped for Shanghai in the pursuit of career growth and experience.
“But at that time, I wasn’t operating from confidence – I was operating from survival and determination,” Sojung shared.
“After moving to China, I became a single mother. I was in a difficult personal situation and was trying to rebuild my confidence and independence. I realised very quickly that material comfort alone would never make me happy.
“I wanted to learn. I wanted to grow. I wanted to build something for myself and for my son.”
That led Sojung to complete an MBA in China, which opened the door to working for JCDecaux, a French media conglomerate. Managing Korean enterprise customers entering the Chinese market meant regular engagement with iconic brands such as Samsung, Hyundai and Amorepacific.
“What fascinated me there was the cultural complexity,” Sojung explained.
“The French leadership team and the Chinese teams operated very differently, and somehow, I became the bridge between them. I was translating not just language but expectations, communication styles and ways of working. That experience taught me a lot about leadership, alignment and people.”
Sojung was then approached by her business school to apply for a newly launched program at Yale – the Master of Advanced Management. The Ivy League was within reach.
But during the interview, the Dean asked a very direct question… ‘Why should we hire a Korean living in China when we came here to recruit Chinese students?’
“I told him that I already represented the type of global citizen that the program wanted to develop,” Sojung answered.
“I spoke Korean, Chinese and English. I had lived across different cultures and understood how to operate between them. Thankfully, I was accepted.”
After Yale, IBM came calling. The recruitment process was intense and involved multiple days of case studies, team exercises, networking sessions and interviews.
“The group interviews were especially intimidating for me,” Sojung acknowledged.
“Everyone spoke perfect English. They were incredibly polished and confident. I remember feeling very nervous, so instead of trying to dominate the discussion, I grabbed the pen and started summarising the group’s thinking and organising the conversation.
“Eventually I received an offer, which genuinely surprised me. That program changed my life.”
From having the curiosity to explore during an internal shipbuilding presentation, to possessing unique initiative to continually strive for self-improvement and growth, Sojung scaled in parallel with her attitude and ambition.
Within the space of six years, this graduate lawyer had evolved into a strategic sales leader across Seoul, Shanghai and New York – representing small local business, global titans of industry and an Ivy League School, before arriving at the office of Ginni Rometty.
“Challenges naturally attract me,” Sojung assessed. “When something feels difficult or unfamiliar, my instinct is to lean in because I know there will be learning on the other side of it.”
The story of Sojung could easily end here. Inspiration aplenty and a lesson that ambition is important and self-improvement matters.
There is no shortage of examples in why possessing the drive to grow, learn and push forward is often what separates people who stand still from those who evolve.
But ambition without discipline is just intention.
Perhaps James Clear – author of best-selling book, Atomic Habits – articulates it best… “you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”
The reality is that long-term progress is rarely built on will-power alone – motivation changes daily, energy fluctuates, confidence rises and falls.
Discipline is what carries people through the days when excitement disappears and the work still needs to be done.
“I’m very intentional with my routines – I organise my day, every day,” Sojung said.
“Every morning I run or do yoga. Those are non-negotiables for me because they ground me mentally and emotionally. I even organise my day on holidays because I like to do things, travel and find new experiences.”
Organisation matters because modern business and leadership reward consistency over chaos. The people who execute well are often not the loudest – they are the ones who build systems, manage priorities and follow through repeatedly under pressure.
“I also organise my life very deliberately,” Sojung added.
“Some people find my intensity exhausting, but structure helps me stay focused and positive. I think deep down I’m just someone who constantly wants to grow, improve and experience new things. That curiosity keeps me moving forward.”
Ambition opens the door but discipline is what keeps you in the room.
At IBM, Sojung constantly volunteered for difficult projects, new markets and additional responsibilities. There was no downside to personal growth.
“The more challenges I took on, the more I learned, and the more relationships and sponsors I built across the organisation,” Sojung expanded.
