The Channel Pulse Q1 2026 data is a channel report. But buried in every finding about what resellers sell is a mirror image of what your organization should be buying.
Microsoft Teams has won the meeting room.
Not won as in leads the market. Won as in: 98% of channel partners cite it as a primary hardware driver. Won as in: the vendors rising in channel confidence are those most tightly aligned with Teams certification. Won as in: the vendors losing ground are losing it because they do not fit the Teams-native model cleanly enough.
That is the headline finding from the Channel Pulse Q1 2026 Landscape Report, published by BlueTouch Paper. The report draws on face-to-face interviews with resellers across five continents. It is a channel document. However, it tells buyers something important about where the rooms they manage are headed.
The counterargument deserves acknowledgment
Some organizations run Zoom-first estates, and Zoom still commands meaningful reseller attention as a strong second platform. A slice of the market maintains Cisco Webex estates, typically tied to legacy Cisco hardware. Google Meet serves education and SMB niches. There are legitimate reasons to run a non-Teams-primary environment.
Furthermore, the Blue Touch Paper methodology has a built-in bias worth naming. Resellers believe Teams will dominate partly because they have organized their businesses around selling Teams-aligned hardware. Of course they predict the ecosystem they have bet on will win.
That is a fair critique. Yet the data reflects behavior, not just opinion. Resellers are selling what customers are buying. The consolidation trend is customer-driven. Buyers are making these choices already. The channel is following them.
Which means you are likely living this reality in your organization right now, whether or not you have named it explicitly.
The MDEP problem is coming whether you are ready or not
The most quietly significant finding in the Blue Touch Paper report is not about Microsoft Teams dominance. That story is already well established. The more important finding is about MDEP.
MDEP, or the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform, is Microsoft’s framework for ensuring that Teams Rooms devices meet consistent standards for security, manageability, and long-term feature access. Think of it as certification with teeth. Today’s Teams certification tells you a device works with Teams. MDEP tells you a device slots into Microsoft’s enterprise management and security stack in a standardized, future-proof way.
The Blue Touch Paper survey found that most resellers cannot yet explain MDEP clearly. Most clients have not asked about it. Yet 47% of channel partners predict a negative sales impact for vendors who do not adopt it. The implication: vendors without MDEP compliance may face exclusion from future Teams Rooms ecosystems.
This matters for buyers because hardware decisions made today lock in platform eligibility for three to five years. If you buy from a vendor who misses MDEP adoption, you may find your room systems fall outside Microsoft’s supported ecosystem long before your next refresh cycle.
Add MDEP to your evaluation criteria now. Your reseller may not raise it yet. Raise it yourself.
CVI is costing you money it no longer earns
The report contains a quietly damning finding about CVI. Cloud video interoperability, the technology many organizations paid meaningful money to deploy, now appears in fewer than 10% of deployments. Native guest join, the built-in ability to join a cross-platform meeting directly from a Teams Room, handles most scenarios adequately for 65% of channel partners.
Technology debt is real. Paying for solutions to problems that no longer exist is a specific kind of waste. Review your CVI spend this quarter. The default assumption should be that native guest join covers your needs. The burden of proof should fall on CVI justification, not on dropping it.
The prescription is simple, even if the execution is not
Name your primary platform. Align your hardware to it. Audit your certification status. Ask your vendors about MDEP. Review your CVI spend.
None of that is complicated. However, it requires your organization to treat room technology as a strategic infrastructure decision rather than a series of isolated procurement choices. The Blue Touch Paper data shows the channel already understands this. Resellers know your rooms connect to platform strategy, licensing decisions, OS selection, and AI readiness simultaneously.
The channel has already decided what meeting rooms look like in 2027. The question is whether your procurement process has caught up.
Tim Albright is president at AVNation. They have held no consulting relationships with the manufacturers or vendors discussed in this article.
Tim Albright is the founder of AVNation and is the driving force behind the AVNation network. He carries the InfoComm CTS, a B.S. from Greenville College and is pursuing an M.S. in Mass Communications from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. When not steering the AVNation ship, Tim has spent his career designing systems for churches both large and small, Fortune 500 companies, and education facilities.
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
