EXCLUSIVE: Pivotale AI launches channel-centric AI readiness tool

The tool named PAIR aims to helps partners, vendors, and customers on their AI journey.

Pivotal AI has released its channel-centric AI maturity assessment platform, PAIR to help partners, vendors and their customers on their artificial intelligence journey.

PAIR or Partner AI Readiness is a three-way AI assessment tool where vendors can assess partners, partners can assess themselves and partners can assess their customers.

The tool assesses an organisation through five pillars, strategy, data, technology, talent and culture.

Once a user has answered the questionnaire, that G says takes under 30 minutes to complete, they are given not only an AI readiness score but a 90-day advancement plan, and auto-generated sales and marketing playbooks.

As this tool is vendor agnostic, Maury G, founder and director at Pivotale AI told CRN Australia, “there is nothing like it in the market”.

“We know every vendor has an AI readiness, but only around the solution. We added an extra layer of vendor agnostic,” he said.

G noted that the tool is also partner centric.

“To make sure that the partner and the customer have a full view of where they need to fill some gaps and what would be the right solutions for that,” he said.

Steve Dawson, founder and CEO of Asia Market Entry who has trialled the product said it gets “straight to the point”.

“Identifying gaps and turning a complex stack into a clear, tailored 90-day roadmap,” he said.

“Not just a benchmark, but something you can execute. For our clients, it’s about being properly prepared for AI and adopting best-in-breed solutions that genuinely move the business forward."

Dawson noted that the biggest challenge in the channel isn’t AI awareness - it’s knowing where you stand, where the gaps are, and how to turn that into real commercial value.

“That’s where the partnership between Asia Market Entry and Pivotale AI comes in. We’re aligned on a simple belief: AI sits at the centre of growth, not on the sidelines,” he added.

Read more of our interview with G.

CRN: What do you want partners to get out of this PAIR platform?

Maury G: We want partners to walk away with something they've never had before — a credible, structured baseline.

Right now, most MSPs and channel partners are having AI conversations with their clients based on intuition and vendor-led narratives. PAIR gives them something concrete: a scored, evidence-based view of where a client or their own practice sits across strategy, data, technology, talent, and culture.

That's not just useful — it's transformative for the partner relationship. It shifts them from order-taker to trusted advisor.

CRN: Who can use the PAIR platform?

G: PAIR is purpose-built for the channel — MSPs, MSSPs, SIs, and resellers who want to lead with AI readiness as a billable service. It's equally valuable for vendors and distributors — including partner program managers and channel managers who want a structured, repeatable way to assess and grow partner capability at scale.

Entry starts at $599 for a single-use assessment, with subscription tiers that scale to enterprise vendor use.

CRN: What excites you about the platform?

G: The clarity it delivers. We've spent years helping partners benchmark their cloud and cybersecurity maturity, and we know what a good assessment outcome looks like — one that a partner can pick up and act on without needing a consultant in the room to decode it.

PAIR does that for AI readiness. The five-dimension visualisation is immediately interpretable. But beyond the tool itself, what excites me most is that PAIR finally gives the channel a shared language for AI maturity — replacing hype with something measurable.

CRN: How long have you been working on this PAIR platform?

G: Maturity and Readiness assessment has been a core principle of our practice for six years — first across cloud, then cybersecurity — working with partners across Asia Pacific and North America.

About a year ago, we started seeing a clear gap: AI readiness was becoming a critical conversation in the channel, but there was no credible, partner-centric benchmark to anchor it. The tools that existed were vendor-built and vendor-biased. Partners had no independent starting point.

We built PAIR to fill that gap — giving partners a direct, vendor-agnostic solution they could implement with their clients immediately and with real clarity. What started as an internal tool quickly drew interest from trusted clients who saw the outputs and asked when they could buy it. The answer is now.

Those interested can apply to Pivotale AI for early access.