Podcasts about pax8

The core structural shift highlighted in this episode is the commoditization of AI model platforms and concurrent consolidation at the vendor and platform layer, forcing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to move their value proposition above reselling models to orchestrating, governing, and verifying AI outputs. The discussion references the rising concentration and valuation of platforms such as NinjaOne—a founder-led, profitable RMM platform with a $12.3 billion valuation and 70% year-over-year growth—and Pax8 building business toolkits that draw more operational functions onto their rails. At the same time, major AI developers like OpenAI are entering the channel more directly by launching partner programs aimed at MSPs and consultants. The most consequential development is the confirmed shift from reselling AI models to managing their outputs and risks. Glean surveyed 6,000 digital workers and found that while AI delivers approximately 11 hours of weekly time savings, nearly 6.4 hours are reclaimed by “bot sitting”—the human intervention required to supply context, verify, and correct AI outputs. This hidden labor raises a risk scenario: two-thirds of workers admit to releasing unchecked AI outputs, and Ivanti found that only 42% of IT environments actually have a named owner for each AI agent, despite 85% claiming so—a 43-point gap in accountability. Asana and Deloitte further reinforce the issue, reporting frequent cost overruns and unmanaged autonomous AI deployments among enterprise and SMB environments. Supporting developments underscore this governance and accountability gap. TechCrunch cited that ChatGPT's AI market share has dropped below 50% as the field becomes more interchangeable and less differentiated by underlying model. Vendors such as Anthropic and OpenAI, recognizing model commoditization, are seeking revenue through high-volume partner channels, blurring the lines between vendor and channel competitor. According to Asana, more than 80% of UK IT leaders encountered unplanned AI costs, and over half reported business harm from autonomous AI actions, shifting operational and liability risks squarely onto MSPs and IT service providers. Operationally, these trends compel MSPs to take explicit ownership of the orchestration and governance layer, rather than relying on tool reselling. The transcript advises mapping every AI-driven decision or output that reaches client endpoints and identifying who verifies these outputs before customer exposure. Failing to address these governance blanks does not avoid work but shifts it to unbilled, post-incident cleanup, often with financial, legal, or compliance consequences. Effective MSPs will need to price, document, and regularly review their verification, orchestration, and risk assumption, positioning these as standalone, billable services to manage risk and maintain margin as AI platforms commoditize and vendor dependencies rise. 00:00 Bigger Platforms, Unwatched AI 03:44 The Vendor Walks Into the Channel 05:56 Govern It or Absorb It 08:52 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  ScalePad  Sign up for the SMB Online Conference: www.smbonlineconference.com

A pronounced infrastructure dependence on third-party AI models has emerged across the MSP ecosystem, largely due to the rapid adoption and integration of AI-powered features within vendor products. This structural shift is increasingly opaque, as providers are sold features rather than transparent access to underlying models, leaving MSPs exposed to changes in technologies and policies enacted upstream by vendors or regulators. The episode highlights how this dependency extends to delivery teams and end clients, with operational continuity tightly linked to decisions and actions outside the MSP's direct control. The most consequential development referenced is Anthropic's release and rapid withdrawal of its Fable 5 AI model following a directive from the U.S. Commerce Department, which ordered a cutoff of model access to foreign nationals within 72 hours of public launch. According to published benchmarks, Fable 5 surpassed GPT 5.5 in performance, but the government-mandated suspension exposed how quickly model access can be rescinded. The policy move immediately impacted any MSP or client with offshore or nearshore staff relying on AI features invisibly powered by that model. Further supporting the central theme, companies such as PAX8, Enforcer, and CloudRadio are embedding AI capabilities into platforms used by MSPs to manage Microsoft 365 environments, automate ticketing, and support scalable client operations. In parallel, vendors like Proofpoint are integrating compliance solutions directly with AI model APIs, further entwining risk management tools with the same core AI infrastructures. A Netrio survey cited in the episode found that while 82% of mid-market IT leaders have AI in production, only 26% report organization-wide governance, highlighting an accountability and visibility gap. Operationally, MSPs face heightened contract and vendor risk. Most lack an accurate inventory of which AI models underpin their services and how rapidly these dependencies can be affected by regulatory directives or vendor shifts. The discussion underscores the need for explicit procurement protocols, delivery mapping, and outage runbooks that account for opaque model dependencies. As clients seek greater transparency and contractual assurances regarding model use and continuity, MSPs who anticipate and document these dependencies may be positioned to reduce exposure and establish clearer accountability. 00:00 Switched Off  03:19 Painted Over 05:20 Govern or Absorb 08:41 Why Do We Care?  Supported by: Pax8 Sign up for the SMB Online Conference: www.smbonlineconference.com

Recorded live at the Pax8 Beyond 26 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, these back-to-back conversations with Chris Marks, VP of Marketplace Innovation, and Chance Weaver, Global Vice President of AI Adoption, offer a powerful glimpse into the future of the IT channel and the evolution from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to Managed Intelligence Providers (MIPs). Together, they share how Pax8 is helping partners navigate one of the most significant technology shifts in decades by combining innovation, community, education, and practical AI adoption strategies. While Chris focuses on the vision, leadership, and marketplace transformation required to unlock new opportunities, Chance provides a tactical roadmap for turning AI into measurable business outcomes and recurring revenue streams. Discover why AI is not simply another tool, but a catalyst for deeper client relationships and strategic business transformation. Key themes include the importance of moving beyond technology conversations to business outcome discussions, embedding AI into workflows rather than treating it as a standalone solution, leveraging community to accelerate learning, and embracing curiosity, adaptability, and servant leadership in times of rapid change. Chris highlights the tremendous opportunity for MSPs to become trusted business advisors, while Chance demonstrates how partners can start immediately by having AI conversations with clients, identifying business challenges, delivering quick wins, and building long-term value. Together, their insights reinforce a powerful message: the future belongs to technology leaders willing to innovate, educate, and guide their clients. Key Highlights: The evolution from MSP to MIP and why business advisory services are becoming a critical differentiator. AI creates new opportunities for growth, efficiency, and recurring revenue when tied to measurable outcomes. Community, collaboration, and continuous learning are essential for navigating technological disruption. Practical strategies for introducing AI to clients, addressing governance concerns, and demonstrating ROI. Leadership lessons centered on curiosity, empowerment, servant leadership, and enabling teams to innovate. How Pax8 is building the programs, tools, and ecosystem partners need to thrive in the AI-driven economy.   Be sure to register for Beyond 27 in San Diego, California, and visit pax8.com to learn more about the marketplace.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Pax8 Beyond26 – managed intelligence: Pax8 wrapped its annual Beyond conference in Salt Lake City on Tuesday with over 3,500 attendees including 200+ from Canada, centering the show on the transition from managed services to the Managed Intelligence Provider model. The headline announcement was Microsoft Agent 365 for Managed Intelligence – multi-tenant governance of agentic AI across MSP client environments through the Pax8 Agent Store, arriving in July – alongside the launch of the Managed Intelligence Provider Program, Voyager Alliance Rewards, and the Managed Intelligence Alliance. CEO Scott Chasin argued that as AI models commoditize, the trust MSPs have already built with clients is their primary competitive advantage going forward. Arrow Electronics global experience centers: Arrow introduced a network of global experience centers on Tuesday, built in close collaboration with channel partners in North America and Europe to reflect how partners actually go to market today. Facilities in the US and Sweden are fully networked to deliver a consistent design and testing experience regardless of location, and are designed specifically to help partners accelerate the move from AI and cloud evaluation into deployment and monetization. Mitel names new channel chief: Mitel has appointed Ben Macdonald as vice president of global channel go-to-market, bringing experience from Owl Labs, Poly, Juniper Networks, and Ekahau. The hire comes as Mitel’s own research shows 68 percent of businesses are running communications infrastructure more than seven years old, with 92 percent of modernizing organizations choosing an integrated-hybrid strategy – a dynamic the company says positions its 6,000-plus channel partners at the center of one of the largest communications refresh cycles in a decade. Cork Cyber wins Pax8 Startup Vendor of the Year: Pax8 recognized Cork Cyber at Beyond26 for its AI-native remediation platform built for MSPs, which remediates threats automatically, reduces ticket volume, and provides financial payback when risks slip through. The award was presented on the Beyond mainstage by Pax8 president Nick Heddy. Canada’s cloud market: A new report from the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, covered by CBC News, calls the Canadian cloud computing market “broken,” warning that Amazon, Microsoft, and Google control approximately 85 percent of the market. The report argues that even adding domestic sovereign alternatives will not fix the problem without interoperability standards, coining the term “maplewashed dependency” for the risk of trading one lock-in for another. Pentesting research: New research from Cobalt and Omdia finds that 53 percent of security leaders believe traditional penetration testing is now outdated, with demand growing for continuous, AI-assisted approaches. iCOUNTER leadership: iCOUNTER has appointed Joel Molinoff, formerly of BlueVoyant and CBS Corporation, as chief operating officer. DataStrike expansion: DataStrike has expanded its Linux managed services practice by hiring Jon Cain as senior Linux infrastructure engineer to meet growing client demand. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Thursday, June 11, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Pax8 wrapped its annual Beyond conference in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, and the event made a clear statement about where the distributor sees the managed services business heading. With more than 3,500 attendees – including over 200 from Canada – the show centered on what Pax8 is calling the Managed Intelligence Provider model, or MIP. The idea is that MSPs are no longer primarily managing infrastructure. The next phase of the business is orchestrating agentic AI and delivering outcomes that SMB customers cannot build on their own. The headline product announcement from the show was Microsoft Agent 365 for Managed Intelligence, which will give MSPs multi-tenant governance of agentic AI across their client base through the Pax8 Agent Store, arriving in July. Alongside that, Pax8 announced the Managed Intelligence Provider Program, the Voyager Alliance Rewards program, and the Managed Intelligence Alliance, all aimed at helping partners navigate that business model transition. CEO Scott Chasin’s central argument was that as AI models commoditize rapidly, the trust that MSPs have already built with their clients becomes the primary competitive differentiator. It’s a different kind of pitch than many vendors have been making this year, and the Canadian partner contingent at the show was among the largest regional groups in attendance. Distribution giant Arrow Electronics introduced a new set of networked global experience centers on Tuesday, and the design philosophy behind them is worth paying attention to. According to Arrow, the facilities in the US and Sweden were built in close collaboration with channel partners across North America and Europe, specifically around how partners actually go to market today, where they face constraints, and what slows them down. The two locations are fully networked, meaning the design and testing experience is consistent regardless of where the customer or partner is located. Arrow has operated various lab facilities over the years, but this iteration is explicitly oriented around solving the commercial and operational friction partners face in moving customers from AI and cloud evaluation into deployment. For solution providers working to differentiate on deep technical expertise and pre-sales capability, the ability to leverage distribution infrastructure at this level is increasingly part of the value equation. Mitel announced Tuesday that Ben Macdonald has joined the company as vice president of global channel go-to-market, making him the company’s new channel chief. Macdonald comes from Owl Labs, where he led the shift to a scalable B2B and enterprise channel model including strategic alliances with Microsoft and Lenovo. He has also held senior channel roles at Poly, Juniper Networks, and Ekahau. The appointment arrives at a moment Mitel describes as one of the largest communications refresh cycles in a decade. According to Mitel’s own research, 68 percent of businesses are currently running communications systems that are more than seven years old, and 92 percent of organizations actively modernizing are choosing an integrated-hybrid strategy. Macdonald’s specific background – building recurring revenue models out of historically transactional, hardware-centric businesses – aligns directly with what Mitel says it needs. For the more than 6,000 channel partners in Mitel’s ecosystem, including a significant number of Canadian resellers and MSPs with established UC practices, the appointment signals an intent to activate that market opportunity through the partner community. In Brief – Pax8 named Cork Cyber its Startup Vendor of the Year at Beyond, recognizing the MSP-focused AI remediation platform that remediates threats automatically and pays out financially when risks slip through. A report from the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project calls Canada’s cloud computing market “broken,” warning that Amazon, Microsoft and Google control 85 percent of the market and domestic providers risk creating what the report calls “maplewashed dependencies.” Cobalt and Omdia research finds that 53 percent of security leaders believe traditional penetration testing is now outdated. iCOUNTER appoints Joel Molinoff, formerly of BlueVoyant and CBS Corporation, as chief operating officer. DataStrike expands its Linux managed services practice by hiring Jon Cain as senior Linux infrastructure engineer. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. Later today on In The Channel, we’re hearing from Josh Singh at Turning Point Technologies in Vancouver – it’s a conversation about running a single-vendor Dell practice, AI for SMB, and why backup is the last line of defense against ransomware. And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday on In The Channel I sat down with ESTI’s Earl Gosick on AI infrastructure, cyber resilience, and why Saskatchewan may be Canada’s next data center hub. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Platform vendors are transferring liability and delivery responsibility for AI services onto MSPs by building structured AI practice frameworks, training programs, and service delivery methodologies. This approach is motivated by mounting economic pressures on vendors, as seen with large-scale infrastructure investments and the need for sustainable revenue models. PAX8, Ingram Micro Cloud, ConnectWise, and others are formalizing AI partner programs that enroll MSPs to deliver vendor-defined services, while shifting operational complexity and accountability downstream. The episode highlights PAX8's Managed Intelligence initiative, aimed at helping small and midsize MSPs deliver AI services to SMB clients with minimal prior expertise. PAX8 cites its own research, which notes that 62% of SMBs view AI as essential for competitiveness and 74% plan to increase AI spending in the coming year. The economics of AI scaling are underscored by data on projected data center buildout costs—up to $15 trillion by 2030 and requiring $1.75 trillion annually just to maintain. OpenAI's public offering, with an $850 billion valuation and $180 billion in funding, is attributed to the need for capital that private markets can no longer supply, prompting vendors to leverage channel partners for both revenue generation and market validation. Supporting developments include expanded programs at the distribution and platform levels: a PAX8-Nocdoc partnership providing managed NOC/SOC services for smaller MSPs, Ingram Micro Cloud's collaboration with PartnerStack to formalize AI service delivery infrastructure, and ConnectWise's introduction of an AI-native platform for predictive and autonomous IT operations. Research from Omnia and the IBM Institute for Business Value indicates underutilization of vendor market development funds and widespread deployment of AI frameworks despite only 11% of tech leaders feeling prepared—demonstrating the gap between vendor offerings and operational readiness. The implications for MSPs are significant. By enrolling in these vendor-driven AI programs, providers take on delivery risk, contractual accountability, and potential liability for AI outcomes they did not design. The structural split is clear: MSPs can either create and govern their own AI methodologies—pricing accountability as a service—or become vehicles for vendor frameworks, absorbing complexity without full compensation or control. Practical recommendations include updating service agreements for AI-related risks, building internal governance around AI deployments, and not allowing vendor or community consensus to substitute for explicit accountability for outcomes. 00:00 Channel AI Shift  03:59 Enrollment, Not Enablement 06:55 Methodology vs. Liability 10:01 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  Zero Networks  CometBackup 

In the spirit of recording content at Conferences, we want to replay a special episode with Ryan Walsh, Chief Strategy Officer, Pax8. Enjoy and be in the look out for exciting episodes from Beyond 26. Success doesn't happen by accident—it's a journey we must own, and that begins with the right mindset. Ryan Walsh, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pax8 discusses the power of strategic leadership, embracing innovation, and the importance of cultivating community within the channel. From his rock-climbing analogy of navigating challenges to his passion for helping MSPs grow through “guided growth” and “amplifying uniqueness,” Ryan underscores the need for focused vision and teamwork.   Highlights also include: A glimpse into the Voyager Alliance partner program. The expanding influence of AI, agents, and a shift to managed intelligence partners (MIPs). To be competitive means owning a niche, staying connected, and thinking collaboratively. Family and basketball as foundational to his leadership philosophy.   His leadership philosophy, rooted in enabling others and fostering shared success, offers valuable lessons for anyone seeking to lead with purpose in a rapidly changing tech landscape. Follow Ryan on LinkedIn and visit Pax8.com to stay informed about the marketplace.   Timestamps: [08:21] Father modeled passion [18:03] Voyager Alliance Growth Tracks [18:57] Owning your niche [23:05] Power of Team   --- more ---   If you want to master the art of audience engagement while learning how to conquer speaking anxiety, deliver persuasive presentations, and close more deals, this is the program for you. Twins Talk It Up is hosted by identical twin brothers Danny Suk Brown and David Suk Brown, who share leadership communication strategies designed to help professionals embrace the power of their authentic voice.   Together, we'll explore tips and tools to unlock the full potential of your voice, dominate every stage you step onto, and elevate your influence and value. Along the way, we'll crush goals and share plenty of laughs.   Book a Free 15-minute discovery call: dsbleadershipgroup.com/schedule-a-call/ Website: appmeetup.com/twinstalkitup/ Community: facebook.com/groups/publicspeakingpoints Patreon: patreon.com/twinstalkitup

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Eltjo Hofstee, Global Sales Director at EasyDMARC. Eltjo joined nearly four years ago with a clear brief: build a scalable sales organization around a product with strong market fit. That journey has taken him deep into how MSPs grow, sell, and redefine the value they bring to end customers.Eltjo opens with a concept reshaping how EasyDMARC thinks about its partner program: the shift from managed service provider to managed intelligence provider. The idea, which Eltjo credits to Pax8, moves MSPs away from SLA-driven metrics toward a more proactive, data-informed advisory role. MSPs already sit on a significant amount of customer data, and using that data to get ahead of issues is what separates a vendor from a genuine partner. EasyDMARC's own program reflects this: the company now helps MSPs not just deploy DMARC, but find new customers and sell adjacent services.DMARC generates an XML report for every email sent from a protected domain, and those reports tend to reveal more than end users expect. Organizations that assume they are too small to be targeted routinely discover, once they set up DMARC, that their domain is being impersonated constantly. The data also surfaces shadow IT, such as a marketing tool sending emails from an unconfigured source. That ongoing visibility is what keeps EasyDMARC relevant after initial setup: MSPs can build a proactive early warning system that adds clear, measurable value to every end customer conversation.What ties it together is a shift in orientation: from fixing problems to anticipating them. That is where the MSP role finds its next level of relevance._________________________Learn more about Channext

