AI Liability and Data Risk Shifts: Veeam’s Platform Pivot and Rich Freeman on MSP Readiness

[00:00:12] So here's a number worth sitting with, 2.3 billion. That's how many AI agents IDC expects to be operating by 2030. Right now, there are roughly 28.8 million. Every one of them is moving fast, operating largely out of view, and often with permissions they should not have.

[00:00:33] Veeam CEO put it plainly on Veeam On, the new failure isn't just a breach. It's actually a wrong decision which you take, execute it at machine speed, before anyone notices. At the same time, OpenAI and Anthropic, backed by Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Apollo, and several billion dollars, just launched services businesses aimed squarely at the mid-market. Not the Fortune 500, the M in SMB.

[00:01:01] The customers MSPs have spent decades building relationships with. MSPs have been debating AI strategy for two years. Meanwhile, the companies have stopped waiting. This week, we're going to map exactly what's happening, where the vendor landscape is shifting, where the real money is forming, and where MSPs need to step into a liability trap, potentially, that no one's talking about and warn them off. Joining me is the journalist who's been documenting all of it, week by week, from the inside.

[00:01:30] Welcome to the Business of Tech Lounge. This is where we break down what's changing in the IT services market, what it means for providers and vendors, and what to actually do about it. If you're running or supporting an MSP, this is about making sense of the environment you're operating in, not just the headlines. Now, to make this conversation possible, a message from our sponsor. When chaos hits, will your system survive?

[00:01:56] Comet Backup's full image backups protect your entire system, files, apps, settings, and even the OS, in one powerful automated backup. Comet is easy to deploy and bandwidth efficient. Full system backups for Windows, for Linux, for servers, for endpoints, all in one centralized platform. Whether you get hit with ransomware, hardware failure, or accidental deletion, Comet restores your system to physical, VM, or the cloud.

[00:02:21] Short on time? Restore individual files or folders to access critical data within moments. Try Comet Backup today. Reliable, secure, and made to scale. Visit cometbackup.com to protect what matters most. Get $100 free credit when you sign up with the promo code MSPRADIO. Comet Backup. Backup. Fast. Restore. Easy. Rich Freeman is the founder of Channelholic, the sharpest beat journalism product covering the MSP and SMB channel today.

[00:02:51] He's also chief content officer at Channel Mastered and co-host of MSP Chat. He spent over two decades as founding editor at Channel Pro Network before going independent. And he writes from primary sources, the vendor executives, working MSPs, and analyst data. And he has a talent for identifying what a big announcement actually means once you strip out the press release. Rich, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much for having me. I always look forward to this.

[00:03:17] Well, likewise, you've been covering some really great stuff. So I think it's worth doing a little bit of a recap and setting the piece. I want to start where you recently came from, the Veeam On Show. Because what Veeam announced is either a genuine category pivot or the most elegant repositioning I've seen in this space in a long time. And I can't necessarily tell which one it is. Now, Veeam's CEO didn't announce a new product. He announced a new platform category, Data AI Command Platform.

[00:03:46] The basic pitch is that AI creates an entirely new class of data failure. So this isn't ransomware. It isn't accidental deletion. It's beyond those. Data gets hallucinated into existence by chatbots. And agents can delete databases and sensitive files get exposed to people who shouldn't see them. Now, you called it out on your own Channelholic newsletter. The key question is, can Veeam deliver?

[00:04:13] Because they put together a particular architecture around this. And I thought it was interesting. We'll also get into some of the stuff that happened with Auvik at the same time. But Rich, tell me a little bit about the unveiling of Data AI Command Platform. And how did partners react to this change? Well, I think partners like the analysts and the media present there were all kind of digesting it a little bit. This is a...

[00:04:39] So, again, as you pointed out, this is not Veeam launching a new product. It's not even really Veeam launching a new platform. It's Veeam attempting to invent a new kind of platform. And one that essentially zeros in, focuses in on the fact that there is no AI without data. And wherever data is to be found, you know that there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. And those include the traditional things like ransomware and so on that you pointed out.

[00:05:09] But then all the other stuff about hallucinations and, you know, the salary records that your company being inadvertently exposed to... There are a lot of different things that can go wrong with data. And so this was a very ambitious, very different kind of announcement by Veeam. And I think everybody there, certainly the media and the analysts afterwards, we were all kind of, you know, chatting about it. What do you think?

