Artificial intelligence, and the opportunities it presents for technology partners, was one of the focuses of the first of Dicker Data’s TechX 2026 events which kicked off in Perth last week.
Delivered as a one-afternoon experience across multiple cities, the TechX series brings partners together to explore how the market is changing and what those changes mean in practice for partner business models, customer engagement and long-term growth.
In the opening keynote - which also saw Mark Iles, chief analyst for APAC at Omdia, deliver a view of how the market is evolving across ANZ - Ben Johnson, Dicker Data's GM of marketing and strategy for ANZ, drew parallels to where AI is currently to where the industry was with cloud years ago.
“The future of AI starts with the fact that we've been here before. Who remembers the rush to cloud? We all went there, and then we went ‘hang on, that's really expensive’, and then we landed somewhere in the middle, or somewhere closer to on-premise, depending on your needs,” he told the audience gathered at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre.
“Right now, we are in the rush to public AI; we're about to see bill shock, and we're about to see all of that shift again when it comes to consumption-based pricing. Now it's a question of did we learn our lesson when we made the rush to public cloud, and did we learn our lessons in repatriation and how we landed somewhere in the middle? Because we're going to need that for AI.”
On the expo floor, AI was also a predictably hot topic of conversation.
Igor Pavic, the director of Perth-headquartered MSP Office Solutions IT, said that while everybody right now wants to do something with AI, few are clear on what that looks like in reality, nor what the potential applications of AI are.
“What we're finding is that consulting piece has actually been something that they're willing to engage on - do a few projects, get some easy wins and then start building on from that,” he explained.
“We've got a product, we call it an AI launchpad. It's about six sessions we do with the clients, and we're talking to them about their businesses and the pain points that they might want to try and address using AI; the typical ones are usually around productivity or repetitive work.”
Beyond that consulting angle, Pavic said that Office Solutions IT sees a number of opportunities for recurring revenue from AI services, not just in the likes of end-user support and licensing, but also from an integration lens.
"We build some custom integrations for our clients into the applications that they're already doing, and then we'll host those integrations and keep them up to date and build on them over a period of time,” he told techpartner.news.
With a team of three AI professionals currently - comprised of a software developer and a pair of business analysis-focused consultants – Office Solutions IT is also exploring AI augmented services, with a number of tools already implemented into day-to-day processes for customers.
“We're using AI tools to tell us why a particular customer on a particular contract may not be profitable, and then it will then produce a scope of work over the next one to two to three months, just depending how big the problem is, and tell us what we need to change in order for that customer on that particular agreement to become profitable,” Pavic said.
Windows refresh, cybersecurity challenges present opportunities
Johnson explained that from a Dicker Data perspective, the distributor needs partners to “lean in” to AI harder than they ever have before due to being at a precipice of change.
“If partners are able to accelerate their success and lean into AI, particularly as a new technology, they're going to leapfrog and get ahead,” he told techpartner.news.
“One of the key messages I delivered in the keynote is that the partners who didn't lean into cloud are no longer with us, and so now is the opportunity to lean into AI and to get ahead of the market because we are seeing partners be successful. While the first boat on AI has already left, it's not too late to catch the second, but if they don't move now, it will be too late.”
Outside of AI, Johnson said that other opportunities that Dicker Data needs its partners focused on is closing out the last 500,000 Windows 10 commercial PC devices that still need to be refreshed and then shifting across to the 3 million Windows 11 PCs that are over four years old.
“That's older than ChatGPT. Those people need to get moving onto new modern devices,” he said.
“Of course, there's the cybersecurity angle that we all need to look at [too]. The real duality of AI is a problem for our industry right now, and the attack surface and the threat actors are moving faster than ever.
“We need to embed AI into the solutions that we're delivering, because at the end of the day, the attacker doesn't care which vendors you use. They're looking for your weakest link, and we know that you need to be selling more cybersecurity vendors to build more comprehensive solutions to build the resiliency of not only your own business but that of your customers.”
Distribution helping to simplify the Microsoft puzzle
Steve van Blommestein, the MD and co-founder of 32-year-old Perth-based MSP Netlink, said that owing to the managed services business – and especially the Microsoft business – being “absolutely crazy” in terms of demand, his company was tapping more into distributors, including Dicker Data, for guidance, strategy and tools.
“It's quite difficult to manage unless you know exactly what you're doing and you've got good processes. Dicker Data recently signed us up with ECP Pro, and it's been an absolute winner,” he explained.
“It just makes our life so much easier and controls what could be chaotic.”
Exclusive to Dicker Data, ECP Pro is an application to manage, monitor, cost optimise and secure all Entra ID and Azure tenants from a single portal.
That strategic partnership is one of a number within Dicker Data’s Microsoft practice - in addition to relationships with TechClick, UnifyCloud and Chorus Cyber - alongside partner programs and solutions that saw Dicker Data become the first local distributor in Australia and New Zealand, and one of only four distributors globally, to achieve Microsoft Frontier Distributor status in June.
For van Blommenstein - who says he built Netlink on the motto of ‘harnessing the power of a strong relationship’ - that relationship is not just between Netlink and its customers, but rather that of an ecosystem, where distribution works hand in hand with technology partners.
"What it looks like is a distributor builds a fantastic ecosystem, and you are very much a part of that. They provide incredible assistance, they provide a lot of guidance, they provide strategy, and they will give you really good market indicators of what's happening out there and how you can gear up," he told techpartner.news.
"A lot of the disties are a bit behind the eight ball in that [regard], but some of the really good ones have already built it, and they're coming to us and showing us how their way of doing things is much better than what's been done in the past. If [disties] aren't doing it, then they're going to lose market share big time."
TechX 2026 is headed to Brisbane on 20 August 2026, Melbourne on 29 September 2026 and Sydney on 15 October 2026.
techpartner.news is the official media partner of Dicker Data TechX 2026.
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