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: ASUS Canada Country Manager: ASUS Canada has announced the appointment of Vernon Coutinho as Country Manager for its System Business Group. Made ahead of the ASUS Business Summit 2026 in Toronto, the move underscores the company’s long-term growth ambitions in the commercial market as it accelerates its focus on AI-ready devices. 7AI PLAID ELITE Launch: Security vendor 7AI has launched PLAID ELITE, a fully managed, AI-native security operations solution. The platform uses agentic AI to autonomously complete the majority of investigations end-to-end, offering partners a way to scale security operations without increasing headcount. Guardz Appoints Channel Leader: SMB cybersecurity platform Guardz has appointed former Pax8 executive Danni Munro as its new Director of Channel Sales for the ANZ region. The hire reflects a broader global channel push by the vendor to help MSPs meet the accelerating demand for consolidated security services. ChannelNEXT Toronto: TechnoPlanet’s ChannelNEXT conference kicks off tomorrow in Toronto, gathering Canadian VARs and MSPs to tackle pressing channel challenges. The event will feature extensive discussions on the future of the channel ecosystem. ManageEngine Autonomous AI: ManageEngine is rolling out an autonomous AI push designed to streamline IT operations. The initiative aims to help MSPs handle increasingly complex environments with automated workflows. Tech Builders 2026: Global Startups will host the Tech Builders 2026 conference in Toronto on June 16, focusing on the new digital economy. The event will explore AI, venture capital, and Canada’s role as a global innovation hub. Tech Financing Adoption: Mitsubishi HC Capital Canada is urging the channel to embed financing into partnerships. Director of Technology Finance Jim Moschos believes this approach will help clients overcome the high upfront costs of complex technology implementations. CRTC Streaming Demands: The CRTC has officially ordered streaming giants like Netflix and Apple TV to boost their spending on Canadian content. The regulatory move is designed to support the domestic production industry. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, May 27th, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Yesterday, ASUS Canada announced the appointment of Vernon Coutinho as Country Manager for its System Business Group. The announcement, which came just ahead of the ASUS Business Summit in Toronto, reflects the company’s long-term growth ambitions in the Canadian commercial market. Coutinho, who brings nearly 30 years of industry experience, will oversee strategy and performance across consumer, gaming, and commercial segments. For Canadian MSPs, this signals a deepening of the ASUS partner ecosystem locally. The company is actively accelerating its focus on AI-ready commercial devices, bringing its consumer DNA into the workplace. According to ASUS, the goal is to elevate the business laptop experience by delivering devices that are secure, manageable, and enjoyable to use. Also on Tuesday, 7AI announced the availability of PLAID ELITE, a fully managed, AI-native security operations solution. The platform combines autonomous investigation by AI agents with expert oversight from 7AI security engineers, delivering a continuous, follow-the-sun security outcome. The company is positioning the tool as a way for organizations to protect their environments without needing to build or scale an internal operations team. What makes this relevant for the channel is the service model. Rather than relying entirely on human analyst shifts, PLAID ELITE’s coverage scales with investigation volume through agentic AI. 7AI noted that agents are now autonomously completing the majority of investigations end-to-end, allowing partners to drive security outcomes through technology rather than headcount. Cybersecurity platform Guardz has appointed former Pax8 executive Danni Munro as its new Director of Channel Sales for the Australia and New Zealand region. While this is an international appointment, Munro’s background in scaling Pax8’s operations underscores a broader channel push by Guardz. The company is actively deepening its partner relationships to meet accelerating demand from small and medium-sized businesses facing rising ransomware threats. This move highlights a continuing global trend where cybersecurity vendors are relying on seasoned channel veterans to help MSPs deliver consolidated security services to clients who lack the internal expertise to manage threats independently. In Brief – TechnoPlanet’s ChannelNEXT conference kicks off tomorrow in Toronto to address pressing partner challenges. ManageEngine says its new autonomous AI push will streamline IT operations for managed service providers. Global Startups is set to host the Tech Builders 2026 conference in Toronto on June 16. Mitsubishi HC Capital Canada is urging the channel to embed financing into partnerships to offset complex technology costs. The CRTC has ordered streaming platforms like Netflix and Apple TV to boost their spending on Canadian content. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. Later today on In The Channel, we will be airing our conversation with Coro CEO Joe Sykora to discuss security stacks and the 2026 threat landscape. And if you haven’t heard it yet, be sure to check out yesterday’s episode featuring Nigel Brown, CTO of Microserve, for a practitioner’s take on AI readiness and tokenomics from Dell Technologies World. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Top Down Ventures closes C$38M Founders Fund I: Top Down Ventures has announced the final close of its Founders Fund I at $38 million Canadian, oversubscribed against its original target. According to the firm, this is the first institutional fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and AI for the MSP ecosystem, backed by more than 100 MSP operators including Pax8. The fund’s first exit – zofiQ to ConnectWise – returned 5.3x the invested capital in roughly six months. Canada now second globally for ransomware, Fortinet reports: New data from Fortinet‘s 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report and its companion 2026 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report show Canada has moved from third to second globally for ransomware attacks, with 374 organizations extorted and 17 billion total cyberattacks recorded in 2025. According to Fortinet, AI-accelerated threats are compressing time-to-exploit by two to four times, while 47 percent of Canadian IT leaders cite a cybersecurity skills shortage as a top cause of breaches. Barracuda: one in three emails now malicious or spam: Barracuda‘s 2026 Email Threats Report, based on analysis of 3.1 billion emails, finds that 48 percent of malicious email activity is phishing, 34 percent of organizations experience account takeover at least monthly, and 70 percent of malicious PDFs now hide phishing links inside QR codes. According to Barracuda, attackers are shifting toward stealthier, trust-based tactics designed to bypass traditional filters, creating growing demand for layered email protection and automated response. Calian completes Computex acquisition: Ottawa-based Calian Group has officially completed its acquisition of U.S. managed service provider Computex. The deal expands Calian’s American IT services footprint and adds to its cybersecurity capabilities. Crogl begins private rollout of AI SOC platform: Crogl has initiated a private rollout of its new AI-powered SOC platform, positioning it to help service providers automate threat response and reduce alert fatigue for lean security teams. Pax8 and NinjaOne announce MSP partnership: Pax8 and NinjaOne have announced a partnership starting as a referral motion, giving MSPs a path to RMM and unified IT operations tools while the companies work toward future marketplace integration. TD SYNNEX secures reserved NVIDIA GPU access for MSPs: TD SYNNEX has arranged reserved NVIDIA GPU capacity for channel partners through a deal with Nebius AI Cloud, giving MSPs a route to AI infrastructure services without buying hardware or competing with hyperscalers for supply. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Tuesday, May 12, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Top Down Ventures has announced the final close of its Founders Fund I, pulling in 38 million Canadian dollars and oversubscribing its original target. According to the firm, this is the first institutional fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and artificial intelligence for the managed service provider ecosystem, which it values as a roughly 1 trillion dollar global IT services category. The fund is backed by a limited partner base of more than 100 MSP operators, including distribution giant Pax8. Top Down noted that closing the fund in the current economic environment was a challenge, but the oversubscription signals clear institutional interest in the MSP software space. The firm also pointed to its first exit as a proof point – zofiQ, an agentic AI platform for MSP service desks, was acquired by ConnectWise just six months after Top Down’s initial investment, returning 5.3 times the invested capital. Having dedicated institutional capital purpose-built for the ecosystem means the next generation of MSP tooling gets funded by people who actually understand the problem. For solution providers thinking about where the platform wars are heading over the next five years, this fund is part of that story. New data released yesterday by Fortinet paints a stark picture of Canada’s position in the global threat landscape. According to the company’s 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report and its companion 2026 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report, Canada has moved from third to second globally in ransomware attacks, with 374 Canadian organizations extorted last year. Total cyberattacks against Canadian targets surged to 17 billion in 2025, up from 13.7 billion the year before. Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs says the time-to-exploit for critical vulnerabilities is now running two to four times faster than it was, driven by threat actors deploying agentic AI to accelerate reconnaissance and execution. The skills picture compounds the problem: 47 percent of Canadian IT leaders cited a lack of cybersecurity talent as a top cause of breaches, and 49 percent say they struggle to hire staff with specific AI security experience. That combination – faster attacks, a shrinking talent pool – is exactly the kind of environment where a strong MSP security practice becomes a business necessity for SMB clients, not a nice-to-have. Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global vice president of threat intelligence at FortiGuard Labs, called it an “industrialized defense” challenge. New research from Barracuda released this morning adds another dimension to the threat picture. Based on an analysis of 3.1 billion emails, the company’s 2026 Email Threats Report finds that one in three emails is now malicious or unwanted spam. According to Barracuda, 48 percent of malicious email activity is phishing, 34 percent of organizations experience account takeover at least once per month, and 90 percent of high-volume phishing campaigns now use phishing-as-a-service kits. Perhaps most notable for the managed services conversation: 70 percent of malicious PDFs now hide phishing links inside QR codes, a tactic specifically designed to bypass traditional email filters. Barracuda positions the core finding as a shift in attacker strategy – away from noisy malware and toward stealthier, trust-based techniques that use compromised accounts and familiar file formats to slip past defenses. The report identifies growing demand for layered email and identity protection combined with automated response, which points directly to an opportunity for service providers helping customers with lean IT teams who are already stretched managing alert volume. In Brief – Calian Group has completed its acquisition of U.S. managed service provider Computex, expanding the Ottawa-based firm’s American footprint and cybersecurity capabilities. Crogl has begun a private rollout of its AI-powered SOC platform, positioning it to help service providers automate threat response and cut alert fatigue. Pax8 and NinjaOne have announced a partnership starting as a referral motion, giving MSPs a path to RMM and unified IT operations tools while the companies work toward future marketplace integration. TD SYNNEX has given MSPs reserved access to NVIDIA GPU capacity through a deal with Nebius AI Cloud, letting channel partners deliver AI infrastructure services without buying hardware or competing with hyperscalers for GPU supply. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. Later today on In The Channel, I sit down with Joel Abramson, managing partner at Top Down Ventures, to go deeper on the Founders Fund close – the LP flywheel strategy, the zofiQ exit, and what it means for the companies building the next generation of MSP software. And if you missed it yesterday, check out my conversation with Steven Kiss, partner and national ServiceNow practice leader at EY Canada, on what building Canada’s first ServiceNow elite partner teaches you about what is coming next in the agentic enterprise. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Joel Abramson, managing partner at Top Down Ventures Today’s In The Channel episode lands on the same morning that Vancouver-based Top Down Ventures announces the close of Founders Fund I at C$38 million – oversubscribed against an original target of US$25 million, and positioned as the first institutional venture fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and AI for the managed service provider ecosystem. Managing partner Joel Abramson joined the show to walk through the fund’s thesis and what it means for the channel. Abramson co-founded and led Fully Managed through more than a dozen acquisitions before its $137 million acquisition by Telus Business Solutions in 2021. He joins general partners Chris Day (founder of IT Glue and ScalePad) and Mark Scott (founder of N-able) at Top Down – three operators who between them have spent about 75 years building and scaling companies inside the MSP ecosystem. The fund’s first exit – zofiQ to ConnectWise, which closed in January 2026 – returned 5.3 times the invested capital in roughly six months. Abramson describes it as a case study in what Top Down looks for: founders solving singular problems with exceptional depth, validated by real MSP operators rather than generalist investors. The macro thesis is equally compelling. The global IT services market is projected to grow from $600 billion to over $1 trillion by 2030. And in 2026, SMB IT spend is on track to outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever – a shift Abramson contrasts with what he calls the “SaaSpocalypse” in enterprise, where headcount reductions are translating directly into fewer SaaS licenses. The fund’s LP base of more than 100 MSP operators – including Pax8 – acts as a flywheel for validating investments, sourcing design partners, and connecting portfolio companies with the customers best positioned to stress-test what they’re building. Find Top Down Ventures, including their newsletter and annual research report, at topdown.com. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. If you caught The Buzz this morning – and you really should have – you already know the headline. Vancouver-based Top Down Ventures has closed Founders Fund I at $38 million Canadian, oversubscribed, as the first institutional venture fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and AI for the managed service provider ecosystem. The story behind it, though, is rich. Top Down was founded with three partners with deep roots in the Canadian channel community: Chris Day of IT Glue and ScalePad, Mark Scott who founded N-able, and today’s guest, Joel Abramson, who ran Fully Managed through more than a dozen acquisitions before its $137 million sale to Telus Business Solutions in 2021. The fund already has its first exit in the books. zofiQ, an agentic AI platform for MSP service desks that ConnectWise acquired just six months after Top Down’s investment, at 5.3 times the invested capital. Joel joined me this morning to talk about why MSP software needs its own dedicated venture fund, what the first exit tells us about where agentic AI is headed, and one market shift that has the team genuinely excited about the decade ahead. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Joel Abramson. Joel, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Joel Abramson: Great to be here, Rob. Robert Dutt: I wanted to start with the origin story here. I think it’s an interesting one in that you had a big role in building and running Fully Managed through a dozen or so acquisitions, then sold – instead of going off and retiring on a boat somewhere or that sort of thing, you ended up in venture investing in specifically MSP software. Can you walk me through how that happened? How did Top Down come together? Was this something that you sought out or something that Chris Day pulled you into? How did that happen? Joel Abramson: Yeah, well, let’s be clear – I do love being on boats. To tell the origin story, you get to go through a 25-year journey of the MSP ecosystem itself, because there are three general partners: Mark Scott, Chris Day, and myself, Joel Abramson. Our journey dates back to the early 2000s when Mark Scott started N-able, and he was one of the pioneers that really helped value-added resellers and break-fix IT service providers become MSPs. I meet people every time I’m out on the road who have a story about working with N-able – transitioning their revenue model from break-fix to recurring. N-able is a phenomenal company today and I think Mark’s legacy lives on there. Mark started that company and then exited just before the SolarWinds acquisition. Then he went on to start a service provider called CareWorks – an MSP focused on senior care facilities. A really interesting vertical, as well as broad SMB. But I’ll pause his story and focus on Chris, because Chris is founder and chairman and really sets the vision for Top Down. Chris had an MSP as well back in the early 2000s. Eventually that was Fully Managed, and that’s where I joined him. I had a small – much less successful – MSP called Packetsafe Networks, and I rolled my little MSP into Chris’s marquee MSP, Fully Managed, and together we set on this journey. We wanted to bring that company to ten cities with $10 million in revenue in each city and then sell it to a Canadian telco – and it’s not revisionist history, it was actually the goal. But then a couple of years into our shared journey at Fully Managed, Chris got pulled into building software. It was because I’d built a bunch of software for Fully Managed to run on, and he made the mistake – or the fortuitous opportunity – of showing it to his peer group. His peer group was like, “I want to use that.” So he said, “Okay, well, I’ll build it for you.” He started building a documentation platform from the ground up and called it IT Glue, and that was a phenomenal ride for him – taking it from a couple of peer group mates trying it out to selling to Kaseya in 2018 and building a very large company in a relatively short amount of time. Not without a tremendous amount of hard work and grind. He was on the road with pop-up banners signing up logo by logo by logo in the early days, but eventually the movement just took shape and every MSP realized that they needed a documentation platform, and IT Glue took off. So IT Glue exits to Kaseya in 2018. Chris has to make that decision: do I want to golf and travel for the rest of my life, or what brings me joy? And so he actually started Top Down as a way to re-engage back with the MSP community. He had an early portfolio of three companies: Warranty Master, a company he had started with his brother; Backup Radar; and Quoter. Together those three early companies started to grow at their own individual pace. Keep in mind, we’re still running Fully Managed over here – I’m running it for him. Then we ended up putting Fully Managed together with Mark Scott’s MSP, and that’s how the three of us came together. Then yes, we did a number of acquisitions. We grew Fully Managed to be $100 million in revenue. It wasn’t the straight line Chris and I had talked about – ten cities in ten years – but it was maybe seven cities. The bridge version: Telus came in and said they wanted to acquire Canada’s largest MSP, which was Fully Managed at the time. They had done a bunch of research and nine months later we consummated that transaction, at the end of 2021. I’d been working with Chris for a number of years on the early-stage portfolio, because we’d get a couple of calls every month with people saying, “Hey, I’m starting this project, Chris, are you interested in taking a look?” So we started to build this reputation as investors in early-stage MSP software companies. We tried some other stuff – everything from consumer packaged goods (we still have a couple of investments) to starting a country music label, which we’ll save for another time. But we always knew our home, I think, was in the MSP space. After the Fully Managed exit, we decided we wanted to really compound our impact. We had this idea of a venture fund – and maybe I’ll pause there, because I can continue the journey, but we’ll wait and see if you have any questions up to that point. Robert Dutt: Understandable. It’s a wild journey, and it really is back to the heart of the early days of the MSP movement – as you say, from break-fix and VAR models. I guess tell me a little bit about where you’re at now. The fund is positioned as the first institutional VC targeting early-stage software and AI for this ecosystem. Why do you think this space needs a dedicated fund? What does a generalist venture fund miss or get wrong when they’re looking at the space? Joel Abramson: We’ve been doing early-stage investing for a few years – five years. At the same time, Warranty Master became ScalePad, and ScalePad started to gain really, really great momentum. ScalePad brought in a growth equity partner, Integrity Growth Partners, who are just phenomenal folks. They capitalized the business and that grew ScalePad from $10 million to $50 million. They were great partners, great board members, and we watched these guys – we were like, wow, we’ve been through this journey a couple of times. They add a lot of value, and we’re really excited about that relationship. We were doing our thing with the early-stage companies, and so we looked across the ecosystem. We said, there is a ton of capital that’s ready to invest in companies in the MSP ecosystem when they get to a certain scale – that was kind of the scale that ScalePad had gotten to. Then we looked down and said, well, what about the guys that are just starting out? There’s not a ton of support. There’s a ConnectWise pitch contest that grants $60,000 or $70,000 to early-stage companies. And there are early-stage investors – we’ve seen companies like Pax8 and Huntress go through many rounds of financing and they started somewhere. But we saw that the strongest source of capital in the MSP ecosystem was actually coming from angel investors. It was Joe Paniterri and Kevin Blake and Channel Angels, and they had done a number of deals, bringing together really early-stage capital and putting $100,000 into a business fueled from a number of different folks. That’s really, really cool. But where’s all the venture? You look across horizontal software and there are funds of venture that just pour in. In the big markets – the Valley and New York – and then in secondary markets, there are funds focused on those areas. But we saw early-stage MSP software companies as vastly overlooked. So we said, what if we could bring together capital from the MSP ecosystem? Because we’ve made plenty of millionaires just by acquiring them with Fully Managed. You look at how that scales out across the ecosystem: you’ve got Evergreen and Integris and Thrive and all these folks buying up MSPs. The stats are over 200 search funds, family offices, and MSP aggregators buying MSPs right now. That’s generating a lot of wealth for a lot of people. Then you have MSPs that are super profitable and people are making good cash flow. Then you have all the software companies that have exited with similar stories to Chris’s. There’s actually quite a bit of capital that could be put to work back into the ecosystem if we just found a way to harness it and focus it on innovation. We said, instead of doing a couple of deals a year, what if we could make 8 to 10 investments a year by bringing capital together? And then what if we could build a system around that to take everything we’ve learned working with early-stage companies – applying those practices, bringing folks together for design partners, early customers, advice, and partnerships in the MSP ecosystem? So we set out to raise a $25 million venture fund, and we said we were going to focus on educating the MSP ecosystem on what investing in a venture fund looks like, because it’s really just going to fuel innovation for MSPs themselves. Our goal was to have half the fund raised from the MSP community and half from outside – similar to what it was at Fully Managed: let’s tell the world about what a great opportunity exists in MSP. We were super successful in the first bucket. We got really well received by the MSP community. We have over 100 LPs in the fund and we exceeded our target of $25 million. In the second bucket, we still have a lot of work to do. We’re one year into our Outliers podcast, we’ve produced one white paper, and we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of conversations in the institutional community, educating funds of funds and family offices on the opportunity for early-stage MSP software investing. We only got a couple of participants in this fund – which is all right, because it shows the strength of the MSP ecosystem. We still oversubscribed our target. But we’re excited to continue that journey of educating institutional investors for our second fund and beyond. Robert Dutt: You mentioned you’re in at the early stage. Where in the lifecycle do you typically start looking, and what does a target portfolio company look like at the point you’re getting involved? Joel Abramson: I’ve only been doing this for a few years, so I’m still learning some of the language, Rob. But we talk about early stage being right at inception – which is called pre-seed, the first money into a company. Maybe they have an idea of what they want to build, a prototype, a business plan, some people, but they haven’t actually started that path to launch – all the way up to around that first million or million and a half of revenue, where they’d be called a late-seed investment or an early Series A. So maybe it’s the second money in, or in a Series A it could be the third. But really we’re focused on the early stage where we can leverage the strength of our LP base – a lot of strong MSPs – as well as the strength of the community that Top Down works to enable and bring together. That can be for design partners, early customers, folks to help with advice, and then partnerships in the MSP ecosystem. Maybe a company is working with ScalePad to solve a problem and ScalePad can help by bringing that product to its customer base. It’s really about building the things that matter most to MSPs. And that’s why I think we love this ecosystem so much – it’s a partnership of vendors and service providers. If we look forward to how AI is going to impact things, you have small and medium businesses at the frontline – all the enablement use cases there, all the cybersecurity use cases. Then you have the service provider layer, which is MSPs helping them with all those things. Then you have a middle layer of supply chain software like the companies we invest in. And on top of that, you have the hyperscalers, the cloud companies, the frontier companies. That four-tiered system really matters, because without the innovation from Microsoft and Anthropic, the macro doesn’t move forward. But very rarely is it going to go straight from there into frontline workers’ hands. The two layers in between – the layer we invest in, and the MSPs themselves – are really what’s helping bring the value from the top to the end market. We think it’s an incredibly resilient ecosystem. We think there’s nobody better positioned to help with AI transformation than MSPs. And that layer between the frontier companies and the hyperscalers and the MSPs is really important – that’s where innovation happens on their behalf, and that’s the kind of companies we’re investing in. Robert Dutt: One example of that would be zofiQ, which I think was your first exit – and some pretty startling numbers there: a six-month turnaround, selling to ConnectWise, bringing back more than 5x what you put in. What did you see in that company that made you say “we’re in,” and what did the ConnectWise acquisition tell you about the market for PSA and agentic AI and where that’s all headed? Joel Abramson: It starts with Lee and his team. We get the fortunate opportunity to look at a lot of things that are being built and we’re still learning, trying to keep pace. As the last couple of years have played out, we’ve been students of what people are building and how they’re looking at solving problems, armed with the knowledge of the last 25 years of the ecosystem. When we met Lee, we were really impressed with him as a founder. He had a strong track record of purpose-building solutions. When Chris and I sat down with him, it was obvious he was solving singular problems with a tremendous amount of depth, versus some of the other folks we’d seen building solutions who were really going an inch deep and a mile wide. Knowing how mission-critical these solutions are to MSPs – that for every time they mess up a service ticket, they put that customer relationship at risk – we knew that Lee’s approach was just bang on. He was obsessed with solving singular use cases. It showed in the team he put together, the technology he built, and what customers were saying about the product. It’s very atypical to make an investment and then six months later have it acquired. When it was all going down and we were talking to the ConnectWise folks, it was bittersweet. We’re so happy to see ConnectWise gain this incredible capability, but we were sad to know we weren’t going to have Lee in the Top Down portfolio anymore. Ultimately, thrilled – because what it means for ConnectWise is that they can get this really powerful technology into a lot of people’s hands. That has a tremendous impact for the ecosystem, the end market, the MSPs partnered with ConnectWise. They can get this great innovative technology out into the market much faster than Lee could on his own, just going out and telling the story and waiting for the momentum to build. Thrilled for ConnectWise, thrilled for Lee and the team to jump into an organization like ConnectWise. And proud that we were able to play a tiny part on that journey. Robert Dutt: zofiQ was automating the service desk with AI agents. From what you saw inside that experience with them, and looking across the portfolio now, I’m curious – especially given your background running an MSP – when you’re talking to MSPs about what some of these companies are doing, how ready are they to adopt and operationalize this kind of agentic tooling? Both in terms of willingness and interest, which I’m sure is high, and actual aptitude and ability to make the operational changes that come with it? Joel Abramson: It totally depends on the MSP’s maturity. I’ve been through the life cycle of MSP maturity many times – two steps forward, one step back, a bunch of times. Every MSP is on a similar treadmill of growing and maturing, then having to embrace new technology, then getting hit by outside factors: whether it’s COVID, the move to remote work, the push back to the office, or the change in technology. It’s not a static industry, but it is an industrial-strength ecosystem because it’s so mission-critical for the customers MSPs serve. Everybody is at their own part of the journey. Companies like zofiQ come around and they focus on building the right technology, then working with the ideal MSPs that are at a place where they can embrace it. I go back to an inspirational investor, Dave Lahn, who always talks about the different buckets of work: the hero work, all the work that supports the hero work, and then all the work that should be done but isn’t. I think about MSPs with that third bucket. As a 20-year MSP operator, there were all these things I knew I wanted to do but could never get around to because we were always fighting fires, then trying to do proactive work, then project work – it compounds and you never had enough hands for the work that should be done that isn’t. I think that’s one of the huge opportunities with AI – actually getting that work done, staying on top of it, and providing more stable, secure environments for MSP customers. If AI is the great enabler for MSPs themselves, then how exciting is it to be in a position where I can’t think of a service provider that supports small and medium businesses that’s better positioned to bring AI enablement down to that market than an MSP. I doubt it’s the accountant, I doubt it’s the janitor or the maintenance people. I think it’s the MSP, because you’re already talking technology. As MSPs continue to evolve from the server room to boardroom conversations, AI is an incredible hook to get into that conversation. That’s why the work ScalePad does around customer success and supporting the strategy conversations is so critical. But the next wave of companies we see are really around helping MSPs actually deliver AI use cases successfully to their customers. That transformation will take place for a long, long time. Robert Dutt: Your base of limited partners includes more than 100 MSP operators, including Pax8. That’s unusual for a VC fund. Was that a deliberate choice? And how does having operators as limited partners actually change how you source and evaluate deals? Joel Abramson: It just makes us so strong. We have the brainpower of over 100 people there for us to tap and leverage. At our Horizons event in November – where we bring all of our LPs together – I’ve never seen a more aligned group of individuals, focused on supporting the supply chain of an ecosystem, come together and have meaningful conversations without any real individual agenda. We think about it as a flywheel. We have a group of limited partners with all of our capital in this fund together. Of course we all want to make money – but I think what drives that outcome is supporting innovation and figuring out exactly where the best place to put capital is today that can have the largest impact tomorrow. zofiQ is a perfect example. Here’s a strong founder with a huge problem, solving it at the deepest level, that MSPs are going to be able to take forward and dramatically impact their businesses and their customer experience. That, to me, is the genesis of venture investing: aligning all those things and putting the right pieces together. We think about the strength of the mindshare of our LPs, figuring out ways to connect them with our portfolio companies, ways to validate our thesis and investments by harnessing that energy, and then making the right investments and providing the right support throughout a portfolio company’s lifecycle, thanks to that really, really strong LP base. Robert Dutt: So if I’m an MSP owner listening to this – not an investor per se, just someone running a managed services shop – why should I be paying attention to what you guys are doing and what you’re funding? What’s the typical practical downstream impact on my business? Joel Abramson: You could look at our portfolio with a degree of confidence that these companies are getting great support to build great products, that they’re talking to top MSP operators around the world to help shape what gets built. The average MSP is the benefactor of that, because it means they’re getting great product built that they can use in their MSP or deploy to their customers. We’re doing this to earn and keep the reputation that a Top Down-backed company means tier-one innovation, great people behind it, that it’s been validated and tested – and that MSPs themselves can be the benefactor of that by leveraging this technology. Robert Dutt: You closed this fund at about $38 million, oversubscribed, in what you called a slog of an environment – and I get that. What does that tell you about where institutional capital is actually flowing in 2026? And what does a successful Fund I set up for Fund II? Joel Abramson: A lot of institutional capital is flowing towards the frontier companies and the supply chain of AI. We think that’s great, because just like the Microsofts and Googles that have powered the ecosystem for the last ten years, we think heavily capitalized AI companies are fantastic for the downstream companies – the software companies we’re investing in, the AI companies we’re investing in, the MSPs themselves, and the SMB layer. Capital flows down as well. As vertical-focused funds like ours demonstrate a strong track record, more institutional capital will flow into vehicles like ours. Certainly a lot of capital is tied up at the top right now, but we see that as a great thing because we’re not super concerned about the capital cycles of the next three months. We’re much more concerned about the capital cycles of the next two decades. As we’ve mobilized a non-insignificant pool of capital to support early-stage MSP software companies, we strive to earn the right to have a second fund with a more diverse group of participants, and subsequent funds beyond that – as long as we continue to find the right companies to partner with and add value along the way. Robert Dutt: And that seems like – just with the names you’ve mentioned and the names I can think of off the top of my head – a target-rich environment. There are lots of companies building specifically for the MSP market for obvious reasons. But I’m curious: without necessarily naming names or tipping your hand, what problem or product category are you most excited about in the MSP software pipeline right now? Where’s the white space that’s still underbuilt? Joel Abramson: In our research paper, we talk about two big macro things happening in the market right now. One: we think this market – let’s broaden it to IT services, not just MSP – is going from a $600 billion addressable market to a $1.3 trillion addressable market, certainly $1 trillion by 2030. That’s a huge market. On the MSP side specifically, we have four or five scaled companies at or above a billion in revenue. Ninja is on its way up there. N-able, of course, is a big company. But you’re talking about a much larger addressable market – there’s still empty canvas where new companies can scale up to fill the middle and eventually be alongside some of those platforms. We expect those platforms to continue to grow and thrive, and we hope to build or invest in companies that can partner with them to take advantage of their distribution and ultimately make small and medium businesses better through MSPs. All that said, what are some of those categories? I don’t think it’s new MSPs starting up and buying PSA – that market is fairly saturated. Nor do I think it’s more EDR or XDR – those are pretty saturated markets too. There’s still market share that will trade, don’t get me wrong, and innovation will build on top of it. But doubling the market requires new products, new revenue streams, and obviously AI is a critical part of that. Whether it’s the evolution of agentic service work to do all the work that should be done but isn’t, or raising productivity levels so the service is that much better, or helping the average SMB with a sophisticated IT strategy that evolves into an AI strategy – we see the category of AI services enablement for MSPs as a huge, huge opportunity. In the enterprise, we’re living through what I call the SaaSpocalypse – the idea that big SaaS companies are going to see fewer licenses because people are going to downsize headcount and thus take an impact on their top line. But we see the SMB market as more resilient, because my accountant with 60 people and one person in marketing – they’re not going to downsize that one-person marketing department. That person is actually just going to get that much better thanks to all the tools they’re using. SMB IT spend is expected to outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever in 2026. We believe that’s because of the resiliency of the SMB market – the idea that when a big tech company lays off 5,000 people, those people don’t all sail off into the sunset. A lot of them move into the SMB economy and start small businesses. Maybe the IT folks start an MSP. So we see the SMB part of the economy continuing to thrive, and it’s showing itself this year – thanks to this crazy stat that SMB IT spend will outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever. For all those reasons, we’re very excited about the opportunities it creates in the companies that we’re invested in. Robert Dutt: That is a crazy stat, and it’s worth underlining – because of where you and your peers and so much of this community is focused, right in that SMB space. And closer to home, as a Canadian podcast, we’re very much a nation of SMBs. So it really is super impactful here. Joel Abramson: Yeah, I would agree. Robert Dutt: For people who want to follow what you guys are doing – whether they’re founders, MSPs, or just interested in what’s coming in terms of new AI-first MSP software – where do they find you? How can they find out more? Joel Abramson: TopDown.com. We publish a newsletter and try to share all the learnings we’re gaining each quarter. We publish a white paper annually. We have a conference in November called Horizons – if you’re interested in investing in the MSP ecosystem, our goal is to bring everybody together as peers. We do a lot of dinners and events around the big MSP events. Our goal is always to bring everyone together as peers, not in a supplier relationship where you’re being sold to – just everybody trying to solve this thing together. The community aspect of the MSP ecosystem is so strong, and that’s how you engage. I’m pretty easy to find and always interested in a conversation with anybody from inside the ecosystem or outside, as we try to build this thing one brick at a time toward 1.3 trillion of addressable market. Robert Dutt: Brilliant. Go get that. Go build that. I appreciate you taking the time, Joel. Joel Abramson: Thank you so much for having me. Robert Dutt: There you have it – Joel Abramson from Top Down Ventures. I’d like to thank Joel for his time this morning. Thank you as always for listening to In The Channel. A few things stuck with me from this conversation. First, the framework Joel described: frontier AI companies at the top, then the supply chain software layer that Top Down invests in, then MSPs, then SMBs at the front line. It’s a clean way to think about how AI value actually gets delivered to small and medium businesses. And the point that MSPs are the most natural vehicle for that delivery is hard to argue with – from where I sit, and probably from where you sit too. Second, that stat about SMB IT spend outpacing enterprise IT for the first time ever this year. If we’re in what Joel calls the SaaSpocalypse for the enterprise, we’re in a resilience story for SMB. For an audience of MSPs, that’s your market, and that’s your moment. And the zofiQ story. A six-month hold, 5.3 times the invested capital to ConnectWise. What Joel said about what made it work – going deep into a singular problem rather than an inch deep and a mile wide – is as much a product philosophy lesson as it is a venture capital story. If you want to follow what Top Down is doing, find them at TopDown.com, where they publish a regular newsletter and annual white paper on the state of MSP capital. Their Horizons conference runs every November if you’re engaged in this ecosystem as a founder, an operator, or an investor. If you’re enjoying the show, please give the podcast a follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or most of the major podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always encouraged. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Salesforce launches FDE Partner Network: Salesforce is dedicating 50 million dollars to its new Forward Deployed Engineering Partner Network, providing partners with the same training and direct product team access as internal staff. According to Nick Johnston, senior vice president of partner sales, the program is designed to help partners build and monetize their own agentic AI practices on the Agentforce platform. For Canadian MSPs and consultants, the initiative presents an opportunity to transition from selling software licenses to delivering higher-margin advisory and managed services. Cisco reinstates compute deal registration: Reversing a decision from late February, Cisco has officially reinstated its compute deal registration differential. The initial elimination, driven by rising memory prices, effectively removed roughly eight points of margin on server deals, causing friction within the channel. In a communication to partners, Cisco’s Tim Coogan confirmed the discount restoration, though the tightened seven-day quote protection window remains. The move restores critical profitability and margin predictability for Canadian partners navigating ongoing supply chain volatility. CloudCapsule debuts Manage module: CloudCapsule, a security platform launched by former Pax8 leaders and MSP owner Nick Ross, has introduced its Manage module. The solution extends Microsoft 365 security management into a unified workflow, bringing assessment, remediation, and reporting into a single pane of glass. For Canadian MSPs struggling with fragmented toolsets, the platform reduces administrative overhead and automates the reporting process, providing tangible proof of security outcomes to justify recurring revenue. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, April 22, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Salesforce has launched a new Forward Deployed Engineering Partner Network for Agentforce, backing the initiative with a 50 million dollar investment in agent-building incentives. According to Nick Johnston, senior vice president of partner sales, the software vendor is committing to provide channel partners with the same training, tools, and direct product team access that its internal staff receives. The program is designed to help partners build their own agentic AI practices and push beyond basic implementation. For Canadian MSPs and consulting partners, the initiative signals a continued shift away from selling software seats toward delivering measurable business outcomes. As AI deployments become more complex, partners who can demonstrate real-world results will be positioned to capture higher-margin advisory and managed services revenue. Cisco has officially reinstated its compute deal registration differential, reversing a controversial decision made in late February. The networking giant had originally eliminated the discount in response to rising memory prices and supply chain volatility. According to partners, that move effectively erased roughly eight points of margin on server deals, causing friction and prompting some to look at competing infrastructure vendors. In a recent communication, Cisco senior vice president of global partner sales Tim Coogan confirmed the discount restoration for registered compute hardware deals, though the tightened seven-day quote protection window remains in place. For Canadian IT solution providers, the reversal is a necessary correction that restores critical margin predictability, allowing partners to confidently quote hardware projects in an unpredictable supply chain environment. A new security platform built by former Pax8 leaders and an experienced MSP owner is making its official debut this week at the Kaseya event. CloudCapsule, led by CEO Nick Ross, is launching its Manage module, which is designed to help managed service providers assess, remediate, and demonstrate security outcomes within a single workflow. The solution extends Microsoft 365 security management into a unified system, addressing the ongoing problem of fragmented tools and manual reporting. For Canadian MSPs, operational consolidation is becoming increasingly essential. Proving the value of security services to clients is a persistent challenge, and a platform that automates the reporting process can help reduce administrative overhead while providing tangible proof of security posture improvements to justify recurring revenue. Later today on In The Channel, we have a conversation with Rewst founder Aharon Chernin. We will be talking about building the automated MSP, and how AI thinks while automation acts. It is a deep dive into where the service delivery model is headed. And if you haven’t heard it yet, make sure you check out yesterday’s episode featuring Jennifer Roy, CEO of Nucleus Networks. We had a great discussion on maintaining culture while scaling a national presence, and what private equity really looks like from inside a Canadian MSP. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening.