[00:05:34] This was a bold, ambitious announcement by Veeam. And it follows a very significant acquisition they made late last year. They bought a company called Security AI, S-E-C-U-R-I-T-I-A-I. And that's sort of a data security posture management company. And the idea was we're going to take DSPM and combine it with our traditional data protection functionality.

[00:05:59] And we're going to create a platform with a set of capabilities that you're not really getting in any other platform out there right now. Security, backup, compliance, privacy, governance, all specifically revolving around data and all of that necessary in order for your end users, your MSP, to safely utilize and transform around AI.

[00:06:27] So it is, as you were saying, Dave, an artful pivot. But by Veeam, absolutely. It's also, from what I can make out, the birth of a legitimate new platform category. And then the question just is, is this the category the market has been waiting for? Can Veeam execute against the vision? That's what comes next. And you noted in the coverage that precision remediation is currently limited to Microsoft 365.

[00:06:55] So this is, how much of this is real? Like, so they've got that as a component now versus, do they give some sort of sense of how long it would take to put this together? Are we talking about weeks, months, years? Did they give a sense of the timeline here to get to full coverage? Well, it's not years and it's not weeks. So I think months is probably realistic. I would imagine that they will be significantly beyond where they are today by the end of the year.

[00:07:25] Say, I can't honestly recall if they talked about like when, you know, the Google platform would get added to Microsoft 365. But it is a work in progress. This was sort of a down payment on a larger vision. But I mean, they're betting the business on this, Dave, basically. They will not be snoozing their way through this rollout. Now let's layer in Auvik too, because they shipped what is called the do phase of its see, tell, do roadmap.

[00:07:54] And this is the first automated network management and troubleshooting capability built on data from 12 million devices and 300 million device configurations. Now what was interesting is the framing is similar to Veeam's, right? You cannot automate what you don't understand. And understanding requires data depth that takes all of these years to put together. Like, how do you think of this?

[00:08:18] So if Auvik's framing is you need this decade's data and Veeam's framing is trust first, then automation, they kind of feel like they both rhyme and are different bets at the same time. Give me a sense of your take on those visions and which one you're leaning more towards. Well, I mean, the commonality across both of those, obviously, is the centrality of the data.

[00:08:44] And so in the case of Auvik, basically, they've had it in their mind for a long time that someday somehow it would be possible to automate a lot of functions of network management. But you're not going to do that until you have the data that provides a clear, accurate picture of where things stand and can essentially drive good, solid, automated remediation measures.

[00:09:13] So data, absolutely essential to realizing a vision that Auvik has had for a while. And what's right for Auvik is right for more or less any other business. And I think that's where Veeam is coming from, is that everybody, in order to take advantage of AI and automation, really has to pay close attention to data and accumulate as much data and consolidate it and clean it.

[00:09:39] That's one of the things the Veeam platform does, actually, is help you map how much data you have and where it is and where it's located in a very granular way. What kinds of policies and procedures, restrictions, limitations are in place against that data? What additional policies and procedures do you need to add?

[00:09:59] You know, enforcing those policies in real time so that the Veeam spin on the data story, basically, is your success in AI is going to depend on the depth and the quality of your data. And because data is important, it also needs to be safe and compliant. And so there are all these sort of preconditions to putting data to work in a production capacity in AI.

[00:10:29] Now, I've got to bring up the AI data governance here. I'm going to first quote Nolan, who commented here, that he thinks the governance gap is one of the biggest opportunities MSPs have seen in a very long time. He's got some thoughtful thoughts there about the way that MSPs need to understand how to operate here and not just deploy the tools. But I wanted to ask you a little bit, thinking about this, if we're identifying as I think Nolan's right, I think this is the massive opportunity. But I also feel like there's a readiness gap here.

[00:10:58] And I feel like I'm not necessarily sure that the channel is actually ready to sell this and deliver upon it, particularly when I look at the fact that enterprises are even still struggling with this question. As you're talking both to the MSP side of this and to the vendor side, how are people perceiving the readiness of the channel in general to deliver on this? Yeah, it very much depends on who you're talking to.

