Ultimate Guide to Partnering® 271 – Unstoppable MSPs: AI, Marketplaces & Partnerships in the Age of Tectonic Shifts
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Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.
Join industry leaders Vince Menzione, Scott Sacket, Per Werngren, and Nabil Aitonumeziane as they discuss the evolution of MSPs, the critical role of AI readiness, the power of strategic partnerships within the Microsoft ecosystem, and the growing importance of co-selling and digital marketplaces. Learn actionable strategies for profitability, navigating new buying behaviors, and becoming an “ultimate MSP” by focusing on outcomes, building trust, and embracing community.
Key Takeaways
- The MSP landscape is undergoing “tectonic shifts” driven by cloud adoption, AI integration, and evolving customer buying behaviors through marketplaces.
- Successful MSPs must evolve beyond the “break-fix” model to become strategic partners, focusing on business outcomes rather than just technology.
- AI presents significant opportunities for MSPs, but requires immediate adoption and internal training to avoid being left behind.
- Strategic partnerships, particularly within the Microsoft ecosystem, are crucial for MSP growth, emphasizing mutual value and trust.
- Standardizing offerings and specializing in specific technologies or solutions can significantly improve MSP profitability and success.
- Engaging with communities and peer groups like Ultimate Partner provides invaluable networking, learning, and collaboration opportunities for MSPs.
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:
MSP,Managed Services,AI,Artificial Intelligence,Microsoft ecosystem,cloud transformation,hyperscalers,marketplace,co-selling,partner strategy,Nabil Aitonumeziane,Scott Sacket,Per Werngren,Vince Menzione,AppPoint,FSI strategy,Ultimate Partner,channel growth,digital buying,data security,governance,copilot,agentic AI,recurring revenue,business model,profitability,trusted advisors,community building,IT business,technology evolution,strategic partnerships
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts,
[00:00:08] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models.
Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.
[00:00:42] Vince Menzione: Good morning. I’m Vince Manzione, the CEO of Ultimate partner, and the host of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering Podcast. And I’m thrilled to be back in the studio here in Boca Raton. We have a lot of stories about Boca Raton. It is really the seminal point in the start of this ecosystem we all care about.
It’s also where we host the Ultimate Eye to Partnering podcast where we host our events, and we’re gonna do our very first live stream here today. Uh, it’s designed for you to achieve incredible success as a partner. We’re working with hyperscalers like Microsoft. Our topic today is becoming the ultimate MSP.
This is a topic that we care deeply about as, as our guests do as well. And each of my guests that are here today, I am so privileged to have members of our community, friends, uh, people that I truly appreciate and admire who are here now, who feel the same and are so passionate on this subject. I wanna invite them each to say, introduce themselves and say a couple words about why they believe this MSP moment is so unique and why it’s so relevant to all of us today.
So s Scott, good to see you.
[00:01:49] Scott Sacket: Great to see you. So exciting to be here alive, right? Gotta be careful. So for those who have, I’ve not met yet. My name is Scott Sackett and I’m the senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AAV Point. And, um, I’ve been in the channel ecosystem now for over 25 years. I was a partner, of course, I’ve been at AAV point, leading channel now for many years, um, almost 20 years.
And, um, this moment’s incredible, right? Um, you know, cloud really democratized what, what partners could do. And how to build up, um, and, and support many customers, small and large. And, and today, MSPs really are, um, the linchpin to how we build and, and, uh, manage it. So it’s an incredible moment for them and, and it’s only getting, uh, more important as things change and grow and evolve.
So exciting times.
[00:02:36] Vince Menzione: I love the linchpin comment ’cause it really holds it all together. I love that. And p Wgre, another great friend of ours, p uh, please take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience or all of our friends that are watching
[00:02:47] Per Werngren: us today on the line. Yes, thank you, Ian. It is a privilege to be here.
