IT partners’ ability to innovate and be agile will be “critical” in 2026 amid DRAM shortages and “fluid” economic conditions, said Ingram Micro Australia VP and chief country executive, Hope McGarry.
Speaking with techpartner.news this month, McGarry talked-up the performance of the company and its partners in 2025. Asked about pressures on MSPs, she said “We're seeing the MSP market still perform quite well,” adding that she also saw traditional infrastructure partners doing “significantly good business”.
She also acknowledged industry headwinds when asked about DRAM shortages.
In February, Gartner predicted a 130 percent surge in combined DRAM and solid-state drive (SSD) prices by the end of 2026, which it estimated would increase PC prices by 17 percent and smartphone prices by 13 percent, compared to 2025 levels.
In early April, Gartner estimated DRAM and NAND flash annual prices in 2026 would increase by 125 percent and 234 percent respectively, and it did not expect any meaningful price relief until late 2027.
“Memflation will destroy, or at least delay, non-AI demand into 2028, to varying degrees depending on the application,” stated Rajeev Rajput, Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner, on April 8.
“Technology suppliers should prepare for higher prices during the first half of 2026, followed by persistent but moderating price increases throughout the rest of the year. CIOs and IT leaders should be cautious about signing supply agreements with unfavourable pricing terms that extend beyond 2027.”
“A lot of it is outside of our control,” McGarry said.
"We just need to think customer-first, work with our vendors and our partners to plan as best we can around what we need, and do our best to support and work collectively to minimise the disruption as much as we can.”
“The forward planning is really important. Being able to work with our partners, to work with their end users, to understand their end users’ roadmap for the next 12, 18, 24, 36 months is going to be critical,” McGarry commented.
The distie has had “collaborative conversations” about working with end users on short, medium and long term roadmaps for critical infrastructure projects, and partners working with the distributor and vendors to “try to forecast and forward plan”.
Asked about economic conditions, McGarry said “we're not going to be able to maybe do things the way we've always done them in this situation. It's a different situation. It's very, very fluid.”
DRAM puts brakes on some projects
We asked several partners in our MSP Index if the DRAM shortage had affected their businesses.
It was “putting the brakes” on some projects, said Sean Kearney, managing director of Melbourne MSP Aus Advantage.
“The shortage has affected our server infrastructure projects, either putting the brakes on completely due to spiralling costs or increasing lead times drastically; in some cases, lead times are close to nine months for AI projects,” Kearney said.
“The only thing we can realistically do is continually manage our clients’ expectations around costs and extended timelines.”
“The same can be said for end-user compute,” Kearney added. “Some clients are taking the news and deciding to extend their asset refresh cycle and try to do more with less. Others are continuing as normal because, realistically, what other choice do we have?”
“Our latest major concern is the lack of committed pricing on specific hardware deals.” - Sean Kearney, Aus Advantage
“With additional costs potentially being applied due to final invoices being generated at fulfilment, it makes conversations with clients difficult and frustrating for all parties.”
Also seeing DRAM shortages affect business is Robert Simione, country manager for Meridian IT Australia, who reported “slower buying cycles and budget constraints impacting hardware sales.”
“We are speaking with clients to get ahead of important or urgent projects to beat price increases and lead times, and providing alternate payment solutions to assist where necessary,” Simione said.
He said Meridian IT was “actively pivoting” to providing more services and looking to add more new services to its recurring service lines.
Scott Jefferis, director of Bendigo managed IT and phone provider Revolve IT, said that “for the first time in a while customers are challenging us on our price and comparing that to what they can see online.”
He had responded by “sharpening our margins slightly and sowing discounts on our quotes (in the past we didn’t really have to show that) and offering different finance options.”
Lee Hodgson, head of business development at Wollongong-founded MSP Rodin, saw “some impact around lead times and pricing but it’s manageable. We are planning further ahead with our customers than we usually would.”
David Norris, managing director of Sydney-based IT solution provider Nortec IT, said the DRAM shortage was not affecting the business, “other than from an increased pricing perspective”.
Customers “more cautious”
The economy hadn’t yet this year put a major dent in the partner businesses that responded to our questions.
Kearney re-iterated that some clients were looking to do more with less, and some AI-related projects had been delayed significantly or indefinitely. Some clients were adopting a more flexible WFH strategy due to the fuel crisis, he added.
But “outside of these changes, we have largely not felt an impact from the economic shift,” he said.
Simione saw customers’ budgets tightening and “only certain projects” progressing. “We are working closely with our clients looking at ways to assist in reducing their costs by looking at alternative solutions or providing value services,” he said.
He saw a need for Ingram Micro to keep the Meridian IT team “abreast of price adjustments, lead time constraints and quote validity, and manage these with our vendors to ensure we are not exposed when sending quotes out to customers.”
Simione also wanted the distributor to bring new vendor opportunities “not aligned to the current supply chain constraints”.
Customers were “more cautious but not disengaged”, said Hodgson. “There is a stronger focus on value and outcomes, which means we just need to be very deliberate about aligning to our customer's business needs.”
Jefferis hadn’t seen a downturn “quite yet (we are up 18-19% on last year) but being regional I feel that our customers will be feeling the pinch of increased operational costs on the back of fuel shortages. I’d say cost of living and increases in hardware costs will hit us in the next few months.”
“Keeping abreast of hardware specials and protection from direct selling by vendors will assist in the current climate.” - Scott Jefferis, Revolve IT
Norris said most of Nortec IT’s clients were “sitting tight and waiting to see what happens. Some projects are being put on hold, or work we would traditionally do is being completed internally. But there has been no significant impact for now.”
McGarry to “keep things simple”
McGarry said partners had asked Ingram Micro to “do the basics really well, to free us up to do what we do best”, while keeping them abreast of opportunities and how the distributor can help – rather than telling the distie, “We want to go and drive AI”.
“I think for us in 2026 I really like to keep things simple. We just need to keep doing more of what we did last year and be very, very consistent. So I think for us, it's about being customer obsessed and customer ready,” she said.
Ingram Micro’s February kick-off had the theme ‘customer obsession’. “I live, sleep, eat and breathe it – it's not a cliché, throw-away line,” McGarry said. “If we truly put our customers first and we support them as best we can in uncertain times, then we will navigate this as best we can collectively.”
What does she see as the strategic focus for partners?
“There's headwinds in the market; we're all aware of what they are. But I think those partners that can really refine their value proposition, build their capability around that, build scalable services around that, so it's not bespoke all of the time; and who can leverage distribution to not have to invest themselves necessarily, but leverage our skill set and our team's capabilities – I think they're the partners that are going to be future ready,” McGarry said.
“I think the MSPs who are maybe grappling with trying to define their go to market strategy, that can be hard,” she said, adding that “not being all things to all people is critical.”
For some, standing out doesn’t come easily.
“Having been in the peer groups for many years,” Norris said, “differentiating yourself and developing a value proposition is one of the hardest things to do. MSPs struggle with this.”
What’s your view on these issues? Share your perspective with the techpartner.news editorial team by emailing us.
_(30).jpg&h=142&w=230&c=1&s=1)
.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0){kind=logo}