[00:11:25] I'm not sure how many MSPs are even asking that question. And they really ought to be asking, are we ready? Can we get ready? Should we get ready? A process of ready? desceneidly basically. Because I agree with you and with Nolan, huge need, and therefore a huge opportunity? I think, you know, vendors would generally agree at that point that there isn't an enormous amount of readiness out there.

[00:11:51] And a lot of that comes down to an awareness of the issue and ability to define the issue. Do you have the skills to actually provide governance services to your clients? But there's a sort of tangential issue that you hear governance and maybe you think about GRC, governance, risk and compliance. Those all tend to get lumped together.

[00:12:16] And in my experience through the years, the governance and compliance pieces of GRC in particular tend to terrify a lot of MSPs. And I completely get why. I mean, on the compliance side in particular, right? Very complicated. A lot of legal risk attached to getting things right and legal consequences to getting things. There are a lot of fairly sophisticated MSPs I know who just don't want to get near that.

[00:12:41] And I think there's some of that going on with governance as well, where maybe precisely because people don't have the skills yet and it doesn't feel like there are tools that are going to somehow be the easy button for AI governance, that there's a reluctance to get into this opportunity. And, you know, I understand it. I totally get it.

[00:13:06] But to the degree that you do want to get into delivering AI services, you know, providing strategic business advisory services and solution provider services around AI to your customers. I mean, you have got somehow or another, you've got to address the governance and the security and the compliance issues around that. Or you're going to be exposing your customer to a lot of danger, a lot of risk.

[00:13:34] And so, I mean, theoretically, if you don't feel ready and don't feel you'll ever entirely be ready, maybe you have to partner with somebody else who can assist you with that. But it is an issue that you can't just sort of wash your hands of that and trust everything's going to be okay. That governance is one of those preconditions to successful, safe, and, you know, durable AI. Well, I think you're spot on. And I want to actually use that sort of service. Hey, we've identified a services opportunity.

[00:14:03] I'm going to use that to move on. If you're watching us live, go ahead and put any questions you have into the comment field and the question field. We'll pull it up and answer it in real time. I think this links directly to the second thing that you were reporting on, which is an area that I think the providers themselves may see some of exactly what we've just identified. Anthropic and OpenAI both have announced services businesses, and they announced them the same week in early May. These are not channel programs, everybody.

[00:14:32] These are joint ventures backed by some of those biggest names in private capital. So it's Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, TPG, Bain Capital, Sequoia. Anthropic's venture is rumored to have $1.5 billion behind it, and OpenAI is believed to have $4 billion behind it. Now, the target explicitly mid-market. Anthropic, in their blog post, described it as working with mid-sized companies across sectors,

[00:14:58] with Anthropic's own applied AI engineers embedded alongside client teams to identify where Claude can have the most impact and build custom solutions and support customers over the long term. Now, meanwhile, at NerdioCon, Nerdio's leadership described the MSP AI landscape very plainly. They said most MSPs know they need an AI strategy but cannot figure out what the winning one looks like. AI is moving so fast, they said. What's working today? What's the best model today?

[00:15:28] Might not even be a thing six months from now. Now, Rich, you covered both the Anthropic OpenAI Services news and NerdioCon, and you did it in the same piece. Did you intend this juxtaposition here? Because it felt like the implication is pretty stark. Talk to me about your thinking.

[00:15:47] Well, in terms of the juxtaposition, depending on your point of view, I just got lucky because I showed up at NerdioCon not knowing that Anthropic, I think Anthropic announced theirs that week, and it turned out to be kind of a big deal. And so it turned out to be a perfect juxtaposition because the executive team at Nerdio, they are as deeply embedded in the Microsoft channel as anyone out there, particularly in the vendor community that you can name.

[00:16:18] And, you know, they have risen to unicorn status and beyond basically focusing on the Microsoft Cloud, Microsoft 365, Windows 365, Azure, et cetera. You know, they're utilizing AI in their platform. They don't have a big sort of AI services story for MSPs yet. But they are, from my perspective, a great resource, a great sounding board on what are MSPs thinking around AI services right now?