Mastering the shift from MSP to MIP. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this insightful episode, Oguo Atuanya, CVP of Vendor Experience at Pax8, joins us to discuss the pivotal evolution in the IT channel: the transition from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to Managed Intelligence Providers (MIPs). We explore how the marketplace is moving beyond traditional infrastructure support toward a future defined by AI-driven orchestration, business consultancy, and scalable agent-tech organizations. Oguo details how Pax8 is leading this transformation by curating solutions that allow partners to move from transactional service models to life-cycle management that prioritizes measurable ROI for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. Key Takeaways Pax8 is redefining the role of the distributor by acting as an AI commerce platform for the SMB market. The shift from Managed Service Provider (MSP) to Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP) is critical for scaling in the modern tech era. Successful MSPs must evolve into business consultants who integrate AI-driven workflows rather than just selling infrastructure. Security and automation are foundational elements that every modern MIP must prioritize to ensure scalability for customers. The “MIP Playbook” provides the curriculum-driven enablement partners need to successfully pivot their business models. Building strong, end-to-end customer lifecycle management is the key to minimizing churn and maximizing long-term value. https://youtu.be/c8uCnMJd9bg If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Pax8, Managed Intelligence Providers, MIP, AI commerce platform, SMB technology, MSP evolution, AI-driven workflows, agent-first strategy, digital transformation, channel partner strategy, cloud solutions, customer lifecycle management, IT channel innovation, scalable automation, business consultancy, technology architecture, agent store, managed service providers. Transcript Oguo Atuanya Audio Episode [00:00:00] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion, a guo. Welcome back, [00:00:29] Oguo Atuanya: Vince [00:00:29] Vince Menzione: to the welcome back to the podcast, my friend. So good to see you. [00:00:33] Oguo Atuanya: Good to see you, my friend. It’s been about, what, two years? [00:00:35] Vince Menzione: It has been two years, almost two years. Almost two years ago now. And uh, man, this [00:00:40] Oguo Atuanya: thing is just picking up steam. [00:00:41] Vince Menzione: It is. We’re having a blast. We were having so much fun. It was [00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: awesome. [00:00:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: Really awesome. [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: And you were for context, for people watching and, and listening. Uh, we were here in Boca yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Retreat. [00:00:52] Yep. It was this awesome event and great to have you involved in it. Uh, pat, thank you so much. So, uh, last time you were here [00:01:00] Oguo Atuanya: Yes. [00:01:01] Vince Menzione: Uh, you were representing Microsoft where you spent 22 years. [00:01:05] Oguo Atuanya: 22 [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: years. [00:01:06] Oguo Atuanya: Two years, right. Outta outta Junior Heart. [00:01:07] Vince Menzione: Amazing. And, uh, tell us, tell us about your journey so far. Uh, almost two years, a year and a half at Pax. [00:01:14] Eight. About a [00:01:15] Oguo Atuanya: year and a half. [00:01:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:01:16] Oguo Atuanya: a year and a half. [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: And tell, tell for our viewers and listeners, uh, your role at Pax eight. [00:01:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Which is a preeminent company in this space. We used to use the term disty. I’ll let you describe them. Uh, officially [00:01:29] Oguo Atuanya: No, [00:01:30] Vince Menzione: because they don’t, you don’t use that term. [00:01:31] Oguo Atuanya: We’re not, we’re not a distributor. [00:01:33] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:01:33] Oguo Atuanya: Scott Cha would kill me. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: That’s right. No, I know, I know. I remember the, uh, [00:01:38] Oguo Atuanya: the New [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: York, was it the New York Times article? Yes. Yes. [00:01:41] Oguo Atuanya: Was kind of a, [00:01:42] Vince Menzione: that was a launching point coming out. Yeah, yeah. [00:01:44] Oguo Atuanya: No, we, we, we see ourselves as, um, um, the pre, uh, permanent marketplace. For SMB. [00:01:52] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:01:53] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So you think about the SaaS and the cloud. [00:01:55] Yeah. You know, solutions that you need. In SMB, we work with vendors to bring it, um, you know, to the SMB market through, uh, MSPs. And we also, uh, see ourselves as the premier [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:02:08] Oguo Atuanya: Um, AI commerce platform for SMB. [00:02:13] Vince Menzione: Very interesting. [00:02:14] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And as we go through the discussion, uh, this afternoon, you’ll see why. [00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:02:21] Oguo Atuanya: That differentiation is [00:02:23] Vince Menzione: key. I, I love, I love to dive in. I love to dive in. I will say this, I, I think you’ve gotten a lot of people very interested in the community. I mean, certainly your events are becoming bigger and bigger. You’re beyond conference. [00:02:36] Oguo Atuanya: Next one’s coming up in Salt Lake City [00:02:38] in [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: June. [00:02:38] I plan on being there, salt Lake City in June. [00:02:41] Oguo Atuanya: I must have you there. [00:02:42] Vince Menzione: I will be there and you will, and you will be at our event in May. [00:02:45] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: Talking about beyond, but also talking about this community. Uh, I’ve also woken up over the last year or so as well and learned a lot about this SMB community and ms, what we call MSBs. [00:02:58] You’ve re you’ve re-categorized them, uh, but this community is palpable. The opportunity is huge. [00:03:04] Oguo Atuanya: It’s huge. [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: And, um, I would say that, uh, yeah, we can talk, we’ll talk, we’ll just talk through it. ’cause it is huge. Yeah. There’s a lot of things that need to be done. [00:03:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: And I think, I think PAX eight is, uh, at the forefront in driving a lot of this. [00:03:17] The hyperscalers, like Microsoft are, are paying attention now more in a big, in a bigger way than before [00:03:23] Oguo Atuanya: being great partners. [00:03:24] Vince Menzione: Been great, great partners. Yeah. We’ll talk about your role with Microsoft in that regard. [00:03:28] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:03:28] Vince Menzione: But talk, let’s talk about this evolution too. Let’s, uh, so for those who are listening, who are used to maybe us talking about a SaaS software company Yep. [00:03:36] Or an ISV or an SDC, uh, we’re talking about MSPs, managed service providers, which is the common term that people use. These are, these have been traditionally the companies, the smaller companies, they used to call em mom and pop shops back. The old VARs that became managed service, the past [00:03:53] Oguo Atuanya: provider in, in the past, they’re getting bigger. [00:03:54] Vince Menzione: And then Yes. One of the big [00:03:55] Oguo Atuanya: ones, y say [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Nexus Tech. We had Yes. [00:03:57] Oguo Atuanya: Partners of ours. [00:03:58] Vince Menzione: Nexus Techs, new Charter. [00:04:01] Oguo Atuanya: Charter, Michelle [00:04:02] Vince Menzione: Evergreen, I could Ira Lyra. Yeah. They’re, they’re becoming bigger and bigger. Private equity is getting involved. What’s important, what’s important to note too is that the customer is driving this because customers are requiring more and it’s no longer about, and my my point of view is it’s no longer about loading up software and just letting it go. [00:04:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:04:23] Vince Menzione: You need to be hands-on all the time. [00:04:24] Oguo Atuanya: Abs. Absolutely. And, and [00:04:26] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:04:26] Oguo Atuanya: kind of skating towards that park of, um. MIP? [00:04:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. Let’s talk about MIP [00:04:33] Oguo Atuanya: managed intelligence providers. [00:04:35] Vince Menzione: So last year, year Beyond conference, I believe you launched this like new in I, we’ll call the new nomenclature or the new name, or this new thing. [00:04:46] And evolved. And evolved, yeah. [00:04:48] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:04:49] Vince Menzione: So talk about the managed intelligence provider for us. [00:04:52] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Wow. When it happened In Beyond Or at? Beyond, I should say. Um. We thought it’d catch on because it’s apt. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of indicative of what’s happening now and what will happen over the next 24 months, but, uh, the sort of migration towards this and the marketplace has been immense. [00:05:17] I mean, you, and you, you know, hit on what the difference is. Yes. Earlier on, um, today. What’s driving this shift is that most MSPs have been really good at being tools and technology infrastructure providers. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:05:36] Oguo Atuanya: Right. [00:05:37] Vince Menzione: They would hook up your network and your printer. In the old days, they fix your, fix your computers. [00:05:42] Yes. Or replace re-image, all those things. Right? Yes. That was the old days. And, [00:05:46] Oguo Atuanya: and, and also provide some very manual services delivery, which will now play. In this new era that we are actually, I shouldn’t say going into, it’s taking all, [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: we’re, we’re there, [00:06:00] Oguo Atuanya: we’re there right now. So, um, you know, they, they, I guess the transformation from MSP to MIP others partners that would actually become managed intelligence providers. [00:06:14] That means really, you know, integrating intelligence into workflow that matters for the SMBs. Right. So you [00:06:23] Vince Menzione: so double click on that for, [00:06:25] Oguo Atuanya: for [00:06:25] Vince Menzione: our [00:06:26] Oguo Atuanya: viewers. Yeah. So all really means is that you’re moving from being that, you know [00:06:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:30] Oguo Atuanya: Technology, infrastructure, tools, provider to, you know, becoming an, an orchestrator and a and a and a business consultant. [00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. For you. SMB. Right. So important. ’cause you have to now get into, uh, very secure, streamlined automated AI driven workflows to help them. [00:06:52] Vince Menzione: All driven in the cloud. Everything’s in the cloud now, as opposed to the old days. Right. On premise. [00:06:58] Oguo Atuanya: All gone. None. That’s happening. It’s all gone. All gone. Yeah. [00:07:00] So you, you’ve got this automated platform right now. You should as, um, an MIP, um, we actually gonna be in a position to design, um, agent tech organizations for your, uh, SMBs who wanna scale. ’cause as we talked about yesterday, yeah. SMBs have opportunities they wanna grow, but not have the wherewithal to go hire a hundred people. [00:07:27] Instead of doing that, you go hire a hundred agents. Yeah, but you’re gonna need that MIP to architect, the organization, launch it for you, manage it, get you, you know, automated, you know, workflows that you’d leverage to run your company, and then they have to manage and optimize the technology. Um, as necessary. [00:07:49] So, so, huge shift. [00:07:50] Vince Menzione: Huge shift. [00:07:51] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:07:52] Vince Menzione: And it was interesting for me being at the, where you talked about the write of Boom conference that you, were you, your organization was there? Yeah, I was there as well and I was in the room with some of the Microsoft folks and we had some of those larger partners we talked about [00:08:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:08:08] Vince Menzione: That were in the room as well. And just, uh, different perspectives too. Like I hadn’t heard it firsthand. It was interesting for Microsoft too, to get that feedback from. From some of them as well. Um, I think, I think the ones that are progressive are already on board with you. I’ve, I’ve already talked to some of those organizations, like, oh, we’re a hundred percent Pax eight, that’s it. [00:08:29] But then some of the others I think are still, there are still people out there that are stuck in the past. Would you agree? Like this community is in the, is in a transition right now to this new model? [00:08:38] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:08:39] Vince Menzione: Tell [00:08:39] Oguo Atuanya: us [00:08:39] Vince Menzione: about that. [00:08:40] Oguo Atuanya: There are, I mean, listen, I, I don’t, you know, wanna put a number. You know what we’re seeing. [00:08:48] But I’d say that about eventually, let’s say we’re gonna have about 30% of folks that really get it and move. [00:08:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:56] Oguo Atuanya: Right. The others we’re gonna have to, [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: there’ll be the laggards that’ll [00:09:00] Oguo Atuanya: take longer and let me just, you know, sort of rephrase that state. Most of them understand, you know, what the opportunity is with this whole Yeah. [00:09:14] Vince Menzione: You [00:09:15] Oguo Atuanya: know. They’re still struggling with being able to, you know, articulate this story, um, from a value prop perspective, right? You know, go in, talk to the SMBs, help the SMBs understand how, you know, they can be more productive, more efficient, and um, ultimately more profitable and scale, um, with an agent, you know, framework. [00:09:44] They still struggle. Yeah. And, and that’s kind of where we come in, where we helping these SMB or sorry, MSPs and to be ips. [00:09:54] Vince Menzione: So tell us, understand that. Tell us what you’re doing. I believe you, you stood up like academies and things like that, right? You’re doing some outreach, some enablement for the community? [00:10:02] Is that what it is? [00:10:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, we we’re heavy, we’re heavy in, um, enablement. Um, because, you know, everyone realizes that. To be successful with this whole campaign. It’s not just about putting agents up in an agent store, real, SMB, you know, native, um, vertical aware agents that actually, you know, when you deploy it in an SMB business, right, they drive value right away, [00:10:37] Vince Menzione: right? [00:10:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, but we also realize that it’s not just about, you know, landing the agents in the marketplace, but enablement is a huge factor. That’s why when you go back to things, you know, like academy, uh, the MIP playbook, uh, some of the, uh, inculcation integrations we we’re doing with, um, partners, really critical to have that enablement layer. [00:11:04] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:11:04] Oguo Atuanya: Along with providing the agents and the, in the agents store. [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: Who’s developing these agents in the agent store? Are they providers for the MSP community? Are they organizations like Take, take us through that model. [00:11:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So they, they, they, because [00:11:18] Vince Menzione: you, you manage all the vendors. [00:11:20] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, I do. Right? [00:11:21] Vince Menzione: I do. So tell us more about that. [00:11:22] Oguo Atuanya: I do. So it’s, it’s multifold, right? Um, one fold is you have prebuilt solutions that you know vendors. [00:11:30] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:11:30] Oguo Atuanya: Built for, you know, SMBs and they’re directed towards SMBs. Then you also have a second category, uh, sorry, category of solutions that are more tools that MSBs use. [00:11:42] Right? But there’s also a third, um, prompt to this where we are orchestrating an integration of, um, um, IP between [00:11:54] Vince Menzione: interesting the [00:11:55] Oguo Atuanya: vendor department, uh, into providing, you know, solutions. That we can land in the, in the agent store. [00:12:03] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. So, yeah. So you have, so you have a standalone product or a standalone solution or agent. [00:12:10] You have the orchestration and then you have the customer tools and the tool. And the tools. [00:12:14] Oguo Atuanya: Yes. [00:12:15] Vince Menzione: Yes. That’s fascinating. [00:12:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. It’s um, it’s sort of a three flying approach that, um, the market needs, right? Yeah. And that, that’s key. By the way, Vince, when you know, um. You’re developing these agents and these solutions. [00:12:30] Yeah. Because they’re not, they’re not just tools anymore, right. Essentially it could be somebody’s, uh, FTE. [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:12:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So they have to address a specific outcome. They have to be, you know, uh, valuable. You have to show the ROI and for these SMBs. Don’t have a lot of wiggle room. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: So you, that they’re smaller companies, right? [00:12:55] Yeah. So anything you do is gonna be super impactful. Yeah. It’s not something they can absorb necessarily, or, you know, lose time and money. [00:13:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:13:03] Vince Menzione: Uh, you’ve gotta be very sensitive to that in this, in this market, this size market. And even the MSPs are, even though there are some that are much larger, there’s still a lot of smaller MSPs out there. [00:13:14] Oguo Atuanya: And, and coming to the MIP playbook, um, what partners don’t need anymore. Um, it’s hype. [00:13:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:24] Oguo Atuanya: They need an almost curriculum driven approach, right. To landing this initiative and infrastructure and also managing it long term. Yeah. So that’s what the MIP playbook does. [00:13:39] Vince Menzione: So you were an executive at Microsoft. [00:13:41] You managed the channel partner. I, I would call the resellers and the disti. In fact, for the America’s business, I believe was your role. [00:13:49] Oguo Atuanya: I I did manage the large resellers. At [00:13:51] Vince Menzione: large resellers. So at one point, and you also had the Disti at one time? [00:13:54] Oguo Atuanya: At one point I had the Disti, the telco, the domain providers. [00:13:58] Vince Menzione: Yes. The large resellers. I remember when we first met, yes. I think that was when, [00:14:00] Oguo Atuanya: yes. [00:14:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. And so when you came, PAX eight is a very strong Microsoft partner. You were, again, I mentioned you were the launch partner or one of the launch partners for the marketplace. [00:14:09] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:14:09] Vince Menzione: But talk about the role and the relationship with Microsoft and the value that PAX eight provides for this market, uh, kind of layering between, uh, the Microsoft components and, and the SMB market. [00:14:24] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Does that [00:14:24] Vince Menzione: make sense? [00:14:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, so Microsoft has always been. Um, keen on the SMB segment, um, you know, Jose Gomez and Company in the Americas, and folks like, um, Alison West Hughes from a core perspective that, yeah, they’re very serious about this SMB segment. And, um, I’d say the key difference with Microsoft is Microsoft realized early. [00:14:56] Probably based on the fact that Microsoft’s always been a very strong channel friendly, [00:15:01] Vince Menzione: yes. [00:15:01] Oguo Atuanya: Oriented company. I realized earlier that you really can’t scale cost efficiently by having a direct SMB business, right? Right. You have to go through the channel. [00:15:14] Vince Menzione: They’re what, 160,000 MSPs or ips? [00:15:19] Oguo Atuanya: Um, for us at pax, [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: I think for the world. [00:15:22] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, yes. [00:15:22] Vince Menzione: Somewhere the world around there. The world, yeah. You would have to reach all those companies individually, which Yeah, you’d [00:15:27] Oguo Atuanya: have to, well, I mean, even then the, there’s the Ians of SMBs [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. In worldwide. Yes. That’s right. Right. At at the customer level. The pyramid is huge. You can’t, [00:15:35] Oguo Atuanya: you can’t really scale. [00:15:36] No, you can’t. You can only do that through the channel. [00:15:38] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:15:39] Oguo Atuanya: And, um, I think, I think the relationship between Microsoft and PAX has just. Strengthened over time because Microsoft sees, if we go back to that definition of a, you know, distributor versus a marketplace and a platform provider stuff. So we’re seeing the difference. [00:15:56] Yes. And the value add and, you know, the services led approach that packs it, you know, brings to, um, um, driving the SMB business. Yes. Um, you know, just that we have, we think PAX eight, we have a very strong relationship. And a very strong MSP ecosystem, which is critical when you sort of, you know, uh, look at that difference between just a regular reseller and an MSP. [00:16:26] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. [00:16:26] Oguo Atuanya: Right. Um, you just can’t, what we talked about earlier, just transact a solution and then walk away. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s, um, it, it’s, it’s really a sustainable end-to-end, you know, customer life cycle management approach. When you’re dealing with them. [00:16:44] Vince Menzione: I think it’s important here too, and, and again for the maturity model of our listeners and viewers, it might be at different levels of understanding about the, about the model. [00:16:53] But if you think about the model and the evolution, right, being the, from the old model of being, uh, hardware centric and maybe software centric, uh, the old days of what was a disti, which are not at disti anymore, but, um, the distis were there to provide credit. Availability of product. [00:17:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:12] Vince Menzione: And And delivery, basically. [00:17:14] Right? Yeah. That was it. [00:17:15] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:16] Vince Menzione: And that’s how that they were intermediaries on some of that. [00:17:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:20] Vince Menzione: But PAX eight evolved at a later time. [00:17:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:23] Vince Menzione: More modern time, I would say in the cloud. Yeah. [00:17:25] Oguo Atuanya: PAX eight. So one in the cloud, if you will. [00:17:28] Vince Menzione: And I think that’s maybe a differentiation and this new model that it also feels to like this MSP community has been coming along. [00:17:36] And I, I, I believe a lot of thought leadership from the PAX eight side. I’m speak, I’m speaking for you here, but in terms of some bold moves that the organization is doing. [00:17:46] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Listen. Um, as you know, I dealt or engaged with PAX eight for a while before joining PAX eight. [00:17:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:55] Oguo Atuanya: I’d engaged with p fact fact pxi, funnily enough was the first meeting I had, um, when I came back from the uk. [00:18:02] Vince Menzione: Is that [00:18:02] Oguo Atuanya: right? Yeah. During my stint running, um. Um, devices, uh, sales organization for Microsoft. The first meeting I had coming back into the Americas was so P Aid and Nick Hedy and, uh, Ryan Walsh and, oh, that’s so funny. Joke about it. By the way, Ryan Walsh all has a prep, uh, notes study, you know, he got ready for the media. [00:18:26] Vince Menzione: Oh, that is hilarious. I met Ryan. Uh, we were on stage together at a channel partners a couple years ago. [00:18:32] Can’t [00:18:32] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy. [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: He can’t [00:18:33] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy. [00:18:34] Vince Menzione: Such great energy. [00:18:35] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but listen, I think if I could just sum it in a, you know, in a, um, a framework or a box. The key difference between PAC sales is we look at engaging with MSPs in SMB, um, from a customer lifecycle management. [00:18:57] So we start from, Hey, how do we help you with customer acquisition? When you do acquire the customers and you make that first licensing transaction, it doesn’t go away. That’s when we actually start, you know, thinking about how do we help, um, you ensure that your SMBs realize, um, value from what you sold them. [00:19:18] You know, if you need to expand, but, um, beyond one, you know, skew in the stack, that’s what you do because you understand the needs of USMB that helps drive consumption, you know? Nurture that through all, we start, you know, looking at, is it time for re sorry, renewal. There’s a team minus approach to renewal. [00:19:37] ’cause we also keep our eyes on churn. You can, you know, gain as much business as you can, but if you churn, it does nobody any good. Yeah. So we look at things end to end from our position to churn. And that really is embedded in the platform that sits underneath the marketplace. [00:19:53] Vince Menzione: And you act as the, well see, we’re gonna use technical terms here. [00:19:57] CSP. You’re the first layer of CSP and then they, they also, in many cases, sometimes they’re not, but in many cases they are the CSP to the customer. They’re providing the, the licenses to the customer. [00:20:10] Oguo Atuanya: Well, we, so we, we are the first tier of that, you know, two tier [00:20:14] Vince Menzione: Exactly. [00:20:15] Oguo Atuanya: Model. So we, we, [00:20:16] Vince Menzione: you’re tier one [00:20:17] Oguo Atuanya: Microsoft. [00:20:18] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:20:19] Oguo Atuanya: Right. We, you know, as an existing might press on an example, it could be one of our other vendors, like, you know, um, any of the 150 vendors we have. We engage with them, we enable the um, MSP, who’s the resell, who’s really in the traditional sense, the reseller layer, much more valuable in terms of what they do. [00:20:41] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:20:41] Oguo Atuanya: And then. The MSP engages with, uh, the end customer. So that’s kind of what the flow is. [00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yep. Yeah. And that’s one component of what they do for the customer. The transaction is a one one and done sort of. [00:20:53] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: But then it’s all the managed services and layering Oh, provide on top of it. And then all the other solutions say 150 platforms. [00:21:00] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, 150 vendors. [00:21:01] Vince Menzione: Vendors, yeah. So hundreds of platforms that are available to the customer for [00:21:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:21:07] Vince Menzione: Through taxane. [00:21:08] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but lemme just emphasize that especially. We are going actually where we are. Right. Um, again, it starts, it starts way to the left of the continuum than just driving the transaction. [00:21:23] Vince Menzione: So take us through the continuum then. [00:21:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, that’s what I said earlier, the continuum is, you know, helping this, helping with [00:21:28] Vince Menzione: acquisition, customer acquisition, [00:21:30] Oguo Atuanya: even, you know, prior to that it’s, it’s helped. We’re getting to a point now where we’re helping these MSPs and they should all be able to do that during the MIP era. [00:21:38] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:21:39] Oguo Atuanya: Understand the market they’re playing it. Yeah. Understand, you know, the market, their SMBs are in, understand their verticals or their scenarios so that you can actually build, you know, this precision, outcome driven, you know, solutions. [00:21:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:52] Oguo Atuanya: Right. That, that’s the beginning and then you sell and acquire. [00:21:58] Right. And then once you acquire that business, uh, it’s always on, you know, situation. You’re helping realize value. ’cause if you don’t. You’re not expanding beyond the stock. Yes. And um, you’re not driving consumption. And if you don’t drive consumption, [00:22:14] Vince Menzione: you’re not making any money. You’re really not making, [00:22:16] Oguo Atuanya: it’s not churn. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:17] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And then they have to keep an eye on, when renewals come about, there has to be a healthy T minus period. Right. Um, so ensure that you renew during renewals. Um, that’s actually when we then look at, Hey, what’s your stack look like? Right. Especially with the agent era, right? Do you have everything you need? [00:22:37] Do you have the processes? Is there governance? Is there enough security for your, um, SMB, right? So that’s kind of the tune up time before we renew, and then we help you renew and then retain so that it’s, it’s a, it’s a sort of lifecycle approach, not just transactional. [00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Oh, I, I hear. Talk and, you know, I talk to different people in the industry about the SMBs, the MSPs in the SM B market, uh, that some of these organizations are very much, they’re very technical. [00:23:07] Yeah. Like they’re technical folks. Sometimes they’re not sales folks or they’re not consulting type folks. Yes. So how do you help them overcome some of those challenges or those gaps? I mean, I know some of it’s through the academy. [00:23:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Do you help them also with selecting like, how do they think about their organizational structure to have the right people in the right seats and those types of [00:23:26] Oguo Atuanya: things and that, that’s, that’s, [00:23:27] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:23:27] Oguo Atuanya: All what the MIP playbook, that’s, and the process is all about Nice. It’s, it’s, Hey, how do we expand your horizon, you know, beyond just providing the technical aspect things, how do you understand the business? How do you go about conversations to discover, right, your, uh, SMB, right? And once you discover, how do you go about architecting, you know, a value framework that includes, you know, maybe looking at the organization and suggesting agents and then, you know, when you land them, right? [00:23:59] What’s the, um, optimization, you know, process beyond just landing them. So it’s, it’s helping them. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Make transit, become business [00:24:09] Oguo Atuanya: consultants. [00:24:09] Vince Menzione: Right, exactly. Which is what they need to do. [00:24:11] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. The, in this era, you really need to understand what your SMB is doing because, you know, think about it for the longest, this sort sub, you know, consultative approaches were only sort of reserved for enterprise. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s right. [00:24:27] Oguo Atuanya: But when you look at how, you know, the solutions that we sell, I change, they’re really enterprise solutions now that are in SMB. Right. You have to sell that way. You have to engage that way. Right? So that, that’s, that’s a key differentiator between being an MSP and an MIP, bringing that intelligence into you applying, you know, an intelligent workflow to the way your SMB conduct that, sorry, conducts their business. [00:24:56] Vince Menzione: So tell, take me through, uh, what the ideal MMSP or MIP looks like to you. Like what is the. The, the top of the top and to the right. And then where do you see the challenges? Why do some organizations or, or, ’cause I’m sure there are some that struggle, whether it’s 10%, 20%. [00:25:14] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Because it’s, it’s, it’s a continuum. [00:25:16] It’s a, it’s a cycle to get from, from point A to point B for a lot of these organizations. Right? [00:25:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So [00:25:21] Vince Menzione: what do you see from the challenges they need to overcome and, yeah, so, so the, [00:25:25] Oguo Atuanya: the, the optimal MSP looks like what we just described, right? Yeah. Right. You have an organization that thinks through the process that way, set up. [00:25:33] Right. [00:25:34] Vince Menzione: And they become an ongoing consultant. They help them through the process. They understand ai. Right. This is another thing too, right? Organizations, I mean, are struggling right now with their [00:25:43] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, absolutely. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Their people. [00:25:45] Oguo Atuanya: It’s gotta be the baseline. [00:25:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:47] Oguo Atuanya: You know, these days, understanding ai, understanding the agent, you know, journey. [00:25:53] Uh, what works well is, um, you know, you, um, you know, you, you. You have to be able to design, um, land a scalable, secure, uh, environment, um, [00:26:13] Vince Menzione: secure. [00:26:16] Oguo Atuanya: So, so security is key here, [00:26:20] Vince Menzione: right? I keep thinking about Claude, what’s happened just in the last several weeks. Yeah. In our industry with people putting things up on, through, through open browsers. [00:26:28] Yeah. [00:26:29] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:26:29] Vince Menzione: To Claude and to. Different tools. [00:26:31] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:32] Vince Menzione: And if you’re an SM B and you’re trying to lock down your environment’s, don’t want, that’s, you don’t want your data exposed. [00:26:37] Oguo Atuanya: That’s why security is [00:26:38] Vince Menzione: huge, [00:26:39] Oguo Atuanya: is key. But, you know, one of the things we recommend is start very specific. Uh, it could be a bundle that includes, you know, could be co-pilot, could be some other AI pillar. [00:26:52] Uh, and then it has to be, you know, a security layer. [00:26:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:26:58] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, to that. Then there has to be an enablement, you know, services layer to that as well, right? So, um, you build secure, um, you land, uh, and then skills develop key, right? And then monetization. You have to be able to hit those levels, uh, to be able to survive in this world. [00:27:22] You’re no longer just selling. Tools. [00:27:27] Vince Menzione: Yes. At margins, [00:27:30] Oguo Atuanya: flat margins. So the tool, the tool sprawl, um, is what takes a lot of margins away. [00:27:37] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:27:37] Oguo Atuanya: From the equation. [00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Right? Tell, tell us about that. ’cause I, I, I remember even back in my Microsoft days, yeah, we would go in and, and have partners that were successful that would say. [00:27:47] In fact, the ones that are most successful would basically tell the customer, you already own it. Like you have a, you have an enterprise agreement and it has all the capabilities you need to run your enterprise, and you’re buying all these other one-off solutions and trying to patch them into your, into your portfolio of your, your solution set. [00:28:04] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Nobody, nobody, especially in SB, nobody wants any more tools. [00:28:08] Vince Menzione: No, I can [00:28:09] Oguo Atuanya: imagine. Um, you, you’ve gotta sort of assemble this thing into a platform that works. [00:28:14] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:28:15] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And it’s gotta be repeatable. If it’s not repeatable, then you’re not driving the frequency. Right. It’s gotta be scalable. Um, ’cause if it’s scalable, then you’re going into, um, that kind of sprawl where people start thinking they need to replace gaps with more tools. [00:28:32] Yeah. Nobody needs. Right. [00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And that creates more vulnerability by putting [00:28:36] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. [00:28:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:37] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s [00:28:39] Vince Menzione: fascinating. So [00:28:40] Oguo Atuanya: it’s, it’s a different, um. Sort of engagement and I, I’m refraining from saying it to different kind of sell because the connotation of sell is you transact and you’re gone. It’s a full lifecycle engagement model. [00:28:56] Yeah. [00:28:56] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re doing is you’re enabling the evolution of this market. [00:29:01] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: that’s the way I would say it. [00:29:02] Oguo Atuanya: Well, that, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with, um, the shift from MSP to MIP is. Um, we’re driving the transformation in SMB. [00:29:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:13] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department. [00:29:23] Yes. ’cause they are the, [00:29:24] Vince Menzione: they are ones, the enterprise IT department [00:29:26] Oguo Atuanya: for that customer. Yeah. The, the word trusted advisor is gonna take a very, you know, it’s [00:29:31] Vince Menzione: fascinating, [00:29:31] Oguo Atuanya: more serious connotation in this space. Because the SMBs are dependent on you as the MMIP for that. [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Let’s talk, we, we had a session on marketplace yesterday. [00:29:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:29:43] Vince Menzione: Um, you have been a great driver now through, especially through this new program, the new unified marketplace. [00:29:50] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:29:50] Vince Menzione: Uh, PAX eight is stood, stood above and beyond and doubled sales, I think is what I thought I heard. Take, take us through some of the, [00:29:58] Oguo Atuanya: well, I mean, uh, uh, a marketplace. Uh, marketplace sales has grown exponentially, [00:30:04] Vince Menzione: exponentially, [00:30:04] Oguo Atuanya: right? [00:30:05] Um, um, this partnership with Microsoft is really all about for the first time, um, integrating, you know, both the, uh, Microsoft, uh, marketplace and the P State marketplace into the MSP delivery, you know, system. Right? What does that mean for the MSP? It means that for the first time, the MSP is gonna have an ability to, um, you know, uh, bundle seamlessly or package seamlessly. [00:30:36] I know from a Microsoft Yeah. Package seamlessly. Um, you know, so Microsoft, uh, solutions and third party solutions that are complimentary again, to driving the outcomes that, you know, uh, the SMB needs. It’s really all about provisioning. Um, and, um, you know, building those solutions intelligently and, and dynamically, right? [00:31:05] Where it’s very scalable, right? So that, that’s sort of what the intelligence and the, the dexterity of our marketplace, uh, does. Right? So, so it’s, it’s, it’s creating, you know, um, provisioning, building, uh, transacting. Then really managing in a very automated fashion. Right. So that’s what the MSP gets. Yes. [00:31:32] The vendor, like Microsoft and other vendors remove the guesswork from, is this actually gonna hit the mark for, uh, SMBs? ’cause we do that curation through the discovery when we, you know, integrate marketplaces. Make sure that those solutions, those agents that land in the marketplace are SMB applicable. [00:31:57] ’cause the other thing we, we, we see in the marketplace, and I’m using the general marketplace is, um, a lot of companies will tell you that they have SMB solutions or agents. Yes, in the marketplace. And then you go into the marketplace and these are really enterprise, enterprise [00:32:14] Vince Menzione: solutions. Solutions that are [00:32:15] Oguo Atuanya: being forced down into SMB. [00:32:18] Well, you can’t do that these days ’cause you have to hit that, you know, customer, um, precision when you’re driving, you know, outcome based solutions. You have to be precise. [00:32:29] Vince Menzione: What is, what is the curation