MSSP Pricing Trends: Key Takeaways from the Latest Benchmark Report

[00:00:12] With the new year, it seems like there are a lot of CEOs changing jobs or leaving jobs. Is there something in the water? Or what about all those M&A-focused events? They seem to be springing up everywhere all of a sudden. Or what do we want to know about the latest in MSSP pricing? Jessica Davis and Howard Cohen join me for what promises to be a very lively discussion. Welcome to the Business of Tech Lounge, the live version of the Business of Tech Podcast.

[00:00:41] It's Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, and I'm your host Dave Sobel. I'll be taking questions and comments throughout the show, so make sure to put them in chat. If you've got a question, we will happily respond to it in real time. Now I want to thank our sponsor, Sales Builder, who's our Patreon sponsor whose support makes this show possible. Focus on your IT sales workflow with the power of automation and visit them at salesbuilder.com.

[00:01:08] That's B-U-I-L-D-R.com. And a reminder, I am watching the chat. We'll take those questions. Well, Jessica Davis is a seasoned technology journalist with over two decades of experience, having just left Cyber Risk Alliance and its properties, Channel E2E and MSSP Alert. She specializes in covering managed services, cloud computing, and IT channel trends. And she's currently between roles and taking time from her mini sabbatical to mix it up on this show.

[00:01:38] Welcome back to the show, Jessica. Thanks so much for having me, Dave. It's breaking up my mini sabbatical. I'll be starting my new job and telling you what it is on January 27th. Oh, I see everybody. You're hearing that there's a date first here. So she's up for something. But you get to mix it up with us today. Now, Howard Cohen is a veteran technology industry writer and speaker with more than 30 years of experience.

[00:02:02] And as a senior resultant at the Partners Results Group, he focuses on helping technology vendors and their partners achieve better results through improved communication and collaboration. Howard, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Dave. It's good to be back. And I just want to, you know, I'm glad you reminded me. I need to update my profile. This year is 45 years that I've been in the channel.

[00:02:27] Oh, look at that. Well, congratulations on the end of this month is actually 16 years since I left the channel and started writing for and about. Look at that. So seasoned is the right way to describe this, right? Pepperd, human, yeah, the whole bit. All the bit. Well, I want to start right at the headline. And Jessica, you right before, you know, as sort of last things you were working on when you were at MSSP Alert, you published the MSSP benchmark pricing report.

[00:02:54] I kind of need me to dive in and hear a little bit of what your big takeaways from this were and some of the headlines. So first of all, just to start out, I was really excited to put this report together. You know, I talked to a number of MSSP's in the space to talk to them about, you know, how would you set up a survey to find out about pricing? And the reason why I wanted to do it was because there's so much data out there for MSSP's.

[00:03:21] But when it comes to MSSP's, it's kind of the Wild West still and everybody's blazing their own trails. And so we thought it would be cool to be able to, if we could put together a survey and a report that would give like a novel look, a first look at how some of the pricing for MSSP's breaks down, both the stack pricing and individual add-on services.

[00:03:48] And we published the report, CRA published the report in December. And you can find the report at msspalert.com. This is going to be long. msspalert.com slash whitepaper slash mssp-alert-2024-pricing-benchmark. Sorry for the long URL. For everyone, I'll put that in the show notes and description. Oh, that would be perfect. Thank you, Dave.

[00:04:19] But here's some of the interesting things. Like, first of all, a big opportunity out there for MSSP's and MSSP's both is offering vCISO services. Only 45% of MSSP's offer that now and 25% of MSSP's offer that now.

[00:04:38] But the average retainer for MSSP's for vCISO services is $2,697 a month. And the range for retainers is $100 to $7,500 a month. The average hours included in that retainer price is $14,000 a month. With a range of two hours to 40 hours.

[00:05:02] And the average per hour price after the retainer is used is $244 per hour. So there's lots of great data in this report like that. We looked at add-on services like vulnerability assessment, incident response, security awareness training. And the idea was to give people an idea of what the average price in the market was and what the range of prices were.

[00:05:32] So you could see sort of where your pricing fit in with that and see if there were other opportunities there for you. So I highly recommend everyone go in and download that report. You know, I worked with a bunch of MSSP's to put together the survey. And while it doesn't hit everybody, there were a lot of big MSSP's that maybe, you know, had more consulting services.