So I’m the CEO of Idex. We do AI and Azure operations. And why do I love MSPs? Well, I’ve been doing subscriptions all my life, and recurring revenue is such a beautiful thing because you start small, you sell a little bit. You sell more and you don’t lose what you have sold. You just keep on building and it all piles up.
Beautiful business model.
[00:03:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it.
[00:03:19] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Right. Hi, great to see
[00:03:20] Vince Menzione: you, my friend.
[00:03:21] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Thanks for having me. I mean, it’s been, uh, amazing coming to Florida. To the Hot Florida. But, uh, I’m Nabil Ian. I’m the president of FSI strategy. We’re an MSP. Uh, we specialize in Microsoft. We’re a, uh, managed service provider, but, uh, we specialize a hundred percent in Microsoft, uh, technologies.
So thanks for having Well,
[00:03:41] Vince Menzione: and you are an MSP, right? Yes. We talk about this all the time and how you’ve evolved your company. You a case study. We are, but
[00:03:48] Nabil Aitonumeziane: we are not Your traditional MSP, which is. Managed service provider. We are more of the modernization solution partner ’cause we are trying to, uh, live in the AI era.
Yeah. World. So we had to change our name as well. How to help our customers, uh, move forward with this technology is moving very fast. So
[00:04:10] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna frame that and we’ll go right into, I’m gonna, I have, I’m gonna hit you with the first question, but you know, we talk about this tectonic shifts. That we’ve seen in our world, in our lives, and we’ve been talking about transformation and ultimate partner for many years.
It started back in my Microsoft days, 10 years leading the partner business for public sector and growing that organization during the clouds transformation. But we’ve been talking about a, a, the hyperscalers really at the center and really the, we talk about Boca, the fact that Bill Gates came down here in 1981 and signed an agreement with IBM really sparked this ecosystem.
There’s over a half a million just in the Microsoft ecosystem of partners. Probably well over a million if you put Google Cloud and AWS and, and you look at that center of the universe and we’ll talk about that center and how there are now seven seats at the table. But then, you know, we talked about the last couple years, AI really became a thing.
Chat, GBT started it all back in November, 2022. And now, you know, we’ve had this incredible transformation that we’re gonna talk about, why it’s so fundamental today. And why it’s even more important, and then also how marketplaces are so fundamental to success today that the buying behaviors have changed.
The millennials, the new buying persona, and they buy from, they’re very comfortable in marketplaces. We’re all more comfortable now hitting our phone three times and having a box show up at the end of the day, right? We’re all used to digital buying and it’s becoming the buy. The buying process has changed dramatically.
And the hyperscalers have all embraced this marketplace. But then what do you need? Fundamentally, in order to have success, you need to have engagements with those sellers. And that’s why co-selling is so critical and important. We’re gonna talk about that as also an important component. And then the hype.
We talk about this ecosystem and why you can’t go alone. And then we, we’ve been around ultimate partner. We created ultimate partner. ’cause we recognize that success is all about coming together. And I talk about the seven seats at the table because the buying persona is May now making a decision about driving a solution.
They’re not buying a one-off vendor solution. They’re creating a solution set, and they need multiple vendors to come together. And this conversation today is how MSPs need to embrace these tectonic shift. Nabeel, you’ve owned this successful MSP for many years. You said 25 years you’ve been in this business, which is incredible.
Long
[00:06:29] Nabil Aitonumeziane: time
[00:06:29] Vince Menzione: you don’t even look old enough to have been No. Been doing this for 25 years. Tell us what successes look like for you and your organization and what has the change been like? Can you speak to the change that we’ve been seeing?
[00:06:40] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So we have seen the big changes in the past 10 years when it comes to the MSP world.
Uh, we went, I think all of us in the MSP world, we came all from the break and fix model. To all you can eat, which became kind of very hard to kind of manage. But, uh, the past 10 years I’ve seen the MSP world really growing very fast because seeing the, the big companies out there, uh, ISVs, who are also now providing MSP services because.