process for? Um, I’m an SMB customer. I come to the MSP. And you help at your marketplace level, it sounds like you help design what the right solution is. [00:32:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:42] Vince Menzione: So what, tell, take us through that process real quick. [00:32:45] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, um, you know, we have a set of folks internally. Along with our PXI labs people. [00:32:52] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:32:53] Oguo Atuanya: When we’re actually intaking, you know? So [00:32:56] Vince Menzione: you’re using AI as well on that side of Yeah. We use AI Doing your discovery process for the customers. Yes. [00:33:02] Using [00:33:02] Oguo Atuanya: AI as well. It, it uses ai, the rules that are being written into it, you know, [00:33:06] Vince Menzione: it [00:33:06] Oguo Atuanya: processes, Hey, it’s gotta be applicable from an SMB perspective. Right. This [00:33:10] Vince Menzione: is very cool. [00:33:11] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, um, you know, we, we do that, we ensure that it’s, um. It’s applicable. There’s no guesswork. Right. Then we put it on the, um, on the agent store. [00:33:22] Right. And then, um, you know, we help the, uh, uh, MSPs, um, architect and fit solutions around the agents, you know, for very specific outcomes. That’s, uh, so it’s, [00:33:36] Vince Menzione: this is fascinating. [00:33:37] Oguo Atuanya: It’s a very curated process. [00:33:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So for, um, the market, the MSP market or MIP market that are watching and listening today, and maybe they’re not with PAX eight yet. [00:33:49] Like what would, what would be the, the, I mean you’ve already described what the differentiation Yeah. Just, I’m just thinking out loud here. Like what would you say to them today, especially as this market is changing, not your market, but the, just the technology sector, the, the shifts are happening so fast right now. [00:34:07] What would be the. I guess the one piece of advice you would give to this community of technology companies out there that they should think about for 10 26. [00:34:18] Oguo Atuanya: It’s, it’s really refrain from Yeah. Selling just tools and infrastructure. Yeah. [00:34:30] Vince Menzione: Which is the way a lot of them have been structured. That’s right. [00:34:32] They’ve done right. [00:34:33] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Think about [00:34:34] Vince Menzione: they’ve gone down a road with a vendor because they got great margins for some reason. [00:34:37] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So understand your customer, the space they’re playing and how you can build, you know, solutions, uh, for them. Be specific vis-a-vis the solutions that you’re building. Right. [00:34:50] Again, um. I was having a conversation yesterday with Nina Hard, and we’re talking about the high heat of, uh, traffic verticals, right? Yeah. Uh, you know, things like healthcare, uh, things like financial services, right? Be very specific in the solutions that you’re building, right? Don’t experiment too much land on what an applicable solution is. [00:35:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Predictable [00:35:18] Oguo Atuanya: solution. Make it repeatable, make it. Scalable. Emphasize on the upscale and enablement right, and focus on the monetization. Understand exactly how you’re gonna articulate the value add and the ROI. To [00:35:40] Vince Menzione: To the customer. [00:35:41] Oguo Atuanya: The SMB. [00:35:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:42] Oguo Atuanya: Because that’s where a lot of folks struggle, right. They still cannot do all that, [00:35:47] Vince Menzione: and they get stuck on the cost to the customer. [00:35:50] They get hung up, I guess, is what I would say. Right. They don’t, they don’t articulate the value enough. [00:35:55] Oguo Atuanya: Well, they’re not selling outcomes. [00:35:57] Vince Menzione: They’re not selling outcomes. They’re selling, [00:35:58] Oguo Atuanya: they’re trying to piece together tools. [00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Hot [00:36:00] Oguo Atuanya: and hot [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: tools, [00:36:01] Oguo Atuanya: spot applications. [00:36:02] Vince Menzione: Tools, tools is the best way to [00:36:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:36:04] Vince Menzione: To describe it [00:36:04] Oguo Atuanya: to [00:36:05] Vince Menzione: the [00:36:05] Oguo Atuanya: company and all else spills come to Pax it. [00:36:07] Yes. Teach you how to do it. [00:36:09] Vince Menzione: Well, I, I’m fascinated to join you in June at Beyond. [00:36:13] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:36:13] Vince Menzione: Um, same [00:36:15] Oguo Atuanya: here. [00:36:15] Vince Menzione: So dates again. [00:36:18] Oguo Atuanya: Vincent, you put me, I think it’s, uh, June 7th to the ninth. [00:36:21] Vince Menzione: June 7th to the ninth. [00:36:22] Oguo Atuanya: And this is, uh, in Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City [00:36:25] Vince Menzione: this [00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: year. [00:36:25] Vince Menzione: Salt [00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: Lake [00:36:26] Vince Menzione: year. Yeah. You had it, you had it in a different in Colorado last year [00:36:28] Oguo Atuanya: we had it in Denver. [00:36:29] So this is actually, this is actually, um, this is [00:36:32] Vince Menzione: your hometown, [00:36:33] Oguo Atuanya: the company. Yeah. This is, this is the mainstream. Beyond. So [00:36:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:36:37] Oguo Atuanya: it. This is a big event. [00:36:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. ’cause we also have regional events. [00:36:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Like four or 5,000 people. I think last year [00:36:43] Oguo Atuanya: it was right around three to 4,000. Three to 4,000 last year. [00:36:45] I think we’re gonna get, you know, more than that. Yeah. In, in, uh, salt Lake City. Then of course we have, um, a regional beyond. We just had the Em me version in, um, Berlin. Um. Netherlands, [00:36:56] Vince Menzione: Netherlands [00:36:57] Oguo Atuanya: after that. [00:36:57] Vince Menzione: But you did Berlin last year? We [00:36:59] Oguo Atuanya: did Berlin. Berlin last I knew years ago. Next year we’ll be in, uh, uh, Copenhagen. [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:37:03] Oguo Atuanya: And then we’ll also have, um, uh, Asia version. Nice. Uh, in 27 [00:37:08] Vince Menzione: Milano. Maybe the year after would be good. [00:37:11] Oguo Atuanya: We, we, we need to arrange, I’ll work with, um, uh, you know, uh, MCEO. Harold. [00:37:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:37:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:37:17] Vince Menzione: Um. I would, uh, so I have one question. I might’ve asked you this question before, but I would love to just ask you now. [00:37:24] ’cause times have changed. Our lives change, but this is my favorite question. I ask all my guests, especially all my good friends like you, you’re hosting a dinner party and you can host a dinner party anywhere in the world. It might be here, it might be in Houston, it might be in Kenya, it might be anywhere. [00:37:41] We maybe, maybe it’s in EMEA or AsiaPac. Um. You can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner, whom would you invite? A guo and why? [00:37:55] Oguo Atuanya: So this one always gets me because [00:37:58] Vince Menzione: I love that. [00:37:59] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, you know, you and I have talked before, right? So there’s a standing, uh, invitation for my mom, you know, who know? [00:38:05] Love that. Yes. Swear a while ago. [00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yes. Yes. [00:38:07] Oguo Atuanya: And then, you know, my sister also who [00:38:09] Vince Menzione: passed [00:38:10] Oguo Atuanya: away, passed away in May [00:38:10] Vince Menzione: last year. [00:38:11] Oguo Atuanya: So I’d love to have this tea because, you know. [00:38:14] Vince Menzione: Some great conversations. We’ll see how [00:38:15] Oguo Atuanya: he’s doing and, you know, and check [00:38:17] Vince Menzione: in with [00:38:17] Oguo Atuanya: how, how, how things, um, are going and now Wow. This third one, [00:38:24] Vince Menzione: who’s the third one? [00:38:26] Oguo Atuanya: This third [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: one is, he talked about your son a little bit the last couple of days. Yeah. Days. But I don’t think, [00:38:30] Oguo Atuanya: I don’t think he’s, he wants to be bored. [00:38:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:38:33] Oguo Atuanya: Having, having, um, a dinner with you [00:38:35] Vince Menzione: and you’ll be there. So now we need to ask add one more [00:38:38] Oguo Atuanya: person. Yeah. We need to add one more person. I’m thinking about that. [00:38:42] MSB. Who’s become an MIPI [00:38:46] Vince Menzione: love it. [00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: I [00:38:47] Vince Menzione: would [00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: love to have him at the, or her at the table. [00:38:50] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:38:51] Oguo Atuanya: And, and talk about what that journey was like. [00:38:53] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Well, that’ll be a fun dinner and I might come by and bring dessert or something. [00:38:58] Oguo Atuanya: You, [00:38:58] Vince Menzione: you, you, [00:38:59] Oguo Atuanya: you’re [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: always maybe just stop by and say, [00:39:00] Oguo Atuanya: you’re always welcome. [00:39:01] Vince Menzione: I’d love to meet your mom and your sister. So [00:39:03] Oguo Atuanya: thank you Vince. [00:39:04] Vince Menzione: Um, you are a great friend. I’m so excited to have you here in the room. Your organization is doing incredible things and we love having you as part of ultimate partner in our community. So, so great to see you again, my friend. [00:39:18] Oguo Atuanya: Appreciate it, Vince. [00:39:19] It’s always a, a pleasure being here with you and seeing you and, uh, I can’t wait to see you beyond. [00:39:24] Vince Menzione: I love [00:39:24] Oguo Atuanya: it folks out there. It’s selling out. So [00:39:26] Vince Menzione: babe, [00:39:27] Oguo Atuanya: get our, [00:39:27] Vince Menzione: get your tickets [00:39:28] Oguo Atuanya: soon. June 7th to ninth. It’s, uh, the biggest show in the MSU [00:39:31] Vince Menzione: world. It’s the biggest show. And then we, uh, is also gonna participate, I believe, at our, at our Bellevue event, Bellview Forum, which will be an incredible event. [00:39:39] Yeah. And May 13th, May 11th, through the 13th. I want to thank you for watching. I wanna thank you for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Eye, to partnering and following our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and for being part of our community at Ultimate Partner. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. [00:39:55] Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, may 11 through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Jennifer Roy, CEO of Nucleus Networks Jennifer Roy knew she was underqualified for her first job in managed services. She applied anyway — and she’d tell you that discomfort is kind of the point. Now CEO of Nucleus Networks, the Vancouver-based MSP that now operates across Victoria, Prince George, Calgary, and Toronto, Roy joined the company as COO in 2021 and stepped into the top job in January 2024, taking over from founder-era CEO Martin DesRosiers. Nucleus was recently named to the CRN MSP 500 Pioneer 250 — the SMB-focused tier of CRN’s annual managed services ranking — and Roy was named CEO of the Year by The Channel Company. In this episode of In The Channel, Roy talks about what a non-technical leader brings to an MSP that a technical founder sometimes can’t, including a willingness to ask basic questions and a genuine orientation toward service over infrastructure. “We’re delivering customer service,” she says. “We’re just doing it through technology.” She gets into the practicalities of scaling across Canadian markets. What breaks when you grow beyond your home city, how vertical specialization in architecture and construction, legal, and mining shapes hiring and delivery, and what it means to maintain culture at 80-plus employees across five cities. Roy is also one of the more honest voices you’ll hear on what life inside a PE-backed platform actually looks like. Nucleus is part of Lyra Technology Group, the Evergreen Services Group portfolio of MSPs. She’s specific about what that relationship delivers — a six-hour cross-portfolio hire, proprietary tooling shared from a sister company, a peer network that can produce a Linux specialist or boots on the ground in Australia on short notice — and honest about what it took to get comfortable operating within that structure. On AI, she’s practical rather than promotional: automated client reporting built around her own communication style, a shadow AI mitigation campaign that turned a risk conversation into a client engagement opportunity. It’s a wide-ranging conversation, and a genuinely candid one. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. My guest today is Jennifer Roy, CEO of Nucleus Networks, a managed service provider based in Vancouver that now operates across five Canadian cities. Nucleus was recently named to the CRN MSP 500 Pioneer 250 list, and Jennifer herself was named CEO of the Year by The Channel Company in 2024. What I find really interesting about Jennifer’s story is that she didn’t come up through IT. She had no technical background when she took her first MSP job about 15 years ago. She worked her way from service manager to COO to CEO, and along the way built her reputation for people-first leadership and culture building in an industry that doesn’t always prioritize those things. We’re going to talk about what it actually looks like to scale a Canadian MSP nationally, how she thinks about hiring and culture when one wrong person can undo years of work, what it’s like operating inside a PE-backed platform like Lyra Technology Group while keeping your own identity, and where she sees AI fitting into the MSP business model right now. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Jennifer Roy. Robert Dutt: Jennifer, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jennifer Roy: Thank you so much for having me. Robert Dutt: You’ve talked openly about the fact that when you got your first job in the MSP world, you didn’t know what most of the acronyms in the job description meant — and that’s something I can relate to. I don’t know if you remember or know Nick Tidd, who led 3Com Canada and has gone through a variety of channel roles. But when I was a young reporter, he took me aside and said, “The thing you have to watch for in this industry is the TLAs.” I didn’t bite on that, and it was a great joke at the time. But anyway, the point being — you didn’t come in as a technician. What made you apply anyway? What do you think being a non-technical leader brings to an MSP that someone who has that technical background might not? Jennifer Roy: Great question. When I started in this industry — and I’m going to age myself here — close to 15 years ago, I was working in a quasi-government job and I had gone on maternity leave. I had come back from having my daughter and realized that I was underutilized and really bored. It just wasn’t a fast enough pace for me to feel fulfilled every day. So I had gone to my manager, who was also a good friend of mine, and said to her, “I think it’s time. I’m going to start looking, and I want you to know — I want to be really upfront and clear — that you’re going to lose me likely sooner than later because I’m going to start looking for a new role.” She was so incredibly supportive and said to me, “I’ve got this tech company that’s looking for a service manager. They’re looking for someone to come in and help with their operations. Is it maybe something you want to explore?” I said, “Well, send me the job description and I’ll take a look.” I looked at the job description and I didn’t know any of the acronyms. I didn’t know what ITIL was. I didn’t know what a SAN was. I didn’t know VPN. I didn’t know any of these things. I said to her, “I’m vastly underqualified for this position.” She said, “I know the consultant that’s helping them hire — I think you should at least have a conversation.” I thought, “Okay, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? I apply for this job and don’t get it?” So I applied, and it happened to be the legend Chris Jay’s MSP. They interviewed me — I met with Todd Kane and Chris Jay throughout the process, had a couple of interviews. Really, what they were looking for was somebody who wasn’t going to think from a technical perspective, but look at things from a client perspective and a coaching and leadership perspective — which were tools I had. So I took a leap of faith, and they also took a leap of faith and hired me to run their service desk. I think it was a very unique experience, something I didn’t think I was capable of doing. But I’ve always been a big believer that growth happens when you’re uncomfortable. So I made myself really uncomfortable taking a position I was massively underqualified for — and then 15 years later, this is where I’m at. The piece that I think I offer that’s different than technical leaders is I always look at things from that client perspective. My CTO is really great at finding unique technical solutions. But my first question is always: how does that impact our people? Not just our clients, but our team. Is it going to be a positive benefit for them? So I think that’s what I bring that’s different. Robert Dutt: You joined Nucleus as COO in late 2021 and took over as CEO from Martin DesRosiers in 2024. He’d been in the chair for a decade and built a lot of what Nucleus is. What was it like stepping into that? What did you want to keep, and where did it feel like you needed to put your own stamp on things? Jennifer Roy: Big shoes to fill for sure. I was hired in late 2021 as Chief Operating Officer — operations has been my background forever, so it was a really comfortable position to come in and kind of become Martin’s right hand. I looked at all of Nucleus’s operations. Nucleus had done an incredible job of building their brand and their business, but coming in with a fresh perspective, I was able to optimize a lot of their KPIs and processes and procedures. I had a lot of fun restructuring operations when I first joined. In January of 2024, when Martin asked me to take over as CEO as he elevated up to our parent company, I was definitely nervous. One, I had never been a CEO before. Two, I was stepping into these huge shoes. And then also — the elephant in the room — I’m a woman CEO of an MSP and there’s not a lot of us. So I was also mindful of the fact that I had to live up to that standard as well. Some of the things Martin had done for the last decade I kept, because don’t change what’s not broken. But I also wanted to put my stamp on things. I used that opportunity to make changes that we probably should have made but had stayed comfortable on. I’ll use a really simple example: we were a Microsoft shop, but we used Slack as our main messaging platform. I said, “Why do we have two? This doesn’t make sense.” Everyone was really comfortable with Slack and loved it, but it was a good way for me to say, “With new leadership comes new changes. We’re a Microsoft shop — we need to eat our own dog food. We’re getting rid of Slack.” So I made some small changes, and that really wasn’t just to put my own stamp on things — the timing just made sense. New leadership, some changes we probably should have done a long time ago. I also did a reorg and changed the reporting structure, moved some leaders into different roles I thought they were better suited for. I moved our Director of Client Success into a VP of Operations role because I didn’t backfill my COO position — I just elevated him and put him into a role he can now grow into. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk expansion. Nucleus started in Vancouver and now has offices in Victoria, Prince George, Calgary, and Toronto. For MSP owners listening who are thinking about expanding beyond their home market — what did you learn about scaling a company across cities, and what broke along the way that you had to fix? Jennifer Roy: Scaling across cities is challenging. Anyone who has done it with ease, I would love to learn from. It is hard to get penetration in a market you are not currently in. Building that brand awareness and reputation is difficult unless you have an anchor client that’s really helping you with referrals. Finding talent in a new city, building brand awareness in a new city, getting new logos — a lot of what MSPs sell comes down to trust. You’re asking someone to buy recurring services. This is not a one-time transaction. It’s a recurring relationship, which means you really have to have that trust. It’s harder when you’re an unknown presence. In Vancouver, we have a ton of legal clients. I can sign legal clients much easier here because I can name-drop those other clients. When we move into a new market, I don’t have that big group of logos to point to. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that you need to be prepared to make an investment when you go into a new market. You need to be prepared that you’re not going to sign new clients before you hire staff and before you get marketing spend going in that area. You really have to be prepared to take a loss before you start to see the rewards. If you haven’t budgeted to lose money to expand, then you’re probably not prepared to do it. Robert Dutt: You touch on the legal vertical, and you’ve built real depth in a number of verticals — in architecture, in construction, in legal, and in very Canadian style, in mining. How deliberate was the choice to specialize, and how does vertical focus change the way that you hire, sell, and ultimately deliver those recurring services? Jennifer Roy: We started in architecture, engineering, and construction. Nucleus’s founder was an engineer by trade who was really handy with computers and ended up branching and developing Nucleus from that. So AEC is where we started. For a long time, the majority of our clients were in that vertical. Then we started to layer in nonprofits and expanded from there — so now, as you mentioned, mining, legal, nonprofits, and AEC are our biggest verticals. Although if you ask me, “Do you have a client in hospitality?” Yes. “Manufacturing?” Yes. We’re really vertical-agnostic, but we hire sometimes based on skill set for a specific vertical. If you’re hiring someone for an architecture and engineering firm, someone who knows AutoCAD is probably going to be helpful. Or if you’re hiring in our legal pod — because we do everything through pods, so we have a pod that supports most of our legal clients — knowing PC Law or Easy Law and being able to troubleshoot errors with those line-of-business applications is going to be super helpful. One of my account executives has a background working in marketing at law firms and is well connected in that space. He is my go-to to sell agreements at law firms because he understands lawyers, he understands their assistants, he understands what’s important. He understands why if you can’t print a document, that’s a crisis at a law firm in a way that it might not be at a marketing agency. So we try to hire looking at where those skills will come in handy for the verticals we mostly support. Robert Dutt: You’ve said that people-first leadership isn’t just a slogan — not just a poster on the wall — it’s a daily operating philosophy. And I think that makes sense given the operational lens you come from. You’ve also been pretty candid about being a Type A personality who’s had to learn to delegate and trust as you move through the ranks. For MSP owners who hear “culture” and think it sounds soft — what does people-first actually look like operationally at Nucleus, and what changed in the business when you leaned into it? Jennifer Roy: People-first to me really means that you make decisions that are going to be the most impactful for your team. Because if you take care of your people, they take care of you, and they take care of your clients. So things like investing in training and development, having better-than-average benefits, better-than-average vacation, better-than-average pay — those are the things that keep people, and you protect your culture like nothing else. I hire by our core values. I fire by our core values. I am so particular about who we let join the team. A warm body is not good enough. I would rather have a vacancy for six months than hire the wrong person, because one toxic person can ruin everything you’ve built. We’re a remote-first company. The majority of our people work remotely — that makes it a challenge to build camaraderie. You don’t get those water cooler conversations, so you have to be very intentional. We have huddles with each team a couple of times a week, and I make a point of joining those huddles even as CEO, just to say hello and get face time. I have an open door policy — anyone can Teams me, text me, call me with anything they want. We do fireside chats where people can sign up and ask anything, an ask-me-anything format that rotates through our executive team. No questions are off limits. Quarterly, we do a town hall. I have a slide I call “the good, the bad, and the ugly” and I am super transparent: what went well, what didn’t go well that quarter, and what is the ugly. Even if the ugly is something I’m responsible for and I made a mistake, I hold myself accountable to the whole company and say, “I did you guys wrong. I made this decision, here’s the impact it had, here’s what I learned, and here’s what I’m going to take away from it.” I’m really proud that employee one and employee two from Nucleus are still here today, over 20 years later. That’s really unheard of in the MSP space. Our average tenure is close to four years — from what I’ve seen, the average at other MSPs I’ve worked from was about two years. So we’re almost double. I think a big piece of that comes down to providing a culture and a place where people feel safe — that psychological safety to challenge, to say “I don’t agree with this” or “this process didn’t roll out smoothly for me and here’s why.” That psychological safety is what builds the culture piece, where people feel invested and feel like they’re part of the bigger picture. It is not just a slogan on the wall. I read every single comment on our ENPS verbatim — I don’t have HR summarize it for me. I read every comment. I want to know exactly what we need to do as an organization to provide a better home for our people. Robert Dutt: Nucleus is part of the Lyra Technology Group family now — 75-plus MSPs under that umbrella. A lot of MSP owners are either being approached by PE-backed platforms, watching peers who’ve gone that route, or thinking about it themselves. What does that relationship actually look like from the inside? What do you get from being part of the group that you wouldn’t have on your own — and conversely, what did you have to give up? Jennifer Roy: Great question. And your count is actually a little lower than what it is — the last I heard was 111 MSPs. Globally, I’m told we are the largest MSP in the world with all 111 MSPs under the Lyra umbrella. I’ll be super honest: when Evergreen purchased Nucleus, it was before I had started. They purchased in July of 2021, I joined in December of 2021. I will admit I was ignorant and did not know about the acquisition. I had known of Nucleus in the marketplace before and did not know they had been purchased by Evergreen. So it was during my first week of onboarding that I found out about Evergreen and Lyra and went, “Oh — what did I get myself into?” Thinking: private equity, this is going to be a lot of red tape, this is going to be really difficult. I was reassured: no, it’s decentralized, we operate as we always have. And one of the best examples I give of that decentralization model is how I was hired. I had exited my last MSP and was looking for a new home. Todd Kane — who’s been a mentor of mine and gave me my first role at Fully Managed — put on LinkedIn that he knew an operations leader who was looking for a new home. He lined up a whole bunch of interviews for me. This was just a few days after I was unemployed. I had all these job offers, and then Nucleus came to the table. I said, “Listen, it’s Friday morning and I’ve told everyone I’ll give them an answer by Friday at five o’clock. You have six hours if you want me.” Martin worked double time, had conversations with me and the rest of the executive team, and got me an offer in six hours. They had not budgeted for a COO. They had not posted for a COO. It was not a role they were actively looking to fill — but Martin knew there was talent there and he wanted to hire it. He didn’t need to go to Evergreen or Lyra and say, “Can I get approval to hire this executive team member?” He was able to just say, “I’ll figure out my budget. It’s my budget. I’m going to hire her.” That to me is the biggest story of decentralization — the fact that you can move that fast and there isn’t a lot of red tape. In addition to that, we’ve got 111 operating companies, which means my geographical reach is incredible. I have a client with an office in Australia — I can pick up the phone and call one of my partners in Australia and say, “Can you do boots on the ground for me?” No problem. And they’ll likewise send their work in Canada to me. So we’ve got this vast network of trusted people, whereas otherwise you’re googling someone and hoping they’ll represent your company well. And I’ve got a built-in peer group. We recently implemented Thread and were having some issues with it. We were able to call a sister company in the US and say, “I know you’re highly successful with Thread — can you help us with this?” And they said, “Here’s our code.” Most MSPs are not that transparent — “here’s our secret sauce, you can have it.” So it’s been really incredible from a professional development standpoint, and just having those relationships to leverage. The team at Lyra genuinely cares about the operating companies. I feel like I’ve got additional support, but not a high level of involvement where they’re stepping on my toes. I’ve just got an arm of support if I need it. Robert Dutt: And I have to imagine — to your point on the Thread issue — with a hundred-plus organizations of people all sitting in the same seat as you, if you go and say, “Hey, I’m seeing X, anyone else seen this?” — odds are pretty good someone’s going to put their hand up. Jennifer Roy: A hundred percent. And it goes the other way too — there are sometimes opportunities. I recently had an RFP that needed Linux support, and we’re not a big Linux shop. I went into my peer group and said, “Does anyone have a Linux expert who can help me bid on this? It’s only two servers — I can support everything else.” I had a handful of people say, “Yes, no problem.” It really creates more opportunity for our business than we would have without it. Robert Dutt: You were just on a panel at the Pax8 sales kickoff talking about AI-driven services. You told CRN that your investments this year are focused on AI-enabled automation and better data integration. Where are you actually deploying AI at Nucleus right now, and how do you think about that as a business opportunity versus a change to the billable-hour model? Jennifer Roy: There are a lot of AI initiatives happening at Nucleus. We’re looking at our internal processes and how we can automate and create smart AI for our current workflows. A perfect example: I have a monthly report I send up to Lyra covering how things are going in each department — initiatives, financial results. I used to ask every department to send me a summary, then I’d take all those summaries, combine them into one, and send it. It was really time-consuming, and I’d often kick things back to leaders and say, “I need more data, more context, this isn’t written clearly enough.” So I’d give coaching, wait for a revision, and go back and forth. Our CTO built a simple smart form so that if a department head didn’t provide enough data in their response, it would say, “You do not have data in this. You need data. Jen will send this back to you.” The coaching was already baked into the form. And then it would consolidate all of their writing to sound like me — he built it by taking my old documents and putting them into AI and saying, “Make it sound like Jen.” It combines all the data, and then I go in and edit and clean it up, versus having to do it all from scratch. It probably saves six hours a month of my time. For our clients, we’re looking at their workflows and starting really small — but we’re starting. We’re taking our noisiest clients, the ones who generate the most support tickets, and using them as guinea pigs to create AI and automation to reduce our support hours. I’m not necessarily billing them a ton of money for it yet — I’m really focused on what we can learn from their environment so we can make it more marketable and repeatable. I’m also working on a big initiative to provide a tool called Synthrio to all of our clients as part of an opt-out campaign — so looking at how we can help our clients use AI in a safe, controlled way. We know shadow AI is happening everywhere. So how do we make it so that we can provide it in a controlled environment where our clients aren’t losing their IP? That should be going live in the next couple of weeks. Robert Dutt: I love that example of automating what you can for those noisier customers. It looks like value add for them as a client, and it’s also value add for you as an MSP — because your effective billing rate goes up. Jennifer Roy: Totally. And at the same time, I’m getting my technicians and engineers trained on how to create workflows. Without those real-life examples, we’re kind of flying blind. Robert Dutt: You’re plugged into the North American MSP community pretty deeply at this point — between Lyra’s peer network and various organizational communities. When you compare notes with your American peers, what feels different about running an MSP in Canada? Is the Canadian market catching up, leading, or playing a different game entirely? Jennifer Roy: Interesting question. I don’t know that there are a lot of differences, honestly. There are differences depending on geographic region — I have a peer in New York City and their hourly rate is basically double mine. Vancouver is an expensive city, but New York is more so. So there are differences in what you can charge per user or per hour. But I don’t actually think there is a ton of difference in how we operate. There are economic challenges in Canada that are different from the US at different times, but they’re all very similar. I think we all operate very similarly. The biggest piece I would say is you have to be a little more mindful of Canadian data residency. Our clients want their data in Canada, so there are certain partnerships I’ve had to exclude because they weren’t willing to guarantee Canadian data residency. I can’t take on a new partner if they can’t host our data in Canada. Those are some small differences — but really, I always say: we’re delivering customer service. We’re just doing it through technology. I don’t think where you are matters that much. Robert Dutt: How do you see that data residency and increasingly data sovereignty conversation evolving with your customers? Jennifer Roy: It’s definitely evolved over the years, and I think it’s become more important — especially around certain verticals that want to ensure their data is protected and kept in Canada. We work with some investment firms and companies with personal identification data that they absolutely do not want released anywhere. So we really need to look at each client specifically: what is the requirement for their vertical, and how do we ensure their data is safe? We are a SOC 2 Type 2 organization, so we take security and governance measures very seriously and ensure we’re following those to a T. And I won’t sign a deal if a client comes to us with requirements that I don’t know how we’d fulfill. I’ll walk away from the opportunity — the last thing I want to do is fail a client. Robert Dutt: My last question. You guys hit 25 next year at Nucleus. Where does Nucleus go from here? What does the next chapter look like? Jennifer Roy: I want to see us double our growth in the next five years — new logos, revenue, team members. Even with the introduction of AI and automation, I don’t want to see our team size shrink. I want to see us be able to work on different and more creative things. I’d love to see us be fully across Canada, not just in the three provinces we’re currently in. That’s a very lofty goal — that’s my BHAG — but that’s where I’d like to see us in five years. Just growth, growth, growth, and brand awareness. I think Nucleus is a well-known brand, especially across Canada, but I’d love to see it even more so. Robert Dutt: Well, good luck on attaining all those goals. And thinking back to something you said in answer to the first question — about feeling like things weren’t changing fast enough in the role you were in before you took that first MSP job — I don’t think that’s a complaint you have about the managed services world. Jennifer Roy: No. And this is why I’m still here 15 years later — I like fast-paced. I always say my peak performance is at the brink of overwhelmed. Just before I’m overwhelmed, that is the time when I am at my best. The MSP industry keeps me on my toes. I actually can’t imagine leaving this space and going anywhere else. I love it. Robert Dutt: Brilliant. Thanks for taking the time and sharing some of your insights. Jennifer Roy: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate your time. [MUSIC] Robert Dutt: There you have it — Jennifer Roy from Nucleus Networks. I’d like to thank Jennifer for her time, and honestly, for her candor. This was not a corporate interview. She was remarkably open about what it feels like to take a job you’re not qualified for on paper, about the pressures of being one of the very few women CEOs in the MSP space, and about what people-first leadership actually costs you day to day when you’re reading every single employee comment and holding yourself publicly accountable when you get it wrong. A few things that stuck with me. First, her point that customer service is what MSPs actually deliver — the technology is just the vehicle. Simple reframe, but I think a lot of MSP owners would run their businesses a little differently if they really internalized it. Second, the Lyra and Evergreen story. If you’ve been wondering what PE involvement actually looks like from the inside of a Canadian MSP, this is probably the most specific and honest account I’ve heard. Hiring someone in six hours through a sister company, getting proprietary code handed over, having boots on the ground in Australia through the network — those are real, tangible examples of what a platform can do for you. And third, her approach to AI. No hype, no panic — just practical applications like automated reporting and shadow AI mitigation that are already saving her team time and creating new conversations with clients. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow or subscribe to In The Channel. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. And if you’ve got a moment, a rating or review goes a long way toward helping other channel professionals find the show. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Dan Candee, CEO of Cork Cyber When Cork Cyber first showed up on the radar a few years ago, it was easy to file under “cyber warranty” and move on. But Dan Candee, who came in as CEO in mid-2024 from AWS and Dell, has been pushing the company well beyond that starting point. What’s emerged – a risk visibility platform, a scoring system, and now active remediation tools – looks less like a warranty company bolting on features and more like a deliberate platform play built on a foundation most vendors don’t have: financial skin in the game. Candee positions the warranty as Aflac for cyber insurance – a fast-response layer, not a replacement. But the more compelling moment was his account of a Canadian construction company that had every security check mark green and still got hit through a BEC attack because someone didn’t verify an ACH change by phone. Cork paid out. The MSP kept the client. The Cork Score is where things get practical for MSPs. Candee walked through showing a client they’re at a 350 because of incomplete MFA adoption, then demonstrating that three specific changes move them to a 700. It’s a QBR weapon, and the Credit Karma comparison holds up. On the business side, Vantage starts at a dollar per endpoint and scales to 35 cents. Financial protection comes in four tiers ($25,000 to $500,000), with the lower tiers designed for MSPs to absorb and bundle as a retention tool. Cork is active across Canada excluding Quebec, available through Pax8, and runs entirely through API integrations with no agent required. Candee teased an autonomous remediation engine for summer 2026. Whether Cork can deliver at the pace they’re promising is worth watching. Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPT TO COME