[00:06:01] And so they didn't fit into the exact buckets we had. But this is a great first attempt at breaking down some of the pricing and the opportunities for MSSP's and MSSP's out there, too. Gotcha. Now, Howard, I'm going to let you ask a question here in a moment. But I got to dive in with one piece of data, Jessica, that I had to kind of understand the framing a little bit.

[00:06:22] Because as I dug through the report, what was really interesting to me is 100% of the MSSP's list offering security operations center services, right? And only 57% offer backup and disaster recovery services. Yeah. Okay. Then I actually flipped over and I looked on the MSP side of this and found only 81% of MSPs offer backup. And I literally wanted to say only 81% because I have to laugh and go, that should be 100%. I don't understand why.

[00:06:52] And so I looked at this and I said, there almost felt like this space in the middle that they were both a little bit shying away from. And I look at it and say, I felt like this is a foundational piece of if you're a security service provider, disaster recovery felt like it's something. Now, help me understand the framing maybe of the definitions of MSSP versus MSP in the report that might do this. Or is there something else in your mind going on here? Yeah.

[00:07:21] And we didn't give them a lot of guidance in framing themselves as MSPs versus MSSPs. We asked them what they were. MSPs know what they are and MSSPs know what they are. And there's some conjecture in the industry about what exactly is an MSSP, right? Some people say you have to have a security operations center, a SOC, to be considered an MSSP.

[00:07:49] That's not exactly the definition that MSSP alert has gone with for its MSSP 250 report or this one. But like you said, you can see that many MSSPs identified themselves that way. And I forget the second part of your question there, Dave. Well, it was essentially this framing of backup services. I started laughing and said it felt like I kind of laughed at it. In my mind, I would have thought both sides said 100%, right?

[00:08:18] I know. But MSSPs really in the MSSP 250 report as well, we saw the same trend. They don't offer backup and disaster recovery services so much. MSSPs don't. MSPs do. That's a big core service for MSPs. Like we said, not so much for MSSPs. And I didn't see that same breakdown in any other service other than that. I thought it was super interesting.

[00:08:51] And, yeah, I think the MSSPs are, you know, focused on the MDR, the advanced cybersecurity, but not so much the BDR. Gotcha. Now, Howard, I'm going to bring you on here. I'm confident you've got a couple of thoughts on what's going on here in the MSSP versus MSP world. Sure.

[00:09:14] First and foremost, the first thing I wanted to mention is that I think there's one service that showed up way down the list that next year in this time will probably be near or at the top of the list. It's application security. I was surprised to see it so low.

[00:09:35] But with the introduction of agentic AI and with the, you know, just the meteoric rise that we're seeing with AI, this is the year that I think people get into practical applications. And once you have practical applications involving AI, you have autonomic software, which is scary. So you're going to need somebody monitoring that and making sure that it's performing the way it's supposed to. I expect to see a lot more activity there.

[00:10:05] I think your issue about the backup and disaster recovery, there may be some room for interpretation there between the MSPs and the MSSPs. One of the things that I've seen are a lot of MSPs partnering with MSSPs to pick up the security side of the offerings.

[00:10:26] So if they're doing a project, if they're doing a vertical project or if they're doing an ERP project or something that's not, you know, specifically devoted to disaster recovery, business continuity and security, they're partnering with an MSSP to do all of that.

[00:10:47] So you may have some of them saying, no, we don't do, we don't do this, we don't do this, we don't do this, because in their minds, they're only talking about the services they themselves provide. I think that partnering, you know, if Vince Menzion is successful, everybody will get the idea that partnering is still alive and well and maybe better than ever. And so I think that's going to change the shape of who's doing what.

[00:11:14] And then you'll see that reflected in the next version of this report. That's such a great point, Howard, because you reminded me, and I'm thinking back to going to that Canalys North America forum earlier this year. And one of the things that the analyst mentioned was that many channel deals include seven different partners.

[00:11:43] And so, yeah, and partners are partnering with each other for a lot of these things. So that makes total sense. Yeah, I think that it's because, you know, if you think back in the history, go back like 15 years ago, Microsoft came out and said, if you want to have a gold certification, you have to have four unique people take the tests. That meant that you couldn't have the same four people take all the tests. Right.