Eventually, Sojung was appointed as one of the youngest directors at IBM, heading up the Mid-Market Software Unit across Asia Pacific.
“But over time I realised I wanted greater ownership,” Sojung continued.
“In large organisations, execution often happens in-country, and sometimes nobody truly owns the outcome. That’s what attracted me to SolarWinds. Suddenly I owned the number. I owned the region.”
After joining the business in February 2020 – at the start of COVID-19 – Sojung spent almost two years as Vice President of Asia Pacific and China at SolarWinds.
Then came TeamViewer in December 2021. President of Asia Pacific was a new position within the vendor’s organisational structure, forming the main pillar of a new set-up in the region.
“TeamViewer became another major step because it wasn’t just sales – it was full P&L accountability across the region,” Sojung acknowledged. “Sales, marketing, solution engineering, customer success – everything. That level of ownership excited me.”
In joining a German company for the first time, Sojung initially struggled with the direct communication style. In American companies, feedback can be more subtle while in German culture, it is often more pointed.
“At first, I became defensive,” Sojung acknowledged.
“I used to be very good at giving feedback and very bad at receiving it. Then one of my leaders said something very important to me – ‘feedback is a gift and people don’t waste time giving feedback to people they don’t care about.’
“That completely shifted my mindset. Now, even if feedback still makes me uncomfortable sometimes, I try to sit with it differently. I reflect on it rather than reacting emotionally to it.
“That has probably been one of the most important personal growth areas for me as a leader.”
In assuming the leadership role in region, Sojung was also initially challenged with building belief internally.
At IBM, it was easy to attract talent because of the brand. Likewise at Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), with executives walking into meetings with automatic confidence because everybody knew who they were.
“At TeamViewer in the early days, it was very different,” Sojung recalled.
“TeamViewer required people to explain the company and the value proposition constantly. So one of my biggest challenges was building belief internally – helping people feel proud of what we were building and creating a culture where people genuinely had each other’s backs.”
Building culture across fragmented regional teams as a new President is one of the hardest leadership challenges in modern business, however.
Different offices develop different habits, communication styles and operating rhythms over time. Without deliberate alignment, distance can quietly create silos, inconsistency and mistrust.
Culture cannot be mandated through PowerPoint presentations or company slogans. It is built through visibility, consistency and shared experience.
“When I first joined, every country operated independently,” Sojung explained.
“Japan did its own thing. China did its own thing. India did its own thing. We had to create one regional team culture. That took time, and honestly, I made mistakes along the way.”
In regional businesses, trust travels slower than strategy. That means culture is not built in one announcement – it is earned repeatedly through disciplined leadership and consistent execution over time.
“There were moments where I probably moved too quickly with organisational changes,” Sojung accepted.
“In hindsight, while some decisions were right, I could have spent more time understanding the broader ripple effects across teams, partners and customers. Leadership decisions affect real people and real families so that’s something I now think about deeply.”
In such instances, curiosity becomes a competitive advantage.
The most effective leaders are rarely the ones pretending to have all the answers, they are the ones asking the best questions. An approach that has shaped Sojung’s journey from Seoul to Singapore – and everywhere in-between.
“I’m endlessly curious about leadership because leadership carries responsibility,” Sojung added.
“People join your organisation trusting you to help create growth, opportunity and stability. That’s a huge responsibility.”
Markets are shifting too quickly for leadership to rely purely on experience or legacy thinking – AI is changing workflows, customer expectations are evolving, talent dynamics are different and entire business models are being reshaped in real time.
Leaders who remain intellectually curious are far better positioned to adapt before disruption becomes damage.
“I read constantly, especially during long-haul flights,” Sojung said.
“I love physical books because digital reading distracts me too easily with emails and messages. Reading makes me happy because books allow me to learn from people who have already experienced things I haven’t yet experienced myself.
“I also rely heavily on mentors and trusted peers across the industry. I ask questions constantly. I reach out to leaders I respect. I seek perspectives.”
In many ways, curiosity has come full circle for Sojung.