This Week's Highlights:1. Elevating Your Business ConversationsEver feel anxious about those business-focused meetings with customers? You're not alone! In this episode, Amy Babinchak and James Kernan share their personal experiences—like ice-breakers for introverts, why finding common ground matters, and how to move the business convo from awkward to actionable. Here's Amy's advice: listen actively, ask about their growth and goals, and let those insights lead you into productive IT conversations. You don't need to come to the table with all the answers—just be ready to listen and respond.2. Why MSAs MatterAre Master Service Agreements (MSAs) critical? Our hosts agree: absolutely. James Kernan and Amy Babinchak lay out why every MSP should have a clear, enforceable contract with each customer (especially if you ever plan to sell your business). They cover how overcomplicated contracts can be a sales hurdle, the importance of keeping agreements simple, and protecting your liability in the age of fast-moving tech and shadow AI.3. Industry NewsWe touch on the recent Pax8 hack—what was exposed, why you should care, and how leaks can impact negotiations. Plus, a heads-up on the ongoing scarcity and price hikes for memory and storage thanks to AI's heavy demand. Don't skimp when buying devices for clients! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sail the seas of tech and AI with experience and confidence.  Gavin Garbutt, Co-Founder and Chairman of Augmentt shares how MSPs must evolve to secure and manage Microsoft 365 and SaaS environments. Adopt a security-first mindset, and dramatically increase technician capacity through standardized Microsoft security best practices; through a unified Microsoft Security Management Platform designed for MSPs. Gavin outlines why “blocking and tackling” fundamentals—leveraging audits and maintaining a consistent security posture—remain critical as MSPs prepare for AI-driven growth.  Key Highlights:  How Augmentt represents the “next generation of RMM” for Microsoft 365, Intune, Defender and SaaA visibility.   Intune Autopilot enables MSPs to standardize, audit, and deploy policies across multiple tenants. 'Secret Sauce' for fostering successful partner and customer relationships. Series A funding, strategic partnerships and marketplace strategy (including Pax8) accelerate innovation and scale. Gavin's vision for unified security, AI enablement, and helping MSPs become more profitable. The charge to go from being reactive to becoming proactive; for 10,000 users per tech and 5x revenue per tech.   From sailing the open seas to navigating the channel's next wave, this conversation delivers practical insight for MSP leaders planning for 2026 and beyond.  Visit augmentt.com/ to learn more and to take advantage of a free security audit report & tool.   Timestamps:  Audit as a Best Practice 13:31  Quickfire Questions 32:45 What to Expect 36:26