[00:16:47] And what they told me, what they're hearing from the partners they are very closely in touch with is we're not at the point like, you know, the issue is not a ton of MSPs saying this AI stuff is snake oil or it's a flash in the pan or it's going to be a decade before really. Everybody kind of understands this is for real.

[00:17:08] So the issue is just how exactly do I go to market with something and what is going to be my strategy around AI? And people are working it out, working it through. You kind of identified some of the issues that are on people's mind. You know, I work in three different verticals. Do I need one thing for all three or three different things?

[00:17:30] Is the service that I build, you know, over the course of the next three months still going to be relevant six months from now, which is a difficult question to answer given the way things. And so that people are, you know, I don't want to say taking their time in the sense of going slowly, but it is taking some time for people to work their way through this very complex set of questions and put themselves in a position to move forward with confidence.

[00:17:56] And the juxtaposition there basically is while the MSPs out there serving mid-market customers are thinking their way through this, getting themselves ready to do it right. You've got Anthropic and OpenAI with massive financial pressures on them. They're both, we believe, you know, headed to IPOs this year. Hence all of the interest from Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. Here are billions of dollars.

[00:18:22] Let's create some demand for these services that you guys provide, like right now, yesterday. MSPs are kind of working it out, thinking it through. Anthropic and OpenAI are like, we got to get moving on this. And they're not waiting for partners, which is not to say, by the way, that they have no interest in partnering with the channel. We can talk just a little bit about that in the context of OpenAI, if you like. But they're not waiting around for the channel to make up its mind.

[00:18:51] They're, you know, they're getting in there right now with their own services to produce as much demand for the and consumption of product they deliver as they can as quickly as they can to, you know, make those IPOs and what comes after them work. Well, I mean, you've identified where my next question is, obviously, because I look at this and say, Anthropic deploying its own engineers into mid-market clients, that looks like what a good MSP does, right?

[00:19:19] Like that's literally like the definition, particularly when we think about the mid-market and all of the co-managed IT discussion we've been having over the last years. Like that looks like that. You mentioned that there might be some partner plays here. Like what are those? Or is that just wishful thinking? Like what have Anthropic OpenAI indicated in terms of the way they're thinking about it?

[00:19:42] So both Anthropic and OpenAI have launched partner programs within, call it, the last four to six months. OpenAI hired a channel chief, its first channel chief ever. And her name is Colleen Kopsi, spelled K-A-P-E-S-E. And I remember asking her once upon a time, how do I pronounce that? And she said, Kopsi, but I'll answer to any pronunciation you choose, basically.

[00:20:11] I've had a chance to interview her once or twice. She's been on the podcast. I co-host. She's sort of, you know, the salt of the earth and really someone you would recognize as a channel first, channel passionate kind of person. And she's the first channel chief at OpenAI. It's a recent enough job switch from her. She was the global channel chief at Google. And you can understand why OpenAI would be happy to hire someone with that background away from one of their biggest competitors.

[00:20:37] So she's early enough into this new gig that I don't really, I'm waiting to see what she does, what she launches. My expectation, knowing what little of her I know, is that this will not just, whatever it is that she eventually rolls out, it won't be something that is just for Deloitte and Accenture. I think they'll be looking for a broader channel play. How that plays out more specifically, though, I don't know.

[00:21:04] And, you know, I would imagine a similar kind of story with Anthropic. You know, the obvious question, and I'm sure people in the audience are asking it right now, you know, the Anthropic announcement, it's not just that they're helping mid-market companies roll out AI solutions. They are doing it with help from, and these are like the magic words in Silicon Valley these days, forward deployed engineers, right? Palantir has whatever it is, a 140 rule of 40.

[00:21:34] Palantir is this unbelievable rocket ship colossus. And forward deployed engineers is kind of what they're best known for around AI right now. And that's what Anthropic is doing. They're going to have, you know, feet on the street. They're going to have bodies out there helping mid-market companies build these solutions and roll them out. And so the obvious question is just does that scale? You know, and Anthropic and OpenAI are talking about acquisitions and bringing people in to serve as those forward deployed engineers.

[00:22:04] I imagine that there's some thinking there basically that, you know, near term, medium term, we can drive some business with as many forward deployed engineers as we can get in-house and get those people working right away. But I've got to imagine there they know enough. And, you know, Colleen Copsey at OpenAI is telling them if they don't know over there already to really kind of scale a channel play, which is what you need to do.