All the big scalers, if you ask me, they are trying to cover it all. Yeah. Like, you know, take a customer from soup to nuts, help them with everything they need to do with technology. And that’s why we’re seeing more and more bigger player into the MSP uh, community these days. And it’s one of, I think, one of the fastest growing technology businesses out there.
I mean, I’ve been in it for 25 years and the past 10 years I’ve seen. Tens of thousands of companies that have came out of nowhere. So it’s becoming the hot business in the IT world. So, uh, the big change also that I see, it’s the technology that’s moving very fast. And I feel like the MSPs who are moving as fast as the technology is moving, they’re gonna be succeed.
They’re gonna succeed. But the ones who are waiting. Trying to figure out the whole AI era that we’re living in. Yeah, they’re gonna be left behind. Yes, because the train already has left the station. For the ai, it started, like you said earlier, November 20, 27, uh, 22, but co-pilot, it started for me, 2024 copilot came out of one of the, you know, AI technologies that came out there for Microsoft.
It was not the biggest success out there, but now with agents, they are fixing all the little issues that they had because, yeah. Anyway, I think we’re gonna have time to discuss AI a little deeper. Yes. And what’s going on with it. But those are the difference that I see. It’s, uh, it do not move fast enough and getting the ai, you know, trained today, you’re gonna be left behind.
As an MSPI,
[00:08:55] Vince Menzione: I am in violent agreement with you. You know, Scott, you’ve been at AppPoint for many years. I’ve, I’ve known AppPoint for close to two decades. And you know, you start off in the big enterprises, right? Big organizations, big public sector organizations, all the big government agencies use AppPoint technology.
What have you seen this shift now to, uh, to moving out beyond just the largest customers and how is AAV Point addressing that?
[00:09:21] Scott Sacket: Yeah, so it’s, it’s an incredible journey. Right. We started as a SharePoint, ISV. Yep. Uh, doing things like migration and backup and governance. Um, and the world changed drastically while we’ve been in business.
I mean, just past this past July, 24 years in business, publicly traded. Right. Uh, the last four years. Yep. Um. And what we saw evolve was cloud really changing the game for us. Um, on premise became Cloud. Cloud of course, grew from just SharePoint online for us to exchange online in OneDrive. And then Teams, oh my goodness, teams just blew up everything.
And when we started thinking about how we continue to evolve, our business partners became such an important and critical piece to how we grow. Because what was really expensive and complex for an SMB organization 20 years ago, server Farm, right? Really expensive hardware all of a sudden became a really simple service to flip a switch and just to log in.
And so as we were thinking about this ecosystem where SMB actually comprised of 50% ultimately of the market, how were we going to scale? Yes. How were we going to be able to bring benefit? To those types of customers, and when we really started digging into it, MSPs were not just important. They’re really the superhero.
Yeah. Right. They are the ones who are keeping that entire segment going and, and building out technology and exposing technology to them that they never had before. Because they have that sort of level of competency and expertise that many s and b customers don’t have. That’s right. And so we started really heavily investing in the MSP space over the last 10 years and not just taking our enterprise products and, and just handing it to, to, you know, MSPs and saying, okay, go figure it out.
But we repackaged the whole thing. We built it from the ground up. We built a platform that allows for scale and automation and service delivery. Which is just so unbelievably important as we move into this next era right. Of, of ai when you layer in security and governance. ’cause that’s what’s keeping people from actually realizing that vision.
[00:11:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You, you bring up some really great points. So I think back of the server being in the closet in the back of the room at the ss, the SMB organization and then this move to the cloud. This shift from the cloud started about eight, 10 years ago. Well, MM 365 drove Microsoft’s engagement, their Google Cloud as well.
But then Azure took off in a big way in these organizations. They finally have started to realize the benefits and I feel almost feel like the MSP community was sitting behind doing break fix on computers while the customers were saying, we need to engage and we need to embrace all this. And then you start thinking about data because if you are gonna do things like ai, which is now.