[00:12:12] I worked at that time in a company that had 17 people and we held all the competencies. That's ridiculous. Today, you'd have to have over 140 people to do something like that. And I think that that has migrated out from Microsoft making that very, I think, very intelligent move to get everybody to declare what you're good at. And today's partners are declaring what they're good at. They're focusing on what they're good at.

[00:12:42] And they need to turn to partners to do all of the rest. The only other issue I would bring up about MSSPs, especially MSSPs, is that I think that there are two flavors. There is the flavor that looks at, well, they look at ConnectWise, they look at Kaseya, certainly. They look at Lion Guard and they look at a variety of other players and they decide whose stack they like best.

[00:13:11] And they sign up for that stack. And then they use that stack to provide their services. The challenge they eventually face is that it's really not much difference between them and everybody else who chose that stack. So they're not really differentiating themselves in any way. On the flip side, you've got guys who are building their own stack. And while that's great, I've read recently people who think that they should be creating their own tools and platforms.

[00:13:39] And I'm sorry if that's a lot to ask of one organization. So I think that the MSSPs who will emerge as the most successful are the ones who will focus on figuring out how do you differentiate yourself? What is it that you do that's different so you don't look like everybody else who's using the same platform?

[00:14:01] Well, let's also highlight that in security, you're solving a people and process problem is what security ultimately is. It's a people and process problem. You use technology and build a stack to address that. But if you're starting with the technology stack, you're actually solving the problem in the wrong way. It's a risk management problem in people and process.

[00:14:24] And so the people that come and say, hey, I've got this incredible stack of technology, thus I'm a security provider, are missing the boat. They're just not right. I have had a lot of people tell me that AI has a solution for that human problem. I mean, currently AI is a solution to every problem. So let's highlight that as well. So I think that this is going to be an interesting, Jessica, this is a great resource.

[00:14:53] And I think people are going to want to spend some time digging into it. I want to keep us moving a little bit here because we have a couple of juicy topics today. And you guys both were intrigued by what I'm going to call the CEO shuffle. Because, you know, with the new year has brought us several new rollovers in CEO positions. Of course, Fred Vecola is out at Kaseya. I joined Marvin B on his podcast to do 25 minutes discussing that. We, of course, have a new CEO over at ConnectWise.

[00:15:22] Pia just did a leadership change, you know, for the beginning of the year. There's an open CEO slot over at the Global Technology Industry Association. The newly rebranded CompTIA community is now the GTIA. There's a lot going on at the CEO level. I thought I would throw it to this brain trust to get your sense of like, hey, why is this all happening now? And do we think there's more in the pipeline right now?

[00:15:51] Well, first and foremost, I want somebody to tell me whether we now pronounce it GTIA or GTIA. I'm going with GTIA because that made sense. And until somebody else tells me otherwise. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. If you look at the people who are currently in leadership now, they have a chief operating officer. They have a chief communities officer. And I think that the shape of that may indeed change going ahead.

[00:16:21] They also have a chairman of the board of directors. But traditionally, when it was all one organization, there were basically two heads. There was the board and then there was a director of the board of directors. And there was the company that had been hired to run the operation. And they had a CEO, Todd Thibodeau.

[00:16:45] I did a survey a few years ago asking people if they knew who the chairman of the board of directors of CompTIA was. And literally nobody. And I spoke to, I don't know, several dozen people. Nobody knew. It was MJ Shore at the time, but nobody knew. And it struck me that this is an industry association where everybody knows who the hired help is, but they don't know who the people really running the direction of the show is.

[00:17:15] Now, of course, that's been split in half. And I look forward to seeing. I mean, think about it. Just think about it. You know, you have an association to support all of the IT service providers in the channel. And you never, ever have to raise funds again. You have an endowment that will keep you operating forever. I mean, that's a dream.

[00:17:41] So it'll be interesting to see how they go about finding who they want to tap. Howard, I'm with you 100%. That's an incredible open role right now. And I want to, for listeners that don't have an understanding of corporate governance, I actually think that the board of directors putting someone into place to help with day-to-day operations is a reasonably straightforward approach to this.

