David Beal to unpack big client shift at Pipeline 2026

David Beal, Senior Advisor at Australian ICT and digital advisory IBRS, will speak at Pipeline 2026 on 6 May 2026 about the shift he’s seeing in what clients want from ICT partners -  in ways that go far beyond the technology.

Beal said organisations are questioning the value they receive from ICT partnerships after a long list of high profile outages and breaches.

“ It's been acknowledged that one of the benefits to using an MSP provider is … not just outsourcing the overheads, but outsourcing that risk,” the former CIO said.

“The result of a lot of these incidents that we're seeing is clients are questioning [and asking] ‘Ok, what's the true value proposition we're getting here?’”

“I think that's going to lead to the need for greater transparency and a greater partnership moving forward.”

This includes a need Beal saw for “back to basics” fundamentals, including better change management.

“We know this industry is difficult because there's so many new offerings that are coming up for your clients – they need to be able to pivot to take advantage of upcoming demand.”

“But that shouldn't be at the sacrifice of your core practices when you're deploying anything.”

“If we look at some of the issues that we've had in outages or data breaches – headline news where the third-party vendor has had to cop a bit of responsibility. When you look at why it's happened, a lot of it is back to that fundamental change control, whether or not it's a network outage or some sort of integration has leaked data.

“The point I'm making is that clients are wanting more transparency around those practices. They're wanting more assurance.

“ It's not just a case of [clients] handing over the service, [then] you provide it, we give you money, job’s done. That relationship is changing. The recognition that the need for that relationship to change is what clients are looking for.”

“Hence, we see the change in procurement. What does that value return look like? How are we now going to monitor our vendor?"

Clients asking for "this many tickets for this dollar amount" is "not the conversation anymore.”

“It's ‘How are you strategically partnering with me in the future? What does that look like? How integrated are you into our success?’, which is complex, I know. But that's part of what clients are looking for.”

For example, a client might work with a partner to establish an AI program. “Meanwhile, no one has thought about the cyber vendor and the impacts on what you're about to go with it. They leave it at that project level. And we know that that fails. We see that over and over and over and over again."

"And so somewhere along the line we need vendors to start driving that - not taking ownership of it, but driving that - supporting organisations to have that bigger view.”

“If we can get on the same page, the strength of Australia’s ICT service provider ecosystem only grows.”

To find out more and register your interest in attending Pipeline 2026, visit pipelineconference.com.au.