We talked about just the, the relevance of ai just the last couple years. You gotta get your data state right, and then if you’ve got data out there, you need to protect that data. And that’s where you, you know, you come in with all this set of tools. Right. So that point addresses all of
[00:12:24] Scott Sacket: this. The, the move to AI is been so challenging for so many customers and partners.
We have been building a lot of technology to help break down those barriers. That is by far the most requested and deployed service that we’re building for. Um, and we wanna solve that problem for our partners, right? Because we know once they get to AI, there’s so much goodness to unlock, right? And more productivity to unleash.
[00:12:52] Vince Menzione: And you enable these MSPs, right? Oh yeah. ’cause you bring the tools, you bring the systems and tools. Uh, you take out some of the complexity for them, but then you make them the superheroes in front of those customers.
[00:13:02] Scott Sacket: Absolutely. I mean, the whole idea is to get our partners to be at scale, to automate, to integrate with their existing technology right there.
Yep. Their rs, you know, their PSAs, their RMMs Right. The existing, uh, infrastructure and, and to ultimately build a better business. Right. And to make them so valuable to their customers that the stickiness is, is, you know, obvious.
[00:13:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Eric, you’ve been around. Partners for almost as long as I have, maybe even longer in some respects.
I mean, you were the, you were the founder of Micro, the Microsoft partner ecosystem. It’s it’s association back in the day. And so you’ve seen this evolution up, up, close and personal, right? With, within the companies that you’ve run, you’ve been a serial entrepreneur, what are you starting to see and what, what are the characteristics that the MSP’s watching today and maybe watching this either live stream or.
A recording of this, either on our YouTube channel or or on the podcast, what do they need to be doing differently? What are the characteristics that makes a successful or the ultimate MSP?
[00:14:06] Per Werngren: So, that’s a good question. And I don’t know how many days we got to answer that question, but we’ll start now. Uh,
[00:14:11] Vince Menzione: we’ll be here for a few days.
So
[00:14:13] Per Werngren: I would say that many MSPs, they give too much power to their technical people. Business decisions should be made by business people, and too many times technical people influence strategically important decisions that they should not have a say about. And that means that many MSPs, they have a product portfolio that is too broad, way too broad, and.
[00:14:46] Vince Menzione: That’s broad for our American listeners today, right?
[00:14:49] Per Werngren: I’m European and uh, that means that, um, uh, it is hard to entertain all the technologies that are involved. Yeah, I’m a big fan of Better Together. I want technologies to be integrated with each other because that saves cost and probably also give better outcomes for the customers and too many MSPs, they don’t dare standardize.
Instead they customize a little, little bit too much. And when you customize well, then you kind of lose the ness of being an MSP. The last thing is probably that, um, when you have a product portfolio that is too wide, you will never become really good at all the offerings. Instead, it is better to look at what should you produce in-house?
What can you produce in-house with good quality and good profitability? And then you find partners whose services that you resell. So this mix of, uh, creating your product portfolio and, uh, dare to kill your darlings. They’re to say no to producing everything in house. Try to become a little bit more narrow in what you do is one path to success and profitability is really bad among many MSPs.
[00:16:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Because they’re trying to be all things to all people.
[00:16:15] Per Werngren: Yes. If you try to be jack of all trades, well, you will never be successful. And, uh, that will hurt your profitability. That will also hurt the day when you want to exit your company.
[00:16:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So let’s talk about, ’cause this is really a, it’s winning and successful as an MSB, but a lot of this is around the Microsoft ecosystem today.
Neal’s organization, you would, what do you say? You eat, sleep, drink and bleed. Microsoft, is that it? Nabi, eat,
[00:16:43] Nabil Aitonumeziane: sleep,
breathe Microsoft.
[00:16:45] Vince Menzione: Breathe Microsoft. So what are like the quick wins for the MSPs out there? What can they be doing? What are, what are the things you’ve done in the deal within your organization?
