The Azagury era at Insight comes with three priorities, the CEO tells CRN—growth in AI infrastructure, growth in AI engineering and uniting under a One Insight operating model.
About a week before Jack Azagury started as Insight Enterprises’ CEO, he received a call that VMware owner Broadcom would deauthorize the solution provider as a reseller of VMware licenses and Broadcom-funded VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Entitlement Services in North America.
The incident could have rattled any incoming executive of a solution provider giant—Chandler, Ariz.-based Insight is No. 21 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500 and a 2026 MSP 500 honoree.
But now, seven months into his time at Insight’s helm, Azagury is focused on going deeper with the $8.2 billion solution provider’s closest vendor partners, adding to Insight’s artificial intelligence capabilities and organizing the company under his One Insight operating model.
“Our focus is serving our clients, being able to give them the best advice on-prem, hybrid cloud, cloud,” Azagury told CRN in a recent interview covering multiple aspects of Insight’s business. “We’ve got plenty of things to do with our clients.”
The CEO pointed out to CRN that deauthorization didn’t change the deep VMware and virtualization capabilities within Insight’s workforce. Insight also remains a VMware partner in parts of Europe, he said.
“Ultimately, we have to solve these problems in an integrated manner, which is on-prem, virtualized, hybrid, cloud,” Azagury said. “We had to help get our clients to the best answer that serves their needs. And that’s what we’re focused on doing.”
[RELATED: Top VMware Partner Insight Deauthorized By Broadcom In North America]
In his time at the helm, Azagury has met with some of Insight’s closest vendor partners around 12 times and completed more than 130 client and partner conversations since joining. Azagury continues to prioritize meeting with at least one client every workday.
Azagury spoke to CRN before Insight reported fiscal third-quarter earnings Nov. 5 for the period ended Sept. 30.
Insight reported third-quarter consolidated net sales of $2.4 billion, up 22 percent year over year, with gross profit increasing 20 percent to $523.2 million. The company raised its full-year gross profit outlook while forecasting continued growth in infrastructure, devices, core services and cloud.
Adjusted EBITDA grew 22 percent year over year to $177.4 million with a flat margin of about 7 percent. Cash flow from operating activities was $128.4 million.
Still, Insight executives on the call told analysts they know they have work ahead of them. Insight’s gross margin during the quarter contracted 30 basis points to 21.4 percent. The company’s consolidated net earnings of $22.2 million marked a decrease of 57 percent year on year.
Insight executives on the call told analysts to expect some growth moderation in its fourth quarter due in part to Insight lapping acquisitions completed last year, ongoing Google partner program changes and some prudence over uncertainty from memory pricing, supply chain disruptions and macroeconomics.
For full-year 2026, Insight raised its gross profit growth expectations to between 12.5 percent and 14 percent, with gross margin of about 21.5 percent.
Insight also expects cash flow from operations for the year of around $300 million to $400 million. Last year, Insight’s net cash provided by operating activities fell to $304 million, about half the $633 million reported the year prior.
Azagury’s Vision For Vendor Partners
Insight is open to growing partnerships with smaller AI, security and data startups, Azagury told CRN. The solution provider even has a team for exploring those partnerships.
“Where is the next generation of startups, companies that are getting incubated?” Azagury said. “That we need to pay attention to because they’re going to solve problems for our clients over the next few years and quarters.”
In October, Insight became an OpenAI Advanced Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network, gaining more resources to help organizations build, deploy and scale AI products and services.
As part of the partnership, Insight is building a dedicated OpenAI Center of Excellence and expanding specialized capabilities across its sales, solution architecture, engineering and forward-deployed engineering (FDE) teams. Insight also leverages its Radius AI ROI methodology to help clients adopt and scale ChatGPT Enterprise, Codex, agentic products and services, and custom AI applications.
Azagury shared on the earnings call that Insight helped a major construction contractor develop an OpenAI-powered safety investigation solution designed to bring greater consistency and rigor to manual root cause analysis. The CEO estimated that the solution will save the contractor $20 million in insurance premiums.
The solution provider has more than 600 teammates certified with Anthropic and OpenAI, and more than 100 with Nvidia, Azagury told investors on the earnings call.