[00:22:30] You're going to have to think beyond your own little in-house army of FDEs. It's just difficult to scale that, even just, you know, in mid-market. And if you start looking beyond mid-market and really kind of getting into the S&SMB, you're going to need partners. I think you're right. Now, I think this is the place that we're going to dive into our next topic. But before we do, I want to roll in this message from our sponsors.

[00:22:59] This episode is supported by Halo. There's a moment many MSPs eventually reach. The PSA they started with worked well early on. But as the business grows, workflows get harder to manage. Automation becomes complicated. And the systems start shaping how the company operates. Halo PSA is designed for service providers who want more control over how their operations run. From ticketing and service delivery to billing and workflow automation.

[00:23:26] That's one reason Halo PSA often comes up when MSPs start evaluating their next PSA platform. You can learn more at usehalo.com. One of the hardest problems in managed services isn't technology. It's delivering projects predictably and profitably. Every MSP has lived this moment. You estimate a project at 40 hours, and it ends up taking 90.

[00:23:51] Not because your team isn't capable, but because projects have dependencies, shared engineers, shifting priorities, and timelines that change constantly. That's where Movala comes in. Movala uses automation and AI-driven scheduling to build accurate project timelines and continuously adjust them as conditions change. That means you know with certainty when a project will actually finish, when engineers will become available, and when you can safely take on new work.

[00:24:19] For MSPs trying to run a more mature, predictable operation, kind of visibility is a big deal. If you want to deliver projects without the constant overruns, visit Movala.com slash MSP Radio. That's M-O-V-I-L-A dot com slash MSP Radio to learn more.

[00:24:39] So if I'm thinking about the ability for the larger players to come down, and I'm thinking about the ones that are coming up as they're moving up, you wrote a piece in March that I just keep lingering on. You wrote a piece where you talked about the strange and dangerously huge gap between what businesses want for MSPs around governance and what MSPs are actually doing on it.

[00:25:03] And if I look at what TechAisle asked their channel partners to name their top 2026 priorities, you know, they actually highlighted that developing governance and compliance services came in 11, right? Behind adopting AI-driven intent-based marketing. But on the demand side, 90% of end users worry about their data being used by AI tools without consent, and 80% of workers use unapproved AI tools on the job.

[00:25:30] You know, I'm thinking about this gap that you talk about. And if we identify, we've just talked about the fact that in mid-market, we've got some mature MSPs that are going to lean into that, and who are doing co-managed, and we've got the big players themselves investing. But as the smaller partners are starting to think about it, this gap really feels like there's going to be a piece there.

[00:25:54] Like, what I want to ask you is, you know, when you think about that gap, do you think it's about that the MSPs are not believing the data, or they don't know how to deliver against it? Like, we talked about the opportunity earlier. How are you framing it? Yeah, I think it's more, it's closer to say that they don't really know how to deliver.

[00:26:16] I mean, I have spoken to MSPs who are very cognizant of and good at governance, and they will tell me that the peers they speak with often don't seem to be all that concerned about the issue. And in fact, the inspiration for that piece from March that you're referring to goes back to I was invited.

[00:26:42] So in addition to doing Channel Hall, I'm chief analyst at a company called Channel Master, and we work with vendors and a vendor was doing a focus group with MSPs about this AI governance issue. And we recruited some MSPs to participate in the focus group. These were really smart people, people I know, very successful MSPs.

[00:27:06] And I was struck by the fact how little urgency I detected in this focus group around that issue. I was kind of anticipating that people were going to say, yeah, this, you know, I've got to figure this out somehow, and I'm having trouble doing it on my own. And are there tools out there that I can use as their training that I can get, you know, I wish somebody would help me. It really didn't feel like that was a top of mind concern for for MSPs.

[00:27:33] And so to some extent, I think it's concern about the ability to deliver. And this goes back to the thing I was talking about before that there's almost this fear factor around getting involved in governance and potentially getting it wrong. Some of it, I think is just, you know, people are still trying to wrap their brains around the best ways for the MSPs themselves and for their customers to use AI.