We can talk, we can start top down with getting your organization right. Uh, I think P alluded to some of that as well. We can talk about like, engaging with the Microsoft Field organization, what, what, what seems to work.
[00:17:07] Nabil Aitonumeziane: It may also start, but stop thinking like a service provider. Yeah. As an ms. Yeah.
Alright. We are more of a, a strategic, you need to keep your mic up a little bit higher there. I’m getting, I’m sorry. Uh, that’s right. I dunno if you guys could hear me, but, uh, I feel like every MSP needs to stop thinking like a service provider and think more about the strategic partnership that they’re gonna build with the customers.
We’re here to help customer. And then one thing I think Scott used talk about, it’s. The sellers, uh, in the MSP world or in the technology world, they need to start talking more about business and stop talking about technology. Yeah. Because we are dealing with C executives.
[00:17:46] Vince Menzione: That’s right.
[00:17:46] Nabil Aitonumeziane: They are thinking more about how can we help the business move forward and grow, and how can they do more with less?
That’s why we need to have those con AI conversation. They’re more of business conversations than techno like technical conversation. You’re gonna confuse them. Because what we’re trying to do with the AI era, that’s why I think for all the MSPs out there, you need to get on ai. Now, yesterday, not today, yesterday, because our job now with our all our customers, we’re gonna help them navigate this whole AI era that we’re going through, all the confusions were out there, how can we help them?
What are the solutions that we can build? And then have them repeatable with different customers, with their ai. But if you’re not in the AI world today. You need to be in it, otherwise you’re gonna be left behind because that’s how fast the MSP word is. Uh, moving.
[00:18:42] Vince Menzione: Well, I’m gonna turn it over to you P but I just wanna, I want to kind of frame out a little bit like, ’cause we.
You know, we talk about like, you need to be able to speak Microsoft if you’re working with Microsoft, right? So
[00:18:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: he said something earlier about Jack of all trade and master of none. This is how FSI, uh, about eight years ago decided to, uh, partner with one of the biggest partners in the world, Microsoft, for the reason we were tired of being Jack of Trade and master of none.
We wanted to be good at one thing and be very good at it. So we went and we chose Microsoft. I always liked working with them, so we went with Microsoft. But it’s not about just Microsoft as a partner, choose your partners. Be very wise about how you choose your partners. ’cause the culture is also important when you working with a partner.
Like I’ve worked with a point, which we have an amazing relationship. I work with Black Point, I work with Huntress, I work with Microsoft a lot. But the common things that we all have together, we are all Microsoft companies. Yeah. And the culture at FSI is Microsoft. So if I went to F Point, because F Point was also eating, breathing, sleeping.
Microsoft as well. Yes. ’cause they started their business in 2001. They were a SharePoint company. So they know, they understand how Microsoft functions, whatever. But my point to you guys here. Having the right partner will help you succeed and move forward. So an ISV that you’re buying, uh, uh, services from or software from.
Work with them, do marketing with them, do events with them. Uh, create things. I think this is something that we have lost. We don’t see that much anymore. We see a lot of ISVs in the conferences where they’re just over there. Selling? No. Do things together. Yes. To the community, to our customers. Yeah. For example, I’m working, I’m doing RO show with a point.
I do the same thing with Microsoft where we get all our customers and our customers have also access to our ISV directly. So they know when I’m telling them, Hey, you need to buy that product I’m bringing. My partner to the discussion, they can talk with them and you know, so partnership is very important.
[00:21:00] Vince Menzione: So you talked about a couple things. I’m gonna frame it and I want to turn it over to P ’cause he’s had some, he had raised his hand in a way. Uh, you talked about outcomes. So talk, start talking about the outcomes that you’re, we’re gonna help you achieve. And then you also, what I, what you implied is we bring value back to Microsoft.