It began as a personal trait – the willingness to learn, question and explore – but over time has become a cultural force that shapes how an organisation thinks, operates and evolves across the region.
Curious leaders build curious businesses. They create environments where people are encouraged to challenge assumptions, test ideas and continuously improve rather than simply protect the status quo.
“I don’t think leadership is something you ever fully master,” Sojung summarised. “For me, leadership is a continuous process of learning, reflecting and growing.”
The concept of value is often misunderstood in the channel – a loosely attributed label attached to every partner without scrutiny or merit.
In an ecosystem of 10,000 players in Australia, no business deliberately goes to market as a run of the mill, transactional provider. All company websites advertise uniqueness, showcase differentiation and champion innovation.
On paper, this is a market exceeding expectations. In reality however, this is an industry fighting against commoditisation amid a crashing wave of consolidation.
Because true value is scarce and subject to conditions.
Customers are no longer in short supply of technology, nor are they devoid of partnering options. Choice is everywhere and competition is heightening.
“There is definitely a customer reset happening,” observed Mathew Howard, General Manager of Channel across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at Crayon.
“This is no longer a simple environment that we operate in and that’s where the shift starts to happen. This is no longer a market where customers are simply looking for help acquiring technology.
“Customers have better access to technology and self-service tools today than they’ve ever had before. But what they can’t do is navigate their way through complexity and that’s what they’re increasingly leaning on partners for.”
According to Moxie Research, the ecosystem is currently navigating the headwinds of increased levels of market competition. Of the 218 channel partners in Australia surveyed, consensus is clear that competition is:
The domino effect is a channel challenged in differentiating solutions and services (55%), maintaining customer loyalty and retention (54%) and preventing margin erosion and price pressure (43%).
In other words, 63% of partners now acknowledge that customers want ‘trusted advisors, not just suppliers’ in the age of AI.
“Customers are no longer looking for partners that can simply sell them technology,” continued Howard, speaking at Crayon Connect 2026 in Sydney.
“They’re looking for partners who can connect technology to real business outcomes. They want partners who can help them prioritise where they should invest and help them make better decisions in a much more complex environment than we’ve ever operated in before.
“Again, that’s where the shift starts to happen in the channel, because the modern partner is no longer transactional. The modern partner has become far more strategic.”
Moxie Research mirrors that of Crayon in Asia Pacific, as outlined via the Future of Operations 2025 report – 87% of businesses are increasing budgets for third-party service expertise and 72% of SMBs across the region are prioritising tech-enabled experimentation to stay competitive.
This is a market on the move.
“AI and cloud adoption are accelerating, which shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Howard added.
“But what is also accelerating at the same pace is complexity. That’s really where the shift starts to happen in the market because there are more investments happening in third-party expertise and more hybrid environments that need to be managed. Plus, security, data and privacy are now absolutely critical inside organisations.”
According to the Future of Operations 2025, 76% of businesses rank security and data privacy as ‘critical’ to sustaining digital gains while 70% of organisations are planning to ‘unlock the full value of data’ through cloud and AI investments.
As a result, 47% of companies plan to run workloads on hybrid cloud within two years, driving new integration needs via the partner ecosystem.
Australia stands at an inflection point in AI adoption. After years of experimentation, pilots and cautious exploration, businesses are shifting from curiosity to capability-building.
“Let’s be honest, AI is in every conversation we have right now,” Howard acknowledged.
“It’s in every boardroom discussion. It’s in every vendor roadmap session. But when you step back from the noise, AI is doing two things at the same time.”
On the one hand, Howard said that AI is creating the “single biggest opportunity” in many years for the local ecosystem. On the other, this is also the “biggest disruptive force” to impact the channel.
In short, the AI pendulum is swinging between risk and reward as partners weigh up the benefits against the barriers to adoption.
“We’ve never had a technology wave driving this level of innovation, productivity and automation the way AI is today,” Howard continued.
