For the third year in a row, we conducted a survey of partners around the world to uncover the challenges and opportunities they face in supporting their customers’ AI ambitions. Cisco’s 2026 Global AI Partner Study, “From Adoption to Accountability: How Partners Can Close AI’s Value Gap,” highlights both the value gaps and the new growth opportunities emerging.

Our 2026 Global AI Partner Study just published, sharing insights from 1,702 partners across 30 countries.  

Every year this study tells me something I didn’t expect. This year it was a number that went down: only 29% of partners report high awareness of AI-specific security threats, down from 35% last year.  

At first glance, that may sound like partners are falling behind. But I see it as a reflection of a more realistic understanding of security in the AI era.  

A year ago, many of these risks were still abstract. Now, nearly half of customers are already piloting or scaling agentic AI, and partners are getting a much closer look at what it takes to govern and secure increasingly autonomous systems. Multi-agent orchestration ranked as the weakest capability measured across customer readiness, partner capability, knowledge, and hands-on experience.  

In other words, agentic AI adoption is moving faster and becoming more real. As that happens, customers need help trusting what they have deployed.  

Three forces are making security and judgment central to the next phase of AI.  

1. Customers are recalibrating around value

AI is no longer an experiment that can be funded without a clear path to return. Customers are looking more closely at cost, use cases, and measurable business outcomes.  

92% of partners say at least some customers have raised concerns about AI running costs, while just 43% say customer ROI is meeting or exceeding expectations. And 21% say cost pressures are recalibrating customers’ appetite for additional AI investment.  

That’s not a retreat from AI, but a sign of maturity.  

Partners can make that recalibration productive by helping customers prioritize the right use cases, connect investment to measurable outcomes, and establish realistic expectations before deployments scale.  

2. Governance must evolve with the technology

As AI systems become more autonomous, governance has to evolve with them. The study shows that customers and partners are better prepared to identify AI risks than to explain model decisions or demonstrate regulatory compliance.  

That gap matters because governance is not only a technology challenge – it’s also a business-process challenge.  

Partners are uniquely positioned to connect the two. They bring together technical expertise, knowledge of the customer’s operating environment, and the judgment needed to establish the policies, accountability, and practices that work in the real world.  

3. The capability gap is becoming an opportunity

Partners see these challenges firsthand. Security and compliance are their second-largest internal skills gap, while cybersecurity ranked as a top AI talent gap they see among customers.  

At the same time, consulting and advisory services have jumped from 12% to 50% as a leading growth opportunity — the largest increase of any category in the study.  

That shift is important. In addition to technology, customers need help deciding what to deploy, how to govern it, how to manage cost, and how to measure success.  

Customers also need help building, from designing custom solutions and modernizing infrastructure to integrating AI with business systems and operating it securely across environments.  

Infrastructure remains critical, and the partner AI opportunity now spans strategy, implementation, security, governance, and operations. Security cannot be treated as a post-deployment add-on. It needs to be considered across infrastructure, data, models, applications, and the runtime environment from the beginning.  

To help partners put that approach into practice, Cisco’s AI-Era Cyber Defense Partner Hub gives partners a practical path to assess customer risk exposure, modernize infrastructure, and strengthen security operations.  

The bottom line: It all comes back to trust

Roughly a quarter of partners say AI already makes up more than half their revenue today, and 55% expect to be there within five years.  

Capturing that opportunity means more than deploying AI. It means building the security, governance, cost discipline, and judgment customers need to operate AI responsibly at scale.  

The Cisco 360 Partner Program is designed to recognize the different ways partners create value across that journey — from infrastructure and implementation to advisory and managed services.  

As AI becomes more autonomous and embedded in the business, now is the moment for partners to step up as trusted guides who help customers strengthen security and resilience as they navigate that complexity.  

Unlock the full potential of AI with insights from our 2026 Global AI Partner Study    

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

Cisco Partners Facebook  |  @CiscoPartners X  |  Cisco Partners LinkedIn