A recent IDC study commissioned by Lenovo for the Asia-Pacific region confirms what we have been saying since early 2026: AI is entering its second phase of maturity, moving from ideation, experimentation and proof of value to production deployment, scale and, importantly, return on investment. According to the report, 24% of organisations surveyed in 2024 were piloting or systematically adopting AI; in ANZ, that number jumped to 64% of respondents in 2025. The move from building technology foundations to adoption is reflected in APAC CIOs’ priorities: their number one priority is implementing AI infrastructure and delivering AI to end users as quickly as possible. These factors help drive the 96% of organisations expecting to increase AI spending, by an average of 15%.
ANZ organisations are more conservative, but also more thoughtful and potentially more strategic. Rather than raw deployment and platform-scale metrics, it is capability, frameworks, governance and security to deploy AI safely at scale that dominate leadership planning and budgets. All of this signals that AI infrastructure, capability and penetration across the organisation have moved AI beyond curiosity and well into a productivity, efficiency and, importantly, strategic imperative.
To roll out their chosen AI-enabling frameworks, infrastructure, data layer and governance, organisations must design, secure, deploy and protect the AI infrastructure and new ways of working needed to scale proofs of concept across the organisation and realise the returns their proof-of-value studies promised. Significant cost challenges in neoclouds’ pricing models will certainly drive some hosted private or on-premise AI infrastructure deployments – if ANZ organisations can get their hands on a vanishing supply of raw components. And the skills needed to keep up with the frantic pace of innovation in frontier models, and to enable flexible, interchangeable deployment frameworks, are scarce. At the same time, the traditional buyer within the organisation is shifting: the same study implies AI implementation is escaping the orbit of traditional IT, with AI deployments focused outside IT jumping 89% year on year, compared with 43% growth within it.
We are also seeing a shift from the obvious cost-out scenarios AI implementations present, which are table stakes, to the opportunities that will move the organisation forward. The same study lists the top priorities for APAC CIOs deploying AI as increasing revenue; enhancing, innovating or reinventing the business; and improving customer service outcomes.
MSPs need to move from transactional IT to a more strategic role, helping organisations with all the new build that will enable their AI-powered future. For the CIO – the natural internal translator between business requirements and transactional components in a well-understood traditional IT world – AI considerations now permeate everything from governance to operating models and resource planning, requiring a rethink of the enterprise architecture and organisational structure many have grown comfortable with.
Service providers that move into a Strategic Technology Partner role, starting with a more consultative approach to business outcomes informed by AI expertise, will find themselves in high demand and a core part of the equation. MSPs that keep focusing on the traditional pillars, priced per unit or per seat on an oversight or break-fix basis, will quickly find that the AI-infused modern infrastructure available to customers reduces the cost of an atomic IT activity to a nominal value, destroying margins.
In our conversations, we haven’t seen many MSPs embracing this new landscape. You could be forgiven for thinking the two sides of the customer–supplier relationship were from different planets: the customer wants the solution to a business problem, enabled by smart AI and automation, while the MSP asks whether the network switch model XXPFG-49P or XFGGTW-8Q is the one the customer wants… so we have some way to go!
Smart providers are quickly adopting new approaches to service provision that enable business outcomes. As a service provider, your strategic go-to-market needs to include business enablement focused on harnessing AI, with its associated requirements for IT and organisational change. This is not the traditional territory of service providers, and while consultants may be well placed to translate business imperatives into AI initiatives, when it comes to scaling them into production safely and cost-effectively, the Strategic Technology Partner with MSP capabilities at its core wins.
This article first appeared on LinkedIn on 4 June 2026.