“AI isn’t just adding capability. It’s changing how technology is consumed, how decisions are made, and ultimately how value is created in the market.”
The domino effect of rapid AI acceleration is more complexity, faster change and higher expectations from customers. It’s also changing the traditional value that the channel used to create.
“AI represents the biggest opportunity but it also represents the biggest risk if we don’t adapt properly,” Howard added.
“The question is no longer whether AI will impact your business – it already has. The question is how you reshape your model moving forward to align with that shift.”
Building on that thread, Howard shared three technology consumption trends playing out in the Australian channel today:
“When you bring those three factors together – vendor margin pressure, automation and platforms and more informed customers – it fundamentally shifts the value that we can offer in the channel,” Howard detailed.
“If we remain purely focused on platforms, we risk commoditising the value we once brought. The future will not come from simply moving technology. It will come from the value that partners wrap around that technology.”
According to MiT, 95% of AI use cases are delivering zero business value.
That is despite $30-40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI alone. Just 5% of integrated AI pilots are extracting millions in value, while the vast majority remain stuck with no measurable P&L impact. This divide does not seem to be driven by model quality or regulation, but seems to be determined by approach.
“Why do they fail?” Howard asked.
“They don’t fail because the technology doesn’t work, they fail because there wasn’t enough focus, attention and understanding around the complexity. What is wrapped around the technology – implementation, integration, governance, security – were all underplayed.
“AI has moved beyond the tools and the models. That part is becoming easier. What’s becoming harder is making AI work in a meaningful and sustainable way.”
Because of this, AI is accelerating capability and complexity in tandem which in turn, is disrupting what customers traditionally considered value.
Partners helping businesses move from early pilot stages to viable investment strategies – underpinned by strong levels of governance, security and integration – are taking a lead role in AI conversations centred on delivering business outcomes.
“That’s the value the channel can bring today, and certainly in the future,” Howard said. “AI is not reducing the value the channel brings to market, it’s raising the bar.”
Supporting that statement is MiT which highlighted the ‘implementation advantage’ created by the 5% of businesses already realising true ROI through AI – ‘external partnerships see twice the success rate of internal builds’.
According to Moxie Research – AI Outlook: Australia 2026 – the AI ecosystem is expanding rapidly, moving beyond standalone tools to an interconnected landscape of models, data platforms, infrastructure, governance frameworks and industry-specific applications.
No single vendor can deliver end-to-end capability. As a result, partners are becoming essential orchestrators – bridging strategy, technology, industry context and operational execution for businesses that lack in-house AI maturity.
The most important characteristics that Australian organisations seek when working with an AI partner are:
“The partners that can guide, not just deliver, are the ones that will continue to differentiate,” Howard advised.
Translated into personas, Howard outlined that successful AI partners typically fall into one of three categories:
“The models are different but there’s a common thread across all three – they’ve moved beyond the transaction,” Howard explained. “These partners are building capability around decision-making, governance and helping customers realise value.”
Many partners have historically earned income through software resale and while the “money is still there” the market has moved on from simply rewarding the transaction.
The buckets of money have changed and partners solely focused on this area are now “earning a fraction” of what they used to as vendor incentives shift towards implementation and managed services. Additional revenue is available but the ecosystem must first understand the new rules of engagement.
“Partners are conceptually aware that they need to change but the mechanisms keep changing, and it’s not easy,” Howard identified.
“Enablement is the biggest issue. Many partners are simply not aware because vendor programs can be very complex and change every couple of years. The environment is incredibly fluid now.”
This is where the value of modern distribution plays out – working with partners around specialisation and accreditation to unlock rebates that build profitability back into the business.
“Those rebates are incredibly valuable,” Howard advised. “They are essentially buckets of money sitting there waiting to be claimed and if partners do not know how to access them, they’re leaving that revenue behind.
“There are multiple forces driving this shift. Customer demands are changing. Vendor expectations are changing. Margin structures are changing – they still exist but they have just moved.”