Azagury told CRN that his advice to AI upstarts building partner programs and traditional IT vendors re-evaluating their programs for the AI age is to have a clear strategy on where they want to work with solution providers and where they want to go direct.
As vendors invest in in-house FDE and services wings—including Microsoft’s Frontier Co. and Anthropic’s Ode—they need to define where those services end and solution provider services begin.
“Partners like ourselves can help you scale at that speed,” Azagury said. “You could do the first two or three big projects yourself, but when you get to hundreds of projects, do you want to build that internally? Or do you want to work with a partner that’s going to be able to scale and train and everything else?”
Insight has also not taken its eye off growing deeper relationships with its traditional vendor partners, Azagury said. In April, the month Azagury joined, the 10-year Google Cloud Premier Partner took home the AI and cloud giant’s 2026 Partner of the Year Award for Global Workplace AI Transformation for work including delivery of a 1,500-employee Gemini for Google Workspace trial for credit reporting agency Equifax. It marked the ninth year in a row Insight received a Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award.
The trial resulted in 90 percent of participants reporting improvements in the quality of their work using the generative AI platform and a full 22,000-employee rollout with training focused on team-specific use cases to promote further rapid, high-value adoption, Insight said at the time.
In July, Insight expanded its Microsoft partnership to become a launch partner for Microsoft 365 E7, deploying the product and services suite across its 14,000-plus employee global enterprise. Insight also joined a small group of global launch partners for Microsoft Agent 365 AI agent control plane.
Insight’s Flight Academy program helped achieve more than 90 percent Copilot adoption across its global workforce in just nine months, with teammates reporting an average of four hours of estimated productivity gained per week, according to the solution provider.
The Insight opportunity extends beyond AI and applications into security as well, Azagury told CRN. As an example of the company’s security prowess, in August Insight took home Palo Alto Networks’ North America Growth Partner of the Year for 2026.
The Diamond Partner had more than doubled the size of its Palo Alto Networks team over the prior year. Twenty-five Insight workers devoted more than 300 hours to earn Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM platform certification during that time, and more than 30 Insight workers have more than 20 different types of certifications with Palo Alto Networks overall, according to Insight.
Azagury told CRN that vendor partners old and new could help the channel by keeping partner programs somewhat predictable and communicating changes not only to solution providers but also to their own account executives in the field. “If you’re going to use partners, then make sure your operating model is aligned with that,” he said.
On the earnings call, Insight executives warned that ongoing Google partner program changes will hit Insight more acutely during the current, fourth fiscal quarter. However, “the underlying cloud business, particularly around the Microsoft side, has remained really healthy and really strong,” Insight CFO James Morgado said on the call, according to a transcript. Insight also continues to take share in the Microsoft market.
Inside Azagury’s One Insight Strategy
The Azagury era at Insight comes with three priorities, the CEO told CRN—growth in AI infrastructure, growth in AI engineering and uniting under a One Insight operating model.
And the One Insight model aims to better organize the solution provider and give clients a more seamless experience. To that end, Azagury is investing in Insight’s people and culture, making sure its workforce brings hunger, heart and harmony into their work every day and has the training and tools to succeed in the AI era, he told CRN.
“That is one of the dimensions I’m going to evaluate all our teammates [by],” he said. “Did you live by our core values? Did you live by a One Insight philosophy where it’s not about you, it’s about our clients, our partners, our shareholders and our teammates? That’s what the mission is about: taking care of clients, taking care of our partners, taking care of our teammates and taking care of our shareholders.”
As part of the One Insight transition, Azagury revealed on the earnings call that Adrian Gregory, president of Insight’s Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business, will lead a global solution and partner organization aimed at creating productized solutions and offerings, industrializing delivery capabilities and leveraging best practices globally. Gregory will take over the organization starting Jan. 1.
More consistent global operations, simplifying how Insight brings capabilities and productized offerings to market and better integrating its services to solve client challenges will help reduce Insight’s ratio of SG&A expenses to gross profit, Azagury told analysts on the earnings call.
CFO Morgado told analysts on the earnings call that Insight’s organic growth has improved modestly the last four quarters, although acquired businesses saw “stronger growth” during the quarter than organic.