Apple has introduced Creator Studio, a subscription-based suite that embeds AI-assisted features directly into familiar productivity and creative tools while maintaining strict control over interfaces and user experience. Alongside this launch, Apple confirmed a multiyear partnership with Google to use Gemini and Google Cloud as foundational AI infrastructure, reportedly involving annual payments of around $1 billion. The approach reinforces Apple's strategy of treating AI models as interchangeable components while retaining authority at the application layer, shifting responsibility for governance and oversight away from the platform and toward downstream users and advisors.Google, meanwhile, expanded Gemini through a new Personal Intelligence feature that can reason across Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube data for consumer accounts. Available initially to paid subscribers and requiring explicit consent, the capability highlights Google's advantage in contextual data rather than model novelty. By keeping the feature out of Workspace for now, Google appears to be setting user expectations in consumer environments before enterprise deployment, a move that may influence how business users evaluate AI-enabled decision support in the future.Pax8 disclosed a data leak affecting approximately 1,800 MSP partners after an internal spreadsheet was mistakenly shared with a limited number of recipients. While no personally identifiable information was exposed, the data included licensing and commercial details that could be used for competitive intelligence or targeted attacks. The incident coincides with Pax8's rapid international expansion, new regional offices, and growing reliance by MSPs on its marketplace for procurement and security tooling, including the recent addition of Cork Cyber's risk intelligence platform.Taken together with renewed attention on AI governance, the Secure by Design initiative, and guidance on when to apply GenAI versus traditional code, the episode underscores a widening gap between automation and authority. Surveys show a majority of IT leaders now prioritize AI governance, reflecting concern over accountability, data flows, and failure handling. For MSPs and IT service providers, these developments reinforce the need to clearly define who has the power to approve, pause, or override AI-driven systems and platform dependencies, as clients increasingly expect service providers to explain and manage outcomes they may not fully control. Four things to know today Apple's Creator Studio and Google Partnership Show a Strategy Built on Control, Not AI OwnershipAs Gemini Reasons Across Gmail, Search, and YouTube, Google Redefines AI Advantage Around Context            Pax8 Data Leak, Rapid Expansion, and Marketplace Growth Expose Risk Shift to MSPsAI Governance, Secure by Design, and GenAI Adoption Reveal a Growing Authority Gap for MSPs This is the Business of Tech.    Supported by:  https://scalepad.com/dave/