For growth-hungry partners seeking expansion into new market segments or solution areas, Howard outlined three choices:
“Partner-first is the easiest way to understand how a new capability might fit within a partner business,” Howard explained.
“Partners can understand how engagements are delivered, where the follow-up opportunities are and how to transition project work into recurring managed services. We can take partners on that journey.”
One example is in the AI space through Microsoft Fabric. SMBs want to accelerate AI adoption but don’t know where to start.
“The best starting point is often addressing their data environment,” Howard continued.
“We have the capability to deliver those assessments and services, and Microsoft has programs that fund some of the initial assessments within customer environments. What we typically find is that these engagements open up multiple conversations – security, migration, future AI work and more.
“The partner can then decide which opportunities they want to own directly and which they want us to support.”
The core advantage of collaboration is that partners can learn while building a practice, allowing the transition from point A to point B to not only be faster but carry less risk.
According to Moxie Research, 81% of channel partners in Australia have reported a ‘significant increase’ in the cost of salaries and labour. A comparative look at average technical salaries from 2020 to 2025 – spanning networking, cloud and security – highlights a double-digit increase almost across the board in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
“Some partners still face capacity issues even after building capability internally, so they continue bringing us into larger projects for specific components,” Howard said.
“We work extremely well within that partnership model. Once the practice is mature, we can either step back entirely and let partners run it themselves, or continue supporting where needed.”
For many partners in Australia, partnership is no longer optional – it’s a viable growth strategy as trusted ecosystems take centre stage in delivering new solutions in response to new customer demands.
“Most partners don’t have large technology teams to lean on internally,” Howard added.
“But it’s significantly easier to grow within an existing customer than to win a brand new one. The more areas that a partner can help a customer with, the better – that doesn’t necessarily need to become core to what they do.
“Because if they say no, it opens the door for somebody else to come in. Once that competitor gets in, partners then have a genuine competitor that can land, expand and build experience within that customer.”
The channel business of Crayon in Australia represents the largest channel business in the world for the distributor – primarily focused on SMB with approximately 50,000 customers across the country, scaling down to 10 to 20 seats.
Now SoftwareOne – following its multi-billion-dollar acquisition which closed in July 2025 – the combined business is a Swiss-army knife in terms of services and solutions following a spate of local buyouts.
Before Crayon acquired rhipe for $408 million in 2021, the Australian-born distributor had purchased Parallo, a managed services for software companies and emt Distribution, which specialised in cyber security.
“Our organisation has gone through significant change but what has never changed is our desire to do distribution differently,” Howard stated. “We never wanted to look like a traditional distributor and instead, wanted to add meaningful value to partners operating under margin pressure in an increasingly complex environment.”
SoftwareOne is predominantly a professional services and managed services business in the local market with approximately 70% of revenue services-focused and traditionally aligned to enterprise customers.
“There is an enormous amount of intellectual property and experience within that organisation,” Howard added.
“One of the great things for our partners is that they will never be guinea pigs when we roll out new services. We have already delivered these services repeatedly – often into some of the largest enterprise organisations in the world – before introducing them into the channel.
“Bringing these two organisations together gives us greater capability than any other partner in the market, particularly on the services side, and we are looking at how we scale that capability through the channel.
“I also want to be very clear on one point. The SoftwareOne business is not here to compete with our channel business. It is here to complement our channel business.”
For Howard, the “combination of strengths” allows the business to deliver broader solution coverage for cloud, data and cyber security, underpinned by stronger regional service delivery across Asia Pacific. Plus, unified partner enablement programs and platforms as well as global scale with leading hyperscaler partnerships.
“But the reality is that, from a distribution perspective, we as an industry haven’t evolved fast enough,” Howard acknowledged.
“Most partners view their distributor as interchangeable rather than as strategic and that’s a problem, that’s a significant gap. If you look at traditional distribution, most distributors continue to focus on logistics, pricing and fulfilment but that has now become table stakes.”