[00:18:06] So, for example, if you, you know, and we're seeing the same thing, by the way, over at Kaseya right now. So Kevin Thompson has stepped in for day-to-day operations to run that organization while they do a CEO search. So the idea of someone stepping in there is, and by the way, we've been told that MJ is watching and it's G-T-I-A is apparently the saying for that. He's spelled it all out for us. So apparently that's the way that we're supposed to say it.

[00:18:35] So, Howard, I would say, like, I'm not going to read too much. Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into the operational side of this because typically, and when I think about this from a governance perspective, a board of directors for an organization has essentially one major role, and that is the hiring and firing of the CEO. And then in between that, their other portion of their organization is an advisory board to that CEO.

[00:19:01] And I would expect, you know, this, I would expect, like, I actually think the parallels in what we might see in Kaseya and what we might see in here in the G-T-I-A would be the fact that both of them are in kind of a little bit of a holding pattern while a leader would then step in who I would have some expectation of bringing in some leadership there. Jessica, I'm going to ask you, like, we're watching a little bit of the intricacies of what's going on at the CEO level here.

[00:19:28] What are you observing in all these open spots? Well, I got to say I found it interesting, Fred Vecola. I'm fascinated by Fred Vecola's move particularly because it was, you know, abrupt, as people are saying.

[00:19:47] I think CJ Fairchild at CRN wrote a really good article interviewing the CEO of the 20 MSP, who's a friend of Vecola's, and he was surprised by Vecola's move. And they're a big customer of Kaseya as well.

[00:20:04] So, you know, if a big customer of Kaseya is surprised by this and this guy's a good friend of Vecola's, well, you know, what's going on there behind the scenes that made Fred step aside from the top job? And it makes me wonder if there's another shoe coming to drop, if there's maybe a disagreement he had with the board or maybe there's a merger coming or an acquisition coming. I don't know. Just speculation here.

[00:20:33] But on the GTIA job, I would send it back to you, Dave. And I wonder, you know, I mean, it seems to me like the top job, the top person at that organization needs to have a real sense of community and a real charismatic personality. And someone who really has a vision for that organization.

[00:21:01] I mean, where do you think that that new leader should take the organization, Dave? Well, it's a good question, right? So if I'm thinking about this from a strategy perspective, like you actually have kind of a dual opportunity there at GTIA. Like the first is, as Howard rolled out, you actually now have an operational fund that is in perpetuity.

[00:21:24] This is super unique for the association space because most of the time associations are having to do fundraising on a regular basis. So you actually want to lean in. One of the things that that board of directors at GTIA has leaned into is the idea of being a much more forward-looking philanthropic organization. I think that's part of the headline is that's such a unique opportunity that that leader should step in and say, you know,

[00:21:49] I'm going to take this and we're going to be the leading giver of driving this industry to grow through giving. And I think you actually combine that with a business acumen of a measuring ROI with like a McKenzie Bezos aggressive giving to people that can execute style. And if you can combine the two, you could drive that giving really forward.

[00:22:12] And I think the second part of that would be a, you know, community of communities approach because there's lots of spaces now. Like if we think about the history of where the former CompTIA community came from, I get in the DeLorean, I go back to when I was a baby MSP, right? There weren't a lot of places to be. The new GTIA actually has listed in their press release 2,000 members. I think that number ought to be 20,000, right?

[00:22:40] And I think it ought to be by connecting to the other communities and being a unique resource within them, both of like being a place that you can have that mutual conversation and also leaning into the best and brightest idea generation should happen there. You know, for example, if I was, you know, if I was putting together the programming, I'd emulate more like what code did,

[00:23:05] Kara Swisher's code where you put the best brains on stage to debate things out and you make sure that that's the space. And per their mantra, you know, a vendor neutral, 100% open space will leverage that. That means you should have really robust debate of ideas in a safe zone where you can do that, where you're not wearing your sort of sales hat. You're actually debating ideas.

[00:23:32] And I think you want to pull in outside people to do that really aggressively. And I think like if you combine those two things, you become the unique space where you've got this ability to drive the industry through giving and also the ability to drive the industry through thought leadership. I mean, I think that's what makes this really interesting. And I think that that's the, you know, if I'm lingering there.

[00:23:55] Howard, I'm going to throw to you because I know you've got a bit of a thought on professionalism in this space that's required there. Yeah, just a couple of things. First of all, as far as the CEO rollovers go, I smell IPO in the air in at least one of those organizations. And I suspect that Toma Bravo is looking to refinance ConnectWise to prepare for the next wave of growth.