In this special IT Nation Connect Global edition, we sit down with two respected leaders shaping the future of the channel: Rob Rae, Corporate Vice President of Community & Partner Experience at Pax8, and Eric Torres, Vice President of Channel & Community Engagement at Pax8. Together, they unpack what it truly means to elevate the partner experience—beginning with the simple but powerful act of listening. From understanding the partner's universe to shaping a marketplace that reflects their needs, Rob and Eric illuminate how empathy, intentionality, and constant feedback fuel a thriving community. Highlights include: Uncover and keep the voice of the partner central to design a better marketplace and event experience. What a more “agentic" future means for service providers.  Success stories within the Pax8 ecosystem and the importance of nurturing relationships that enable partners to grow.  Rob emphasis on humility and service, "You're not the center of the MSP's universe."  Eric's leadership principle: “Make time for conversations.” Listening and following up unlock community success.   Whether you're a vendor, MSP, or channel leader, this episode delivers meaningful insights on strengthening connections and building a phenomenal partner journey. Visit Pax8.com for insight into the community and to learn about Pax8 Beyond 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah    Timestamps 00:42— Part 1: Conversation with Rob Rae 33:12— Part 2: Conversation with Eric Torres

Microsoft has launched Agent 365, a management platform designed for overseeing AI agents within enterprise environments. This platform, now available in early access, includes features such as the Microsoft Entra Registry for managing agent identities, risk-based access policies, and performance measurement tools. The introduction of Agent 365 signifies a shift towards integrating AI agents into standard business operations, allowing organizations to manage both Microsoft-built and third-party AI agents in a unified system. This development is part of a broader trend where AI governance and customer expectations are becoming increasingly critical for Managed Service Providers (MSPs).In conjunction with the launch of Agent 365, Microsoft has formed strategic partnerships with NVIDIA and Anthropic to enhance access to Anthropic's Cloud AI model, which will be scaled on Microsoft Azure. Anthropic has committed to purchasing $30 billion in Azure compute capacity, indicating a significant investment in cloud infrastructure. This partnership will allow Microsoft Foundry customers to access various versions of Anthropic's AI models, further solidifying Microsoft's position in the AI landscape. The implications of these partnerships extend to the operational costs and strategies of organizations that rely on AI, as the control of compute resources becomes a central factor in AI deployment.Additional announcements from Microsoft Ignite include new AI capabilities for Windows 11 and enhancements to Office applications, which will introduce free AI features aimed at improving user productivity. Vendors such as NinjaOne, Pax8, and Nerdio have also announced integrations and initiatives to align with Microsoft's evolving ecosystem, focusing on improving visibility, compliance, and modernization of virtual desktop infrastructure. These developments reflect a concerted effort by various companies to integrate more deeply into Microsoft's cloud and AI frameworks.For MSPs and IT service leaders, these advancements underscore the necessity of adapting to a rapidly changing technological landscape. The introduction of AI agents and the associated governance requirements will demand that MSPs develop frameworks for managing AI behavior and expectations. As AI features become standard in widely used applications, MSPs will need to address client expectations regarding AI functionality and reliability. The consolidation of media narratives around cybersecurity also highlights the importance of maintaining a balanced perspective on technology strategy, ensuring that MSPs focus on comprehensive solutions that address a range of client needs beyond just security. Three things to know today 00:00 Microsoft Signals Shift to an “Agentic OS” as Microsoft Deepens Anthropic Partnership and Expands AI Across Windows and Microsoft 36507:29 Ignite Highlights Vendor Rush Into Microsoft's Orbit, Raising Questions About MSP Differentiation and Over-Standardization11:57 CyberRisk Alliance Buys ChannelPro — and Shifts the MSP Storyline Toward Security This is the Business of Tech.     Supported by:  https://getflexpoint.com/msp-radio/https://cometbackup.com/?utm_source=mspradio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=sponsorship

Why is it so important to meet employees where they are—emotionally, professionally, and generationally? Deon MacMillan, Chief People Officer at Pax8, shares her approach to cultivating a dynamic, people-first culture amidst hypergrowth. Her leadership philosophy revolves around balancing high-tech innovation with high-touch human engagement.   Highlights include: The need to honor each employee's current journey, using thoughtful development strategies, AI fluency, and a deep understanding of multi-generational needs. “Meeting them where they are” drives tailored learning paths, stronger engagement, and authentic brand ambassadorship from within. Navigating the tension between scaling a global organization and preserving its unique culture. From one-on-one rituals to employee listening programs, she focuses on creating alignment between purpose and performance. "Organizations that can balance hi tech and high touch will win".   Connect with Deon on LinkedIn and visit Pax8.com to stay informed about the community.   Timestamps: [08:28] Dispel the fear around AI [09:10] The 5 Generation Workforce [15:43] Developing talent around the globe [24:24] Leading Horizontally   --- more ---   If you want to master the art of audience engagement while learning how to conquer speaking anxiety, deliver persuasive presentations, and close more deals, this is the program for you. Twins Talk It Up is hosted by identical twin brothers Danny Suk Brown and David Suk Brown, who share leadership communication strategies designed to help professionals embrace the power of their authentic voice.   Together, we'll explore tips and tools to unlock the full potential of your voice, dominate every stage you step onto, and elevate your influence and value. Along the way, we'll crush goals and share plenty of laughs.   Book a Free 15-minute discovery call: dsbleadershipgroup.com/schedule-a-call/ Website: appmeetup.com/twinstalkitup/ Community: facebook.com/groups/publicspeakingpoints Patreon: patreon.com/twinstalkitup

In this episode of Planning Aces, host Jack Sweeney and resident thought leader Brett Knowles explore how finance leaders are approaching AI's early returns—balancing efficiency, experimentation, and human judgment. CFO Craig Foster of Pax8 discusses how AI enablement is driving measurable productivity gains. CFO David Obstler of Datadog reflects on finding ROI amid rapid innovation and market demand. And CFO Ben Gammell of Brex shares why forecasting still requires human intuition despite data-driven progress. Together, their insights reveal a spectrum of FP&A strategies defining the modern CFO's mindset toward AI adoption and business transformation.Brett Knowles' Key TakeawaysBrett Knowles observes that finance leaders are positioning themselves along a broad continuum—from bold experimentation to cautious skepticism—when it comes to AI in planning. He notes a shift in tone: CFOs are now openly discussing productivity gains and cost efficiency rather than avoiding them. Knowles cautions against overreliance on ROI metrics, emphasizing instead disciplined cost management, pragmatic experimentation, and the evolving role of finance in navigating technology-driven transformation.

AI-powered cyberattacks are rapidly evolving, prompting a significant shift in cybersecurity strategies. According to a recent Gartner report, IT leaders are expected to allocate over half of their cybersecurity budgets to preemptive defense measures by 2030. This change is driven by the inadequacy of traditional detection and response tools in the face of sophisticated cyber threats, particularly those enhanced by artificial intelligence. Experts warn that while preemptive measures can mitigate risks, organizations may encounter challenges in integrating these new systems and overcoming cultural inertia.Datadog's 2025 State of Cloud Security Report highlights a growing trend among organizations adopting data perimeters to combat credential theft, with 40% of organizations implementing this advanced security practice. Additionally, 86% of organizations are utilizing multi-account setups within AWS, which allows for better enforcement of security protocols. Meanwhile, OpenAI's report reveals that cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging AI for malicious activities, including phishing and surveillance, showcasing the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity measures.In response to market pressures, Synology has reversed its policy on drive restrictions for its network-attached storage models, allowing the use of non-validated third-party drives. This decision comes after user feedback indicated dissatisfaction with the previous requirement for proprietary drives, which were often more expensive. For managed service providers (MSPs), this change offers greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness, making Synology's products more appealing once again.Pax8 has launched the Pax8 Agent Store, a platform designed to help MSPs adopt and offer AI-driven tools to small and medium-sized businesses. This marketplace aims to facilitate the integration and monetization of intelligent automation solutions, with early access set for December 2025. Additionally, SolarWinds has introduced an AI agent to enhance operational resilience for IT teams, while Barracuda Networks has launched Barracuda Research, a centralized resource for threat intelligence. Both initiatives aim to empower organizations in managing cybersecurity threats more effectively. Four things to know today00:00 Gartner, OpenAI, Datadog, and DHS Paint a Stark Cyber Future: AI Attacks Surge, Budgets Shift, and Defenses Fracture06:01 New Pax8 Platform Targets Repeatable AI Services, Sets Early Access for December08:03 Synology Reverses Course on Pricey Drives — Because You Stopped Buying09:53 SolarWinds and Barracuda Push AI to Ease IT Burdens—But Can They Deliver Real Value? This is the Business of Tech.     Supported by:  Comet, Scalepad Webinar:  https://bit.ly/msprmail

Enterprises are significantly increasing their investments in AI governance as the risks associated with artificial intelligence become more apparent. A recent report indicates that 98% of organizations plan to boost their governance budgets in the coming financial year, with an average expected increase of 24%. This shift highlights the realization that managing AI is not a plug-and-play solution; organizations must establish multiple lines of defense to handle risks effectively. As AI technologies evolve, refining governance will be an ongoing process, especially as companies face incidents that could lead to substantial financial losses.Public cloud spending is projected to increase dramatically, primarily driven by generative AI workloads. A survey reveals that nearly half of IT leaders expect more than 30% of their cloud budgets to be allocated to generative AI in the coming years. This rapid adoption of generative AI applications necessitates improved cloud cost management strategies, as enterprises brace for higher infrastructure costs. Analysts warn that the financial models supporting this AI boom, particularly for companies like Oracle, which may need to borrow significantly to meet obligations, raise concerns about sustainability.Despite fears of job losses due to AI, a study from Yale University indicates that generative AI has not yet significantly disrupted the job market. The research shows only a slight change in the occupational mix since the launch of ChatGPT, with hiring in the tech sector remaining steady. A significant portion of tech employers plan to hire, particularly for roles related to AI, indicating that the demand for skills like Python and project management is driving this trend. The study suggests that while generative AI has transformative potential, it is too early to assess its long-term effects on employment.In a notable industry development, Huntress has partnered with SureWeb to expand its cybersecurity solutions, marking its first distribution deal. This collaboration allows Huntress's products to be available in the SureWeb marketplace, enhancing security offerings for managed service providers across various regions. The partnership emphasizes the importance of relationships over transactions, contrasting with larger marketplaces. This move reflects a growing trend where vendors prioritize community-focused partnerships, providing opportunities for service providers to access quality cybersecurity solutions while navigating the evolving landscape of AI and technology.Four things to know today 00:00 AI's Hidden Cost: Governance Budgets Up, Cloud Bills Soar, and Debt Piles High Behind the Boom05:25 Government Shutdown and Policy Turmoil, Not AI, Emerging as Real Threats to U.S. Employment10:17 Pax8's “Managed Intelligence” Push Highlights Growing Tension Between AI Hype and MSP Readiness13:28 Huntress and Sherweb Redefine Channel Strategy with Relationship-First Distribution Model This is the Business of Tech.    Supported by:  https://cometbackup.com/?utm_source=mspradio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=sponsorshiphttps://www.auvik.com/              Webinar:   https://bit.ly/msprmail  All our Sponsors: https://businessof.tech/sponsors/ Do you want the show on your podcast app or the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/Looking for a link from the stories? The entire script of the show, with links to articles, are posted in each story on https://www.businessof.tech/ Support the show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mspradio/ Want to be a guest on Business of Tech: Daily 10-Minute IT Services Insights? Send Dave Sobel a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/businessoftech Want our stuff? Cool Merch? Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com Follow us on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/YouTube: https://youtube.com/mspradio/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@businessoftechBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/businessof.tech Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Craig Foster talks about artificial intelligence, he begins with scale. Pax8, the enterprise marketplace where he serves as CFO, connects vendors like Microsoft and CrowdStrike with 43,000 managed service providers. Those MSPs, he tells us, serve between 700,000 and 800,000 small and midsize businesses worldwide.Against that backdrop, Foster describes how AI is reshaping both internal operations and external opportunities. Inside Pax8, teams are experimenting across functions—from customer support to accounting—to automate what was once manual. The company, he tells us, has set a target “to do 20% more with 20% less,” relying on AI tools that are already available. Efficiency gains are not hypothetical; they are part of the current planning cycle.Externally, Foster sees what he calls “agentic marketplaces” emerging—ecosystems where AI modules act as labor components. Vendors are already building such agents, and Pax8 is designing its own. “We're a marketplace,” he tells us, “so we need to incorporate those different… AI components and enable our downstream clients for efficiency.” He believes this wave, unlike earlier technology cycles, is reaching SMBs with unusual speed.The finance leader is also watching economics evolve in real time. Data aggregated across Pax8's network shows strong interest, but pricing remains unsettled. Foster compares today's uncertainty to the early days of API marketplaces, when usage-based models became standard. The question now, he tells us, is how to split value between provider and customer—whether by consumption, per interaction, or shared outcomes. “That's probably the biggest challenge in industry right now,” Foster says.

Send us a textIn this high-energy episode of the Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations podcast, Joey sits down with Ryan Walsh, founding executive of Pax8 and chair of the GTIA Member Champions, to talk teamwork, technology, and transformation.

What if the key to unlocking peak performance is not pushing harder but mastering the art of mental focus and well-being? I traveled to LA to be at Mastery Labs to unlock the secrets of high performance with Michael Gervais, a renowned expert in mindfulness and psychology. This is our annual Holiday episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering and my gift to you, our amazing listeners, followers, and community. Michael shares how mental training can revolutionize personal and professional approaches to challenges, from his roots in elite sports to shaping corporate cultures. He explores the pivotal moments that sparked his passion, revealing how psychological skills like confidence and focus can be trained to thrive in any environment. This episode highlights actionable strategies for balancing well-being with ambition, applying insights from sports to business, and using mindfulness to direct focus effectively. With stories ranging from surfing competitions to Microsoft's cultural transformation under Satya Nadella, Michael offers a holistic perspective on performance psychology and sustainable success. Thank you for supporting Ultimate Partner and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering Podcast. Please tell your friends, subscribe, and leave us up to a 5-star Review, as it helps us get more amazing guests.