Instead, Howard said partners require support in rebuilding margin.
Such sentiment is consistent with Moxie Research data, with business operating costs increasing for 88% of channel partners in Australia.
Consequently, that means 40% of channel partners remain deep in ‘survival mode’ – still struggling to overcome lingering economic conditions, notably the cost of doing business crisis that is particularly plaguing homegrown players. Every aspect of running a partner business has become more expensive.
In response, Howard shared five key questions that modern distributors should be asking – and answering – to mitigate against such challenges:
“If partners don’t have those things, it slows their business down, creates margin pressure and prevents them from moving at the pace required in the market,” Howard added. “On the flip side, it creates an opportunity for a distributor that sees distribution differently.”
The concept of ‘Distribution, Done Differently’ is anchored on the belief that partner value can best be measured through enablement, expertise and services, supported by strong relationships, communities and platforms.
“We were one of the first distributors to invest heavily in technical teams and pre-sales capabilities and today, we have the largest security pre-sales team in the market,” Howard added.
“Whether it’s pre-sales expertise, technical capability, professional services, marketing support or helping bring new leads into your business – we want partners to be able to lean on our investments while they assess the addressable market and build capability internally.”
This commitment extends into services capabilities with additional internal expertise built around AI, optimisation, security and cloud managed services.
“We’re creating opportunities for partners to grow their business and potentially expand into new areas,” Howard continued.
“This helps partners create much stickier relationships with customers because they don’t need to say ‘no’ as often and allow competitors into accounts. They may instead say ‘that’s not part of what we do’ but they can bring in a trusted partner with those capabilities rather than allowing a competitor to take that position.”
Cloud-iQ is one example, a platform that helps businesses buy, manage and optimise cloud services from across Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Adobe environments.
“At its core, Cloud IQ helps partners run their cloud business more effectively,” Howard said.
“It connects procurement, billing, reporting and customer management into one platform but the most important piece is how the platform helps partners grow their business.
“Through customer usage insights, partners can identify optimisation opportunities and more importantly, use those savings to drive innovation with customers. Plus, identify growth and upsell opportunities through the platform.”
Such sizeable investment in partner platforms and services will not reduce focus on personalised engagement however, given the importance of “people before product” in the local channel.
“I still want partners to have an account manager at the end of the phone,” Howard added. “I still want partners to have someone who can come and meet with them, understand their business, understand their growth opportunities and work with them in partnership to achieve those outcomes.”
In looking ahead, Howard summarised that the next era of the channel – in the next 10 years – will not be defined by selling more technology.
The “real shift” is happening in where decisions are made and where value is created.
“The partners that will win are the ones who can help customers make better decisions, understand where to invest and navigate complexity with confidence,” Howard said. “The winners will be the partners who can help customers turn innovation into real business outcomes.”
In that context, Howard closed with a simple message:
“Because the partners that get this right are the ones that will define the market for the next decade,” Howard concluded.
Amid all the market hype surrounding AI, clarity is fast becoming a competitive advantage in the Australian channel.
Just drop the distractions, block out the noise and focus on the growth potential.
“There’s a huge opportunity for partners in Australia to capitalise on the growth in AI,” advised Samantha Said, Senior Partner Development Manager at Microsoft.
Such a headline statement is backed by big local numbers – generative AI (GenAI) alone is expected to contribute $115 billion annually to Australia’s economy by 2030.
Most of these gains – approximately $30 billion to $80 billion – will result from increases in workforce productivity through the automation of routine tasks, according to a report from Microsoft and the Tech Council of Australia.
The augmentation of tasks using GenAI as a ‘copilot’ is expected to deliver between $10 billion and $25 billion in economic value. All invested into a nation housing 98% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), equating to roughly 2.5 million companies.
Yet this is a partner ecosystem facing an AI identity crisis – questioning market positioning, doubting true value-add and unsure of a viable go-to-market strategy.
In other words, the money is there in SMB. But partners are struggling to keep pace.