[00:24:24] That may be operating in several of these rollovers. And I think, you know, when you talk about the 20, this is going to be the year of rollovers and roll ups. I know so many people whose MSPs have been very successful, some of whom have decided to sell now that they can. Others who have decided to go on a tear, buying up every MSP they can find worldwide.

[00:24:50] So I think you're going to see a couple of new global sized organizations that far surpass the scope of the 20, which has done a wonderful job of rolling up. And there are many others. So I think that that's what you're going to see there. As far as the idea, I mean, first of all, the idea that CompTIA only has 2,000 members frightens me.

[00:25:13] You know, I've been deeply involved over the years with IAMCP, which is now in its 30th year of existence and has somewhere around 400 or 500 members. They never hired anybody to do anything, whereas CompTIA made the very intelligent move of hiring people to do everything. And they were able to run a much more successful operation that way.

[00:25:37] I think going ahead, getting them to all weave together and work together. Maybe I'm a skeptic. Maybe I'm cynical. But I know that I went on a mission to try to get all of the heads of the women in technology groups to start to talk to each other. And basically saying, listen, you all have wonderful organizations. Your members love you because you're providing remarkable services to them.

[00:26:06] If you were all to galvanize and really pull it together, you would be speaking with a louder voice than anybody else in the channel. And despite that logical idea, it just never even came close to happening. And I believe that even though there's no testosterone involved, it was a matter of power.

[00:26:29] That each of them was a leader who wanted to maintain their power profile in their organization and couldn't imagine themselves sharing the power with other leaders who are similarly powerful. I hate to say that because I love most of these people. But I think that there's some dynamics in place that make that very hard to do. All right.

[00:26:52] Well, at the same time, I could also equip the famous cartoon about standards and everyone just gets together and then create one standard to rule them all. Then you do. But I want to have a little fun with the IPO statement because I'm going to be contrarian here and say, and then I'm going to let Jessica be the tiebreaker because, Howard, I don't think this is an IPO at all. First off, I would agree 100%. I think there's some financial stuff going on with these organizations. Both of them are looking at the way like Tom Abravo is involved in an investor here.

[00:27:22] I think an insight over on the Kaseya side, I think they're going to be looking at recapitalization. But I don't think anybody's going IPO. And I will boldly say that. And if I'm wrong at the end of the year, come back and flog me. This is an IPO. And here's why. Because the IPO market isn't that great as a larger bit. And then the second part of that is that MSPs, managed services providers, has a failed record.

[00:27:50] Both Datto and Enable going out have not been winners. The market has not responded by saying, hey, this is a great market for IPOs for managed services providers. I don't think they want to go out there. Jessica, I'll let you be our tiebreaker on opinions. Yeah, yeah. So I was fascinated to hear your reasoning behind that because I watched your show, your other show, Dave. And I wanted to find out what your thinking was around the non-IPO statement.

[00:28:21] I'm of the mind that, I mean, Kaseya said in its press release that they're eyeing an IPO, the press release about Fred stepping up, that they're eyeing an IPO. I wonder who got to check off the approval of that press release. Was it Fred? Was it the board? I don't know. And I wonder if that's the disagreement that Fred possibly has with the board. I don't know. Total speculation there.

[00:28:52] I would not disagree that the IPO market has not been kind to these MSP platform companies. And I would say that that might be poised to change in the future, but will it this year? I'm closer to Dave's state of mind on that than Howard's, I would say. All right. So I'm going to keep this one in mind.

[00:29:18] And then for accountability perspective, we will recircle at the end of the year and see how we did. Because it's the idea of challenge. The idea is not to be right. It's to throw out interesting ideas. I'm going to use this as a pivot to sort of our last bit that I wanted to get your thoughts on. And Jessica, you highlighted this as we were kind of preparing this idea that we've now seen a lot of M&A focused events pop up in the channel. I think that's related to what Howard's talking about in terms of the roll-up companies.

[00:29:46] I think that this is part of the overall trend. Jess, I'm going to start with you on this one. Why do you think all this M&A event stuff has started popping up? Well, you know, the M&A market for MSPs went crazy, you know, in 2021, 2022. And then it slowed down a bit. And, you know, interest rates went up. A lot of things changed.