[00:27:57] They haven't really gotten to that sort of road mapping stage where, okay, I've got a strategy now. I think I know how I'm going to go to market. And let's kind of play out what I'm going to have to do to bring that to life. And a piece of that is think through the governance and security idea. So I think it's a combination of issues. Some of it is just for reasons I cannot explain to you.

[00:28:22] People haven't really kind of caught on to how big an opportunity and a risk factor this is. And some of it is just people being a little intimidated by the issue and trying to figure out how to how to deal with it. I think we've identified that they're almost sleepwalking towards something that's going to be a problem. But I want to link that to something you wrote in May, because I was really taken by you had a piece where you were calling out for the for the need for service desk automation benchmarks.

[00:28:48] And I wonder I wonder if MSPs are spending more of their time thinking about internal automation as the use of some of the way that they're going to implement these technologies. But you rightfully call out that there's kind of no objective basis here. Like, I feel like this is linked to the governance problem, too, because nobody has a good idea what good governance is. We also don't seem to have any good idea what automation is. Help me get a little bit of your thinking when you are highlighting this service desk automation gap.

[00:29:18] Well, the benchmark thing in particular came to me because in my work at Channelholic, I am regularly speaking to specifically a lot of service desk automation companies, but also all sorts of other automation for internal MSP workflow vendors. Lots and lots of startups out there right now. And inevitably, there will come a point in my conversation with one of these companies where I will say, you know, there are a lot of other people who are kind of doing what you're doing.

[00:29:48] It's not exactly the same thing, but there are a lot of people in this market. What sets you apart? What kind of makes you better? And more often than not, the answer is our AI is better. And I'm thinking it might be you might be right. How do I know and how does an MSP possibly know? I was doing an interview for the podcast I co-host yesterday, and the person we were interviewing is an executive at one of these startups.

[00:30:14] And he was kind of saying, you know, if you're an MSP right now and you haven't gotten started on automating your processes with AI, a good thing to do is sort of set up a lab in house and start installing these things and testing them and comparing them to one another.

[00:30:27] It just feels like figuring out which of these many tools in these various categories an MSP should invest in would be easier if there was some kind of objective benchmark for them out there that shows here's how they perform against the same set of challenges one against the other. And as I noted in that piece, Dave, I am well aware of all the issues with benchmarks. Benchmarks are imperfect.

[00:30:55] You know, they create perverse incentives and people sort of, you know, game the system and write to the test. And so benchmarks aren't perfect, but there are a lot of them like in the LLM world and adjacent to that for a reason. They give people something to look at that provides some basis beyond their own intuition or, you know, whatever kind of lab testing they can do internally to figure these things out.

[00:31:25] You know, you're probably on to something and I haven't done enough. I'm literally thinking on the fly. There's something around some of the DORA rules, which are some of the measurement of software deployment velocity that have been used that might be useful. But what I want to actually ask you about is, is you and I have both been doing this for a long time and I want to get your take on this.

[00:31:43] If I remove the word AI from everything you just said about investing in automation and trying it out yourself, it sure sounds like exactly what the players were saying 10 and 20 years ago about the use of RMM technologies to automate your back end. Like just remove AI and they'll all talk about the ability to do that. Yet no one did the measurement of that either.

[00:32:08] Is this exactly the same, just sped up or or do you think there's something fundamentally different about what's going on now with these automation platforms? I guess the biggest, you know, you make a great point, Damon. In certain respect, it's not that different.

[00:32:25] It's just that there are a lot of companies making promises to MSPs around AI, specifically AI powered automation all at the same time with, you know, venture capital funding. And so there are just a lot of people coming out MSPs right now and saying we've got the answer. And I do think, you know, I forget the numbers.

[00:32:49] I think Omdia said that companies MSPs who are using one version or another of the service desk automation software are seeing something like 15 to 25% productivity improvements. Like there's some data out there that suggests this isn't just hype. It's not empty promises. This stuff works if you get the right tool and you deploy it right. And, you know, if a lot of things line up the way they need to, you really can make a measurable impact on the business.

[00:33:18] And so there are a lot of companies, you know, introducing products that promise to do that. And it's that I think that makes it harder than the previous automation story where a lot of the automation was coming from the companies you were already maybe buying RMM and PSA from. And it was really just kind of a question of can we make some of the scripting easier and more repeatable and so on.