“Partners should focus not just on positioning products with customers, but also adding your own human ambition,” Said added.
“What does that mean? It means adding change management, services and adoption around utilising this technology. That’s where the value for both partners and their customers is. Some partners have cracked this but not everyone has.”
Speaking at Crayon Connect 2026 in Sydney, Said advocated the benefits of partners leveraging the free tools available in Partner Center.
“Partners have access to renewal data,” Said explained.
“This offers deep insights into how customers are using AI and the opportunities for them to scale and gain more value. That’s where the opportunity lies for partners in the Australian AI ecosystem.”
Despite the daily challenges associated with differentiating within a competitive partner ecosystem, most sellers are not constrained by opportunity, rather time and signal.
According to Microsoft, up to 70% of effort is currently spent on administrative work meaning that portfolio coverage continues to expand while insight quality declines.
Sellers are forced to manually interpret fragmented telemetry across multiple systems, slowing decision-making and reducing precision in where they focus. The result is missed revenue signals, delayed interventions and inconsistent execution at scale.
Productivity is not just about efficiency, it is about enabling every seller to consistently identify and act on the highest-value opportunity, in real time.
To drive consistent, data-led growth across core solution lines, Said advised partners to connect to ASPX Insights within Partner Center.
Short for ‘AI Business Solutions and Security Partner Experience’, this provides direct access to adoption propensity models, customer telemetry and actionable account-level insights across Microsoft 365 Copilot, E7 and Agent 365 scenarios.
“This is the one area that partners should immediately take advantage of,” Said added.
“It shows which customers are using the free version of Copilot, how they’re using their licences today and what their utilisation looks like. That tells a partner whether they’re at risk of losing that customer and whether they’re actually using what they paid for.
“That matters because customers need to get value from what they buy.”
With customer data exclusive to the account holder, partners can then convert free licences to paid by adding services on top. Filtering options on the platform also support through selected Copilot opportunities highlighting the available incentives to ensure customers get the most value from their investment.
Said also highlighted the work of blueAPACHE – a managed service provider (MSP) that leveraged ASPX Insights to work with the first SMB customer in Australia to adopt Microsoft 365 E7.
Through E7, customers can accelerate the adoption of secure, agent-enabled AI at scale. This acts as a lower-friction entry point for customers to move from AI experimentation to enterprise execution, while enabling partners to lead with higher-value conversations around governance, security and operationalisation of AI agents.
“The team at blueAPACHE tied together a customer renewal opportunity with ASPX Insights,” Said shared.
“This is demonstrable proof that E7 is applicable for SMB customers – blueAPACHE moved from signals to results. Partners must now ask themselves – How are we acting on those signals? How are we building them into our operating rhythm and demonstrating the value to customers?”
To further capitalise on the AI opportunity, Said showcased the potential of CloudAscent – a platform designed to provide insights into which customers are ready to purchase Microsoft products.
Partners can receive updates about their existing SMB customer base while identifying new growth opportunities to strengthen lead generation and reduce user churn.
“This data is super useful to partners because it highlights which customers are ready to scale,” Said explained.
“It identifies customers with opportunity and helps articulate the dollar value attached to the deal. Partners are using this to prioritise high-value opportunities, generate new leads from their existing customer base and then build campaigns around those insights.
“If we talk about leaving money on the table, this is where partners can see what that money translates to.”
Global adoption of AI has continued to rise during the past 12 months, with roughly one in six people worldwide now using GenAI tools.
Based on the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, Australia is currently ranked 11th in AI adoption, behind New Zealand (7th) and the UK (8th).
Unsurprisingly, countries that have invested early in digital infrastructure – AI skilling, and government adoption – continue to lead, such as the United Arab Emirates (1st) and Singapore (2nd).
This suggests a sharp rise in adoption across Australia, following a $25 billion commitment by Microsoft to expand in-country computing and AI capacity by the end of 2029.