[00:30:14] The easy to the really high. What I'm told by investment bankers is the high quality MSPs were acquired during that time. And at the same time, the appetite by private equity firms for MSPs to acquire MSPs ramped up a lot.

[00:30:39] So there's this disconnect between the pipeline of MSPs that that are available for purchase that are considered quality MSPs and the demand by private equity companies and other MSPs to buy this this finite number of MS quality MSPs that are out there.

[00:31:00] So I think that this pipeline problem that there's not enough MSPs to buy right now that are of a certain size and a certain quality is why these M&A events are popping up. These investment banking companies, these private equity firms like Evergreen, the 20, they're creating their own events to create the pipeline and to build it up.

[00:31:32] Again, you can see Evergreen, the private equity backed gigantic company. I think they have 90 MSPs that they've rolled up. They've moved geographically and they're doing more deals now in Australia and in the UK. And they just started doing those in the last couple of years. So that's what I think is going on.

[00:31:54] The pipeline is challenged and organizations are trying to do what they can to build the pipeline. Howard, I'm going to throw it to you on this one. Do you have a sense of what the interest here in M&A events is being driven by? Hey, I have encountered a large number of MSPs who look, what choices do they have?

[00:32:22] They can develop it into more and more of a lifestyle business. They can give it to their children, you know, whatever. But most of them want to sell it. And the problem is they've been spooked by PE firms coming in and buying MSPs. When a PE firm comes in and buys you, generally most of your people go bye-bye. And none of these people, I mean, remember these companies, these MSP companies are families. They've worked together for a long, long time.

[00:32:52] And so they want to make sure that everybody is protected if they can. So they're somewhat allergic to P&E coming in. But what's the alternative? And I think that organizations like the 20, and I've seen several others come out, are basically going out there and saying, don't sell to a PE. We'll keep your people in place. We'll keep your people whole. Sell to us.

[00:33:14] And what they need to do now is, because they can't find them by going out to them, they're trying to bring them in to see if they can't find them that way. I'm not sure how successful they'll be. But if they're not successful, I'm not sure how the whole process, how long the whole process will last. I'll give you another theory then for listeners to consider here, because I think there's one other potential reason for this.

[00:33:38] If you listen to my interviews with Abe Garver on the show, Abe's talked about the fact that there is actually something of a dearth of the mid-sized MSP. Lots of big ones, lots of small ones. Not enough of the medium-sized ones, that 3 million EBITDA magic number that a lot of the PE investors are looking for. And my working theory is that these investors have realized that they're going to actually have to start building the people that they want to buy.

[00:34:04] And what they're doing is they're leaning into some education in order to get there. And that, I think, is some of the reason why we're seeing these events. Evergreen is talking about their own event. We've seen the stuff coming out of IT Nation around their M&A stuff. I think what this is is those buyers are saying, I need to put my money where my mouth is. And if you want to go really deep on private equity, I want to throw an interview with Brendan Below that I did, who's written a book on private equity investors.

[00:34:33] If you're interested in learning more about that, I'll throw all of these links into the show notes for people to do that. I want to also do, MJ was kind enough to clarify his 2,000 number from the press release that the GTIA defines 2,000 members as companies, not individuals.

[00:34:51] I'll highlight, though, that I think that that number still translates because if we're talking about sizes of communities, for example, the IT Nation, ConnectWise pitches 25,000 customers, representing more than 100,000, 150,000, I think, employees. Like, I think we need to make sure that we're talking apples to apples in terms of companies to companies.

[00:35:13] But I also think, Howard, I think that still talks about the fact that if we're still only talking 2,000 companies, that number should be a lot higher for that organization based on the size and score of it. But I think it's important, MJ, thank you for clarifying that because we want to make sure that we're not mixing and matching people versus companies here. So I'm going to throw a last sort of thought from each of you. You know, we're kind of in the new year, and I like asking this.

[00:35:40] What's the big thing that you're watching for to happen, say, in the first half of this year? I'll throw it to you, Howard. Wow. I'm going to show my own favorite wood in response for you there, Dave. You mentioned my issue about professionalism. And I guess that when I saw the announcement of GTIA being the new name of the organization, I was to some extent disappointed. First of all, because the word industry is in there.