Insight initiated a voluntary separation program in the third quarter, reporting $25.7 million in net severance and restructuring expenses during the quarter. The separation is focused on mid- and back-office functions. Azagury also said on the earnings call that Insight has “mostly frozen all mid- and back-office hiring for some time now.”
Morgado told analysts that the solution provider should see about $30 million in annualized gross savings from the program. Insight plans to share more details on improving its gross profit ratio over the years during an investor meeting Dec. 2.
Azagury said on the earnings call that the separations are “about more than cost reduction.”
“It is about reallocating resources toward our highest growth opportunities, streamlining how we operate and building a more focused organization that can move faster and execute more consistently,” Azagury said on the earnings call.
Higher earnout valuation adjustments, variable compensation expense associated with stronger performance of the business—plus increased expenses associated with acquisitions—played a role in SG&A expenses growing 29 percent year over year.
Adjusted SG&A expenses increased 19 percent year over year in the third quarter. Earnings from operations fell 26 percent year over year to $68.7 million, 2.8 percent of net sales.
Azagury reiterated to CRN that acquisitions are off the table for now as Insight focuses on the One Insight operating model and internal investments.
“Eventually when the time’s right and we find the right companies we want to acquire, we’ll start to look at that going into ’27 and beyond,” the CEO said. “I’m not in a hurry, but if we find the right companies that are aligned with our strategy and aligned with our culture, then we’ll get back to acquisitions at some point.”
The company separately told analysts on Nov. 5 that it plans to complete the remaining $74 million of its share repurchase authorization this year. The projected $299 million of share repurchases for the year represent more than 85 percent at the midpoint of Insight’s projected operating cash flow.
The solution provider plans to share more details on capital allocation, its three-year financial targets and strategic priorities during its virtual investor and analyst briefing.
Still, Insight is prepared to move fast in the AI age depending on how models advance and changing appetites around technology like open-weight models, Azagury told CRN.
He praised the work of his two predecessors—Ken Lamneck became Insight CEO in 2010 and in 2022 he was succeeded by Joyce Mullen, who departed this year and was succeeded by Azagury—plus acquisitions made under Mullen’s watch.
“We’ve radically pivoted the business” over that time, Azagury said. “Now what we do in cloud, what we do in AI services, what we do in security, and that combination of being a reseller and a service provider—the reality of what we can do in the depth of our engineering talent and what everybody sees, there’s sometimes a lag. And so it’s our job to make sure people understand the full breadth and depth of what we can do here at Insight to be that that solution integrator.”
AI Spending Meets The ROI Question
The road to greater efficiencies within Insight’s clients—and Insight itself—includes AI agents.
AI remains the biggest item for Insight clients, he told CRN. “Over hundreds of discussions, it’s a 100 percent hit rate on AI,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of our clients are going to invest more in AI, not less.”
Around two-thirds of Insight clients seek help measuring ROI on AI investments, going beyond surveys and hours saved. He often recommends that clients establish clear governance around AI efforts, detailing who is in charge, and encourage bottom-up innovation from everyday workers plus top-down AI innovation rethinking a handful of processes that can be transformed by AI.
Insight is up to around 10,000 agents in its environment, many of them created by employees. And for the three Insight processes undergoing AI transformation, the solution provider chose customer operations processes for fulfilling orders and beyond, finance processes end to end, and sales and sales executive support processes.
Those processes reach about 60 percent of the Insight workforce and have their own metrics and KPIs for measuring AI’s impact, Azagury said.
“There are a few transformational initiatives with a measurable ROI that are going to deliver the returns that offset all the investment we’re going to make internally,” Azagury said. “And that’s where a lot of companies have forgotten that you actually need to transform the process to really get the value.”
Azagury himself leverages multiple agents as CEO, including one that delivers news on Insight partners, competitors and the technology industry every morning. Another agent gives him Sunday previews for the week ahead. And another agent goes through his emails and analyzes his Microsoft Teams meeting recordings.
He has leading AI chatbots including Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude and Google Gemini open all the time, running multiple models to test answers and send output to each other to find hallucinations and the best answer.
Strong Infrastructure, Device Demand
Azagury told CRN that Insight’s capabilities in not only software and AI, but also hardware and devices, help it stand out from the rest of the channel.