The new digital infrastructure investment was the headline of a high-profile visit to Sydney by Satya Nadella – CEO of Microsoft – in April, announced alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
At the heart of the capital and operational expenditure is the significant expansion of Microsoft’s Azure AI infrastructure across Australia, as well as enhancing local AI supercomputing capacity and deploying advanced AI processors to support the next generation of AI innovation, data and applications.
Microsoft will see increased growth across Commercial Cloud and AI/GPU offerings for customers in Australian cloud regions, with plans underway to expand its existing footprint by more than 140% by the end of 2029.
“This is a substantial investment in Australia,” Said added. “To capitalise on this investment, we will increase our commitment to AI skilling.”
Specifically, Microsoft will train three million Australians with workforce-ready AI skills by 2028 – the largest commitment of its kind ever made in the country. For the partner ecosystem, AI Skills Navigator represents an immediate starting point on this journey.
“AI skilling can be implemented without delay and partners must use the skilling available to them,” Said advised.
“We recommend getting your teams and businesses to use this. It’s personalised so you can tell the platform what your role is and how you want to learn.
“Partners always want to know where to start on AI. Our answer is internally.”
The most credible partners are becoming customer zero for their own AI strategies. Before selling transformation externally, they are pressure-testing tools internally – across operations, sales, marketing, service delivery and decision-making.
Using AI inside the business creates something far more valuable than a demo environment, however. This is lived experience – it exposes governance gaps, adoption challenges, workflow friction and measurable outcomes in real time.
Customers no longer want theory. They want proof. They want to know what worked, what failed and what changed operationally.
According to Said, becoming customer zero builds authenticity, sharper execution and stronger advisory capability. It shifts AI conversations from hype to practical business value grounded in first-hand experience.
“Partners must become customer zero and use the technology,” Said recommended.
“That becomes your customer story and the adoption story that you can take to market which will empower your sales and marketing teams because they will understand the technology by living it. If they’re not using AI, the messaging can easily become marketing fluff.
“From a personal standpoint, I can no longer do my own job without AI anymore. We’re all asked to do more and become more efficient, so how are you incorporating these AI tools into your own business?”
According to Said, SMBs are not harnessing AI as fast as they should be and it’s the role of Microsoft and its partner ecosystem to help them secure their platforms to enable growth and competitive differentiation.
As shared by Said, three key challenges are slowing down growth in Australia:
For partners facing questions related to selecting a large language model (LLM) in response to customers already aligning with a product, Said cautioned against putting all AI eggs into one basket.
“I would challenge that,” Said stated.
“You don’t need to go all in on Claude, nor do you need to go all in on ChatGPT. Microsoft is investing astronomical amounts into building partnerships so that customers have access to these LLMs by default.
“This is how best to use AI. When customers ask, which LLM they should choose, stop them there because that’s not the right question. The right question is, what platform are you putting your business on?”
As a long-standing distributor locally, regionally and globally, Crayon was honoured as 2025 Microsoft Regional Partner of the Year Award in Asia.
The award recognises Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered “outstanding” Microsoft Cloud applications, services, devices and AI innovation during the past year. This was due to “demonstrating excellence” in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.
Crayon – who purchased rhipe for $408 million in 2021 – was acquired by SoftwareOne for $1.4 billion in 2025.
“Partners can leverage SoftwareOne and Microsoft to help unblock opportunities,” Said added.
“Microsoft is a major business partner within Crayon and we work together every single day to help partners grow their business in Australia. Our combined teams have the ability to tap into all of our programs and leverage that capability to advance your customers, implement AI faster and also earn money along the way.”
In a final message to the partner ecosystem, Said shared three next steps to capitalise on the AI opportunity within SMB across Australia.
“Partners are going to see a lot more of Microsoft throughout the course of this AI transformation journey,” Said summarised.
“So our takeaway is to please leverage us because we’re here to help. We want to see you succeed because we’re all in this together. It’s not about you winning alone – it’s about all of us winning together. And we’re here to help drive that.”
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