Send us a textIn this thoughtful and grounded episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Joey sits down with Ken Tripp of Netwrix to discuss the evolving challenges MSPs face — and how true partner-led collaboration can help solve them. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, this conversation weaves cybersecurity, personal transformation, and the need for industry-wide unity.Ken explains how Netwrix helps MSPs secure and profit from Microsoft, especially in relation to Copilot rollouts, compliance obligations, and scaling client environments without adding technical overhead. He discusses the shared responsibility model and how Netwrix streamlines identity, permissions, and data classification through AI — reducing labor costs and delivering predictable value to MSPs managing dozens or hundreds of tenants.The conversation also turns personal: Ken shares his 120-pound weight loss journey following a major health scare and how discipline and routine helped him reshape his life. That same clarity, he says, is needed in the MSP space — not just from vendors, but through shared change and joint accountability across the ecosystem. 

Send us a textIn this energetic and introspective episode recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz talks with Gene Kim, VP of Sales at Absolute, about what MSPs truly need from their security vendors — and how personal resilience echoes in business strategy.Gene opens with reflections on surfing at San Onofre State Beach, how the ocean provides a space for introspection, and how tracking progress — even in hobbies — helps him stay motivated. This passion for metrics carries into his work, where he supports MSPs navigating the challenges of brand visibility, cybersecurity threats, human capital gaps, and delivering operational excellence to SMB clients.The episode also explores Absolute's application persistence and resilience tools, which help MSPs ensure critical software stays active — even after catastrophic failures. With 600M+ devices already embedded at the BIOS level, Gene explains how Absolute provides continuity at a scale few can match.In a powerful moment, Joey shares his 120-pound weight loss journey, prompting Gene to reflect on how discipline, metrics, and mindset shape both personal and business transformations. 

Send us a textIn this deep and forward-looking conversation, Joey Pinz sits down with Chris Day, founder of TopLeft and creator of IT Glue, to explore how technology, intention, and transparency intersect in leadership. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, this episode is a must-listen for any MSP founder or operator navigating rapid scale, system chaos, and AI disruption.Chris shares what it was like to build IT Glue from scratch, how TopLeft was born from his own pain points in task management, and what he's learning as he transitions from building tools to building teams. He dives into the current AI landscape, unpacking what's real, what's fluff, and what MSPs actually need to be paying attention to.The conversation also turns personal: Chris discusses the pressure of past success, the challenge of staying grounded post-exit, and how transparency — in business models, client interactions, and personal growth — has become a guiding principle.Whether you're scaling a platform or scaling yourself, this episode delivers clarity, candor, and strategic foresight from one of the MSP industry's most influential builders. 

Send us a textIn this heartfelt and high-impact episode recorded at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Christopher Marquez of IronScales for a powerful conversation that blends vendor strategy, personal resilience, and community leadership.Christopher kicks off by sharing his goals for the week: learning from partners, improving services, and helping MSPs strengthen their security posture. He breaks down how IronScales uses adaptive AI to protect against phishing and email attacks, offering efficient deployment, automation, and education as part of their channel-first approach. MSPs benefit from tools like free email health checks, coaching support, and NFR licenses for internal use.But this episode goes beyond tech. Christopher opens up about his past struggle with alcohol abuse, the wake-up call from his doctor, and his journey to recovery and lasting wellness. He and Joey reflect on the power of discipline, coaching, and community in transforming both business and life.From pork green chili to partner enablement to self-awareness, this conversation is a rich mix of grit, gratitude, and growth — for anyone navigating the MSP space or a personal reset. 

Send us a textIn this thoughtful and grounded conversation recorded at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Chance Weaver, a seasoned MSP veteran and executive at High Wire Networks, to unpack the intersection of growth, wellness, and sustainable leadership in tech.Chance shares his personal journey through multiple acquisitions, the burnout that followed, and how introspection and intentionality helped him realign with what really matters. They talk openly about the toll that tech leadership can take — especially in the fast-paced world of MSPs — and how High Wire's growth strategy aims to be bold without breaking people.This episode also explores the High Wire partner model, how they scale complex cybersecurity services like SOC-as-a-Service, and the importance of enabling MSPs to lead with their brand, not the vendor's. Chance emphasizes that the secret isn't more tools — it's more clarity.If you're running an MSP or leading a tech team, this episode will resonate. It's about listening to yourself, empowering your partners, and knowing when it's time to let go — or gear up again. 

Send us a textIn this refreshingly candid episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Joey sits down with Drew Schlussel, Director of Technical Product Marketing at Wasabi Technologies, to talk about simplifying cloud storage and scaling the right way. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, this episode cuts through the jargon and gets to the core of what partners truly want: predictability, transparency, and performance that actually delivers.Drew breaks down Wasabi's flat-fee storage model, its refusal to charge for egress or API calls, and why they've ditched tiered pricing entirely. It's not just a technical decision — it's a cultural one. He dives into the psychology behind data usage, vendor relationships, and what it means to truly earn the trust of MSPs.The conversation also covers why Wasabi is doubling down on channel-only sales, how the company avoids fear-based marketing, and Drew's personal perspective on building tech brands that scale without selling out.If you're in the MSP space and tired of the nickel-and-dime model from traditional hyperscalers, this episode will feel like a much-needed reality check. 

Send us a textIn this high-impact conversation at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Rob Rae, legendary MSP advocate and VP at Pax8, to talk about platforms, peer groups, and the pulse of the managed services community.Rob shares what sets Pax8 apart from traditional distributors — its MSP-only focus, commitment to partner success, and its evolution into a true marketplace, not just a catalog. He explains how the newly launched public storefronts allow MSPs to create digital buying experiences for end clients, and how Pax8's AI-powered recommendations are reshaping vendor discovery and security posture.The heart of the episode dives into community — from Rob's deep belief in peer groups and soft skill development, to how the post-pandemic MSP landscape has changed. He opens up about Pax8's internal billing transition and how staying responsive during disruption is an act of discipline.Rob also shares the emotional story of how a simple piece of advice transformed an MSP's business — a reminder of the long-term impact one voice can have. 

Send us a textIn this wide-ranging episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, cybersecurity leader Joe Saunders of Check Point shares his journey—from Cuban cigars to global IT strategy. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, this conversation blends personal passions with serious insights on cybersecurity, leadership, and AI.Joe kicks things off with a deep appreciation for cigars, explaining how a Cuban cigar gifted at a Pax8 event sparked his fascination. From flavor profiles to Connecticut Maduro wrappers, Joe uses the cigar world as a metaphor for personalization and nuance—something he also values in business relationships.The conversation shifts to Check Point's major Infinity Platform launch, a consolidated suite of AI-powered security tools designed to better serve MSPs and SMBs. Joe highlights the importance of MSP-focused features like multi-tenancy, API integrations, and compliance frameworks (SOC, ISO), all tailored for modern partner operations.He also reflects on the role of discipline and self-awareness in his own growth, echoing Joey's own health journey. Joe closes by inviting MSPs to visit the Check Point booth, try the platform with free licenses, and embrace AI-driven security innovation. 

Send us a textIn this candid and energizing conversation, Joey Pinz sits down with Ryan Ettridge, co-founder and CEO of CyberCert, for a deep dive into martial arts, cybersecurity, and the power of self-awareness. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, the episode kicks off with a discussion on Ryan's lifelong relationship with martial arts, including earning multiple black belts, a serious neck injury, and how jiu-jitsu taught him humility, confidence, and long-term mindset.The conversation transitions to business as Ryan shares his vision for CyberCert and the global launch of the SMB 1001 certification standard. Tailored specifically for small and medium-sized businesses, this standard is designed to be MSP-led, making the managed service provider an essential part of the certification process. Cyber insurers recognize it, reducing friction and increasing trust for SMB clients.Ryan also opens up about his personal journey through burnout, executive coaching, and the realization that every leader must confront their internal fears. He's now building an AI executive coaching app to help others do the same.Whether you're an MSP, a cybersecurity pro, or someone chasing alignment in life and business — this episode is packed with strategy, storytelling, and substance. 

Send us a textIn this laid-back yet deeply insightful conversation recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Charlie Tomeo, CRO of Rewst, to talk automation, community, and catching kingfish.Charlie shares how his love for fishing helps him reset from the startup grind, offering a rare glimpse into the human side of high-stakes leadership. But the conversation quickly dives into strategy as he explains how Rewstempowers MSPs to automate both the obvious (onboarding, offboarding, password resets) and the often-overlooked “high-hanging fruit” — tasks MSPs haven't automated because they've never done them at all.Rewst isn't just saving time — it's transforming automation into a revenue source and making MSPs indispensable to their clients. Charlie explains how their open canvas approach lets both beginners and tech artists build powerful, customized workflows.We also dig into how leadership is evolving, especially for younger tech teams. Charlie discusses mentorship, motivation, and the value of listening — whether on a Rewst open mic call or in the field with a fishing rod. 

Send us a textIn this energizing episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Damo Vasudevan of SuperOps joins us from Pax8 Beyond 2025 to talk about AI, mindset, and meatless gains. From Mark Wahlberg-inspired fitness routines to building next-gen PSA/RMM tools, Damo reveals how discipline drives transformation — in both body and business.Damo shares his journey of sticking to a vegetarian diet while maintaining strength and balance, comparing it to the deliberate, incremental innovation behind SuperOps. With over 2,500 features shipped and a channel-focused roadmap, SuperOps is helping MSPs modernize operations, automate intelligently, and scale with confidence.The conversation dives deep into Pathfinder AI, SuperOps' AI engine that analyzes client data, identifies bottlenecks, and offers strategic recommendations to help MSPs grow. Damo also tackles MSP skepticism around AI, encouraging partners to embrace augmentation over replacement.If you're an MSP leader thinking about future-proofing your stack — and your habits — this episode delivers a motivating blend of technology and personal mastery. 

Send us a textIn this dynamic episode from Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Pinar Ormeci, CEO of Timus Networks, for a refreshingly personal and strategic conversation about the future of MSP security—and the mindset shifts that fuel real change.From her love of Legos and pickleball to her experience shedding 120 pounds and redefining identity, Pinar shares how life outside of work deeply informs her leadership inside it. She opens up about her journey from enterprise sales to leading a fast-growth cybersecurity startup committed to replacing outdated VPNs with always-on encrypted access.Pinar explains how Timus Networks empowers MSPs by giving them back control of the network stack, improving client intimacy, and transforming security from a cost center into a growth enabler. She emphasizes the importance of listening to partners, iterating based on feedback, and showing up as a vendor that truly cares.This episode weaves together cybersecurity, mental clarity, and personal evolution—with humor, grit, and actionable insight. Whether you're building your business or building a 5,000-piece Lego set, Pinar shows why focus and flexibility are everything. 

Send us a textIn this flavorful and focused episode of Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations, Tanya Alfonso — chef-trained tech executive and cybersecurity leader at Vicarious — joins us from Pax8 Beyond 2025 to talk about precision, process, and performance in the kitchen and in business.From her IBM days to knife skills in culinary school, Tanya shares how her love for cooking fuels her leadership style. Organization, attention to detail, and routine aren't just part of her home kitchen — they're baked into her approach to cybersecurity, MSP partnership, and life.At Vicarious, Tanya helps Managed Service Providers streamline vulnerability remediation, not just detection. She explains how Vicarious goes beyond patching to include patchless protection and scripting — essential in a landscape where 50% of threats won't have a patch available.We also dive into Tanya's take on discipline, mental focus, and personal joy. From 5:30 a.m. workouts to weekly fridge cleans, she shares how consistency fuels both her work-life balance and professional growth. 

Send us a textIn this soul-rich episode recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz welcomes Darrin Swan — a cybersecurity strategist, vinyl collector, and espresso aficionado — to explore the habits and mindsets that drive both personal clarity and professional performance.Darrin opens up about his nightly ritual of selecting vinyl records to guide his mindset the next morning, the art of mastering an Italian espresso machine, and how these moments of intentionality ripple into his leadership at Total Helps. He shares how setting the tone for the day—creatively and energetically—has shaped his approach to solving problems and leading high-performing teams.On the business side, the conversation gets tactical as Darrin lays out the MSP challenges he's tackling: client security, talent retention, and the need to move from reactive to proactive cybersecurity strategies. He also highlights how mid-market acceptance of MSPs is growing—and how partner trust, cultural transparency, and gamification are key to success in this next phase of growth.It's a unique blend of music, mindset, and cybersecurity that delivers both strategic insight and personal inspiration. 

Send us a textIn this flavorful and thoughtful conversation from Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Louis Bagdonas, a leader at Moovila, to explore how cooking, culture, and clarity shape both personal growth and project management in the MSP world.The episode opens with culinary banter — from turkey veal meatballs and single-source olive oil to Lithuanian heritage and the power of finishing what you start. But this isn't just about recipes — it's about how life in and out of the kitchen reveals the habits that lead to success.Louis shares Moovila's mission to help MSPs take control of project management before things go off the rails. He breaks down how MSPs can assess their internal readiness, define what a “project” really means, and avoid letting one person carry the entire load.The conversation shifts to family, discipline, and mindset — from Louis's decision to quit drinking, to making space for impact and balance. Whether you're managing projects or personal pivots, this episode is about owning your process and finding satisfaction in both the work and the results. 

Send us a textIn this candid and energizing episode, Joey Pinz sits down with Tom Harshbarger, cybersecurity leader at Red Sift, who shares how everything from Metallica concerts to chronic illness in his family has shaped his approach to leadership, health, and vendor strategy.Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Tom reflects on cycling for mental clarity, building trust with MSPs, and the mission behind Red Sift — a company founded by the creators of Shazam to deliver misconfiguration remediation at scale. Their platform empowers MSPs to secure the attack surface while freeing up senior engineers — all while staying invisible to the end customer.Tom also discusses his own health and mindset journey, navigating caregiving for loved ones with POTS, and the mental reprogramming it took to prioritize self-care, sustainable work habits, and meaningful partnerships.From stories of seismic concerts to seismic shifts in MSP cybersecurity, this episode is both vulnerable and visionary — a must-listen for anyone working to scale without burning out. 

Send us a textIn this candid and compelling episode from Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Rex Frank, VP of Academy at Pax8 and founder of C-Level. From classic Mustangs to modern AI strategies, Rex shares what it really takes to lead MSPs through their next transformation.Rex explains how agentic AI marks a turning point — as disruptive as the cloud, managed services, or the PC. He urges MSPs to stop waiting and start leading by becoming “customer zero” and mandating AI training within their orgs. But this episode isn't just about technology. It's about structure, mindset, and motion.Drawing on decades of coaching experience, Rex breaks down the “rule of 7,” the hidden costs of undertraining, and why scaling requires letting go of what once worked. He also shares his personal weight loss journey tied to climbing Mount Rainier — and why public goals, peer groups, and urgency drive real change.If you're leading an MSP and wrestling with growth, people, or purpose, this episode delivers rare insight and actionable guidance. 

Send us a textIn this inspiring episode recorded at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz sits down with Marco La Vecchia, a tech leader, cancer survivor, and co-founder of Produce 8 — the only digital work analytics platform purpose-built for MSPs. Marco shares how personal transformation and business evolution are deeply connected.Produce 8 offers something rare: easy-to-understand, aggregated data reports that allow MSPs to guide strategic client conversations. From unused licenses to AI impact metrics, their platform arms providers with the insights needed to go beyond break/fix and become true business partners.Marco also opens up about his health journey, the importance of mental clarity, and why driving his kids to school every day defines success more than any revenue goal. Whether he's DJing in his basement, building recurring revenue models, or helping MSPs scale, Marco shows what it means to lead with purpose and clarity. 

Send us a textIn this high-gear episode from Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz speaks with Colin Britton, COO of Devicie, about everything from Formula One engineering to Microsoft Intune optimization for MSPs. Colin brings decades of experience scaling tech firms across the globe, and he breaks down how Devicie is helping MSPs finally extract full value from Microsoft 365 — especially Intune.Colin explains why MSPs face friction using Microsoft-native tools at scale and how Devicie's automation layer bridges the operational gaps Microsoft leaves open. If you're an MSP tired of jumping between tenants, manually configuring endpoints, or underutilizing Business Premium, this episode hits home.They also explore how AI is rapidly reshaping SMB agility, why consumption-based pricing could shake up business models, and how personal data (from Whoop bands to GitHub Copilot) is becoming a decision-making edge. 

Send us a textIn this deeply reflective episode recorded at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz chats with legal-tech leader, artist, and founder of Cloud Contracts 365, Kim Simmonds. From songwriting at the piano to transforming legal AI for MSPs, Kim opens up about the intersections of creativity, leadership, and transformation.The conversation begins in melody and moves into mission — how Kim's self-taught songwriting parallels her bold move to launch an AI-powered legal tool designed just for MSPs. She shares her views on the ethical risks of careless AI use (including lawyers being debarred for citing fake case law), and how her platform avoids hallucinations by not relying on LLMs.They explore differences between US and UK work culture, the undervaluation of MSP services in England, and why shifting from revenue-chasing to meaningful service is the ultimate mindset upgrade. 

Send us a textIn this episode recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz speaks with Shlomi Gian, a tech veteran driving the next chapter of email security with Inky. From anti-phishing to international expansion, Shlomi offers candid insight into how Inky is reshaping the MSP channel with a channel-only model and a coaching-first security approach.We cover Inky's evolution from an enterprise solution to a platform built exclusively for MSPs, leveraging AI, QR-code detection, and banner-based user feedback to block threats and educate users in real-time. Shlomi unpacks the “block and coach” model, Inky's proprietary LLM deployment, and why they run GenAI in-house for both privacy and cost control.He also shares his view on pricing transparency, vendor consolidation, and why MSPs should stop buying “50-cent security.” It's a conversation packed with real value for tech leaders navigating modern threats. 

Send us a textIn this action-packed episode, Joey Pinz sits down with cybersecurity executive and youth baseball coach Aaron Peterik, recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025. From the dugout to the datacenter, Aaron shares what coaching six-year-olds taught him about communication, patience — and how those same lessons apply to securing networks and running channel programs.The conversation kicks off with rule changes in Major League Baseball ⚾ and transitions to the state of youth sports today, emphasizing how multi-sport participation builds better athletes — and people. Aaron also shares sharp takes on parenting in youth leagues and how modern coaching is often hijacked by commercialization.But it doesn't stop there — we dive deep into Aaron's work at Zero Networks, a startup redefining MSP security with agentless micro-segmentation and MFA at the port level

Send us a textKathleen Lord shares a rare blend of personal grit and professional insight in this dynamic episode recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025. From her early passion for equestrian sports to her executive leadership at Zensai, we explore how personal connection, smart systems, and human-centric tech drive real change.Kathleen dives into the realities of horse training, animal instincts, and performance ethics before pivoting into Zensai's mission: helping MSPs deliver post-sale value with ease. Her team's LMS, deeply integrated with Microsoft Teams, offers an elegant solution to a messy problem — keeping end-users engaged and trained without draining MSP resources.We also unpack how AI is reshaping sales funnels and why human connection still matters most — whether in the saddle or the boardroom. 

Send us a textThis heartfelt and high-energy episode from Pax8 Beyond 2025, Joey Pinz speaks with Lorna Burman, a global MSP leader at YouSecure and proud horse owner of Malibu. From riding trails in the UK to leading compliance innovation across EMEA and APAC, Lorna blends courage, confidence, and care into everything she does.Lorna shares her journey of taking up horseback riding at age 42 — and how the adrenaline and peace of the trail helped fuel her leadership style. She opens up about managing remote teams, gathering real-time MSP feedback, and simplifying security and compliance through automation.This episode also explores the mental health benefits of being around animals, the importance of trust in business, and how her team's culture of honesty and rapid response has earned global respect. Whether it's avoiding complex pricing models or making clients feel heard, Lorna explains how empathy scales.If you care about people, process, and purpose — this conversation delivers both inspiration and actionable insight.