GTIA's State of the Channel 2026 Report: Roadmap to Your MSP AI Future
GTIA's annual State of the Channel report not only states the obvious, it provides details and a clear perspective on what MSPs need to know to plan their AI future!
Please Note: Once again this is a particularly long post, so subscribers will find the emailed version of this issue cut off at the end. Please go to the web version for the complete version.
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About the GTIA State of the Channel 2026’s Producer
I had the true pleasure of speaking with my dear friend, Carolyn April, GTIA’s Vice President of Research and Market Intelligence, to dig behind the numbers in this year’s report. Carolyn has been tracking the channel’s vital signs for nearly fifteen years. She doesn’t sugarcoat. And what she’s seeing right now is a channel that is simultaneously at its most exciting and its most precarious.
Carolyn April is one of the IT channel’s best and most recognized research voices. She currently serves as Vice President of Research and Market Intelligence at GTIA (Global Technology Industry Association), where she leads the organization’s primary research agenda, including its flagship annual State of the Channel study.
Her career is a rare and valuable blend of journalism and industry analysis. She trained at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees there. She then worked her way through tech media as news editor and eventually executive editor at InfoWorld, then channel-focused editorial roles at CMP Media’s VAR Business and Channel Insider when it was still the legendary publication we all loved from Ziff Davis Enterprise. That editorial background gave her an unusually sharp eye for what MSP practitioners actually need to understand versus what researchers like to measure.
She then spent 15 years at CompTIA, rising from Director to Senior Director of Industry Analysis, where she became a go-to voice on managed services, cloud adoption, and the evolution of the IT channel business model. When CompTIA rebranded as GTIA, she moved into the VP role overseeing the full research and market intelligence function.
Carolyn is, of course, a frequent speaker at channel events including GTIA’s own annual ChannelCon and is regularly quoted across all channel trade press. Her research focus lately has centered on AI adoption maturity among IT service providers and MSPs.