A large percentage of devices—including laptops—Insight sells are AI-ready, with small models running on those devices as a potential aid to token economics, the CEO said. On-premises and data repatriation are growing, although not as fast as cloud. Clients are seeking greater balance among cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments.
“We see both cloud and on-prem growing at very sustained rates over the next few years,” he said.
Insight’s AI infrastructure prowess sets the solution provider up well to help clients navigate complex IT environments including cloud, on-premises and hybrid, and the thirst for compute, storage and networking, Azagury told CRN.
“Our infrastructure business has been performing great,” he said. “But the need for compute, I see it as a long-term trend.”
Insight reported on Nov. 5 that infrastructure hardware gross profit increased more than 50 percent year over year. Azagury told analysts that demand for servers, storage and networking was being driven by clients modernizing their IT environments for AI.
Hardware product net sales increased 32 percent year over year during the quarter while software product net sales decreased 3 percent.
Devices revenue increased more than 30 percent during the quarter, with units up in the low single digits. Azagury called it a “very strong quarter in devices” and “a very strong quarter in infrastructure” on the call.
The growing price of devices was a factor in hardware gross margin falling 100 basis points—although, quarter on quarter, gross margin grew 10 basis points. Hardware backlog was “healthy” entering the current quarter, Morgado said on the call.
Insight saw 26 percent growth year over year for cloud gross profit, which came in at $164 million. Morgado attributed the increase in part to growth in SaaS and recently acquired company Sekuro’s security software business.
Insight Core services gross profit grew 21 percent year over year, coming in at $95 million. Insight’s Microsoft business helped fuel the cloud gross profit increase, Azagury said on the call.
Looking ahead, Insight expects hardware gross profit to be up high single digits with growth in infrastructure and devices during the fourth quarter.
Betting On Engineering, FDE
Given Azagury’s background in services, he sees himself as well-positioned in the second priority of investing in Insight services, engineering and security capabilities.
Azagury joined Insight following about 30 years with Accenture, No. 1 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500, leaving in 2025 as group chief executive of consulting.
At Accenture, he led the global consulting team, its 42 industries and enterprise functions and served on the company’s executive and global management committees.
“We want to be the leading solution integrator,” the CEO said. “And for that we need to provide a seamless view of everything we do from devices to infra to AI services to data to security.”
Insight is also investing in the services-plus-engineering FDE, Azagury told CRN. He wants Insight teams to sit with a client on Monday and translate business requirements into a proof of value by Friday.
He highlights one story of an Insight FDE in Europe who listened to a client call in a rideshare on the way to the client and had a proof of value ready by the time she arrived at the client site. Azagury separately told analysts Nov. 5 that his FDEs can move from discovery to a functioning prototype running on Claude in just 10 days.
“Tools these days allow you to move at such speed,” Azagury told CRN. “That’s why the FDE community is at the highest level in terms of the deepest experts that can translate business needs in a matter of hours and days, not weeks and months. The days of waiting months to get to value are disappearing fast.”
As vendors like Anthropic and Amazon Web Services invest in FDE programs, Insight is taking a strict definition of the practice with a formal internal interview process.
“The core problem we’re trying to solve with FDEs is our clients need results, and they need them faster than ever,” he said. “The days of studying a problem with PowerPoint and Word documents and spreadsheets for weeks and weeks and weeks are gone.”
Even after joining Insight, the depth of its engineering and delivery workforce exceeded Azagury’s expectations, the CEO said. And Insight is hiring more engineers than ever with AI training and investment in more vendor partner certifications.
“Ultimately we’re in the war for talent, like all our competitors,” he said. “And ultimately, people work at companies they enjoy working with, for leaders they enjoy working with, with teammates they enjoy working with. And that ultimately makes the difference.”
Insight also plans to lean in on its industry expertise and deep knowledge of client processes to help with client ROI for AI and secure implementations with controls.
For the fourth fiscal quarter, Insight expects core services gross profit to grow in the mid-teens and cloud gross profit to grow in the mid-20 percent range.
One of the solution provider’s latest security services offerings came in June with the launch of Insight Managed Exposure Defense, a Microsoft-powered managed security service combining capabilities including continuous threat exposure management, managed patching and extended detection and response.
It brings Insight clients managed 24-hour extended detection and response from a global Security Operations Center across the U.S., U.K., India and Manila, according to Insight.