[00:33:46] There was less of this maybe a smaller potential impact and less of an onslaught of these options coming at MSPs all at once. Well, isn't that a gap? Because I would almost expect like there's a number of companies that are established in the MSP and IT services space that in theory should be the ones helping guide through that process. But now we're talking about it. It's a bunch of new vendors, not the previous incumbents.

[00:34:15] Like do they have an answer that we should be looking for? Or have they responded well? Like, I mean, I know you covered Kaseya's Connect event. Like how are you thinking about some of those legacy players that have the established platform when you're considering against these new players? You know, it would be a little premature to call winners, but I look at what's going on now.

[00:34:40] And so what's happening right now is exactly what happened 10 years ago around SAS. Right. Right. And you, I remember talking about this with you easily 10 years ago and you were kind of saying these legacy RMN PSA vendors, they're totally focused on the device and the device is getting increasingly irrelevant compared to what's happening in the cloud. And they're not sort of pivoting to that.

[00:35:05] And so what happens along come all these companies like, you know, augment and better cloud and jump born in the cloud startups that are addressing this issue that the incumbents weren't addressing at the time. And we look at things right now. So at the time I did a lot of writing where I was saying, boy, this is an interesting duel, interesting race here. Who wins? You know, the incumbents have brand names and entrenched partner channels. And they're, you know, they're all owned by private equity.

[00:35:34] So they're swimming in money. And there are a lot of obvious advantages that they have, but they're sort of slow off the line. And you've got these very nimble born in the cloud competitors. Who's going to win there? And we kind of know who has won today. Right. I mean, you know, the incumbent companies either, you know, built or bought basically eventually their own SAS management kind of tools.

[00:36:02] And really kind of fended off this threat from the startups out there. And it looks like we're heading into a similar kind of situation. Again, I'm not predicting for sure that the Kaseyas and ConnectWises and so on of the world are going to ultimately be the winners here.

[00:36:21] But we are, you know, just within the last few weeks, Kaseya, you know, took a big step forward in terms of providing that kind of functionality internally through its own tool set and so on. And so, I don't know. I feel like I've seen this movie before, Dave. And so, you know, I have a sense for how it might end. Well, perhaps the sequel will be bigger with more explosions. I think Edward also, like, is thinking of the same thing.

[00:36:48] I'm going to highlight what he commented on here because I think his one particular statement is really important. He suspected that the AI providers will succeed when they enable the channel or cybersecurity vendors not replace them. That actually kind of aligns with the idea of some of the new – those startups you were talking about entering the space and enabling some of the existing players. I think we could talk about this all day long.

[00:37:12] And that is a perfect place that I know you and I will continue to be watching and we're going to look for the audience to weigh in on. Rich, if people are interested in tracking what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do so? Well, I would encourage them to go visit Channelholic at www.channelholic.news. That's where all my writing goes. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Channelholic has its own LinkedIn identity. Rich Freeman has a LinkedIn identity there. I'm posting pretty regularly in both places.

[00:37:41] That's the best place to check out my work. Well, Rich, always fun to have you on. Really appreciate you spending some time riffing and talking on these topics with me today. My pleasure, Dave, and truly I'll do it anytime. Well, I'll have you back soon, I promise. And thanks to our sponsors for making the Business of Tech Lounge possible. ABC Solutions, if you're running an MSP and struggling to get that clean financial visibility, that's profitability by client or service line performance or just accurate books.

[00:38:08] They focus specifically on accounting for managed service providers and IT firms. They're at abcsolvesit.coms. And thanks to Rhythms, if connectivity reliability is still a constraint, especially in edge environments or for distributed teams, they deliver 5G solutions designed for MSP use cases where uptime and coverage actually matter. More on them at RYTHMZ.com. If you're watching the recording and you got a question or a take,

[00:38:37] either send it in at question at MSPradio.com or put it in the comments below. And if you want to go deeper on the business of running an MSP, not just the tech, but the pricing, the positioning, the business model, that's what Business of Tech Plus is for. And visit businessof.tech slash plus. Thanks to Rich Freeman for joining me. And I will talk to you next time.

[00:39:20] Produced by Picture This Video. Part of the MSP Radio Network.