[00:36:10] And if you start to remove the vendors and make it a vendor agnostic organization, which is always supposed to have been, it's not about an industry. I was told that, you know, well, actually in several of the articles explaining the split, they talked about what would be left would be the trade organization, the trade association. And again, I just don't think it's about trade.

[00:36:37] I think that at this juncture, what's left from CompTIA, once you take away the training business, is an organization that could very well be supporting the transition of our channel from an industry or trade to a profession. And I've been saying for a long time now, I say it all the time in the evolving MSP.

[00:37:03] I think the biggest evolution is going to be that we will become or our engineers will become the equivalent of a lawyer or an accountant or an architect or a doctor. They will be the professional people who assist businesses in growing and operating their businesses. And to do that, yeah, they need accreditation. They need education. They need licensing. They need all kinds of things. I see organizations out there.

[00:37:31] I've been working with the National Society of IT Service Providers. It's a big focus for them. I am hoping, and since you're listening, NJ, raising my hand to help any way I can, I am hoping that the new GTIA will be focused on elevating the channel to this next level of professionalism. Jessica, what's the big thing you're keeping an eye on, say, first half of this year?

[00:37:56] I mean, it seems sort of obvious, but I think AI is, you know, we've all been talking about it for a while, but it's coming to an MSP near you. I mean, MSPs are looking at customer use cases. They're experimenting on how to implement the technology as projects in customer sites and also the data management and the data governance or opportunities for recurring revenues.

[00:38:25] And there's just a ton of technologies that MSPs can use internally, too. So I think it's going to be an exciting time for AI in managed services. I would agree 100% with that. And I will highlight, for those that are watching live, on today's show for January 15th, I've got some new updates from CISA, who've actually put together an AI framework that is completely leverageable in this space.

[00:38:54] For those listening on the recording, you'll want to grab the January 15th regular version of the show. Thank you both for being here. This has been super fun, and I look forward to mixing it up with you on more panels this coming year. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Dave. Thank you, Dave. Now, I want to highlight an interview that is already available for my Patreons. Holly Rolo joined me to explore the critical role midsize and small companies play in national security and those challenges they face in adopting generative AI.

[00:39:22] We talked about how modernizing technology can enhance cybersecurity and drive business growth in the current landscape. Here's a preview of that interview. Fundamentals are still not addressed. So, for instance, I'll get a call from a CEO and they'll say, oh, we're not seeing the growth that we want. We're not seeing kind of our uptick as much as we thought we would this year. Or something that was working before isn't working now.

[00:39:51] So, we're going to kind of do a digital first type of engagement with our customer base. And that's going to make it better and remove friction. And then I ask them, well, what is your business strategy? And they say growth. And you and I know growth isn't a strategy, right? It's an outcome. And this actually is amazing how many times people will answer that way, which is the reason why I wrote the book, Power of Search.

[00:40:17] Because I wanted to kind of make an argument for why strategy is so important. And so, you know, until that is addressed, until they really understand, you know, are you really an innovator or are you a turnaround company? Are you distressed? Should you be focusing on your core customer base? Should you be in heavy growth mode? Should you be in expansion mode? Sometimes companies will think they're competing as a market leader because they're competing with market leaders.

[00:40:44] And they'll be doing all kinds of activities, but they're not actually doing the right set of strategies in the context of what their business needs. I love that line. Growth isn't a strategy. It's an outcome. Now, my Patreon supporters already have this. If you want to listen now, it'll drop on the weekend on YouTube and the podcast feed. If you're interested, I really do encourage you to listen. It was a great conversation. Visit patreon.com slash MSB radio to get access right now.

[00:41:11] I want to thank Sales Builder, our Patreon sponsor, whose support makes this show possible. Focus on your IT sales workflow with the power of automation and visit them at salesbuilder.com. That's B-U-I-L-D-R dot com. And vendors, you too can get your name mentioned on the live show. It's a simple monthly subscription. Visit patreon.com slash MSB radio for more. And listeners, here's the best ways to support the show.

[00:41:38] Like, share, and follow on your favorite platforms. If you want to support directly on Patreon, use our give what you want model. You set what you think the content is worth and you get access to videos early. If you have a question and are listening to the recording, send it in at question at MSB radio.com. Thanks for joining me for the Business of Tech Lounge. And I will see you next time.