So this is like, how do I get a seller’s attention? And you might be in the SMB market, but they have a sales organization called Small Medium Enterprise and Channel Ssec is the new term. Not my favorite term, but, but they have taken Nicole Deen’s organization who spoke at our last event where you all were there.
Um, and they’ve combined those organizations to help get the scale to the SMB market. But they have salespeople, they have sellers and specialists that support even these smaller customers. PI know you wanted to, to jump in with some thoughts on, on this, and how do you get yourself aligned better? With that Microsoft organization.
[00:21:55] Per Werngren: So don’t ask what Microsoft can do for you, ask what you can do for Microsoft.
Nice.
[00:21:59] Per Werngren: We heard that before. It is important to understand that the Microsoft people, they have lot of things on their plate and so many emails are flowing in and there are 500,000 great partner in the world.
Yes.
[00:22:12] Per Werngren: So you need to make sure that you make it easy for them to understand what you bring to the table.
And something that they love is when you communicate wins. Wins with clients. And the best, and you know, that you do it beautifully, is to take care of clients that are underserved. Clients that are kind of forgotten, do a great thing and communicate that with Microsoft. They love that.
[00:22:39] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the thing that Per was talking about, it’s uh, the way I work with Microsoft as an MSP, uh, specializing, like mostly in Microsoft, it’s, I work with the sellers.
We have a plan together, so don’t go and knock at. A point, or Microsoft or whoever, uh, the, the partner is, and ask for handouts. You need to do some work. So what we do at FSI, we do, we run marketing campaigns for the sellers. Alright? We utilize our SDRs internally to make phone calls for debt accounts.
With that, uh, ISV that we’re working with. So
[00:23:14] Vince Menzione: you’re generating leads. So we
[00:23:16] Nabil Aitonumeziane: are doing the work, we are doing the dirty work as well. We are not, we just, we’re trying to like, what I call it the three Ws, win, win, win. Not only Microsoft wins. Microsoft wins. FSI wins the customers power
[00:23:28] Scott Sacket: of three. Power of three.
[00:23:30] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Here we go. So it’s, uh, that’s what we’re doing. Like, so my point, don’t go to, uh, a partner. And expect them to just because you are buying a software from them, that they’re gonna be giving you referrals, whatever, do things with them, build a relationship with them. Partnership, I think is one of the most important thing for success for any MSP out there.
You need to choose a partner wisely and work with them closely. So this is how it works. I mean, you have to build that. It’s, uh, you’re becoming one because, for example, I’m gonna go back to it again. F point, I’ll sell their stuff for the backup. It’s part of my onboarding. Every customer that we onboard, their backup is going straight to F point.
So what? What the whole meaning of this. When FSI wins, F point wins. The customer wins. Yeah. And Microsoft, you have created And Microsoft. Yeah. And the trust. Trust, yes. And the whole, by the way, talking about partnerships, if there is no trust, there’s no partners, there’s no partnership. It’s the same thing.
Like in a marriage. Yeah. No trust, no marriage. No trust, no partnership. It, I think it’s for me to succeed as an MSP today because of all the competition out there, you need to choose wisely your partner and partner with them and go all out. I mean, don’t go ask for handouts, do the dirty work, work with the partner.
Come up with ideas, you know, be, be the person out there who’s gonna give them ideas to run the marketing campaign for their own customer. ’cause they’re gonna benefit from it. Yep. It’s not only FSI or whoever the MSB is
[00:25:05] Per Werngren: and not the person that is being shown on a big screen on a cool, that’s right.
[00:25:09] Vince Menzione: So I, I gotta turn to that because that point is, is genuinely probably one of the best at brand and story and getting and, and doing things that are not traditional.
Like how do you kind of sit back and wait for things at Point has an incredible reputation for really making things happen. Like really like going out above and beyond. I want. I was hoping, Scott, you could talk a little bit about this as well.
[00:25:34] Scott Sacket: Yeah, and I’ll, I’ll, you know, frame it in the lens of the Microsoft story as well.
[00:25:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And partner of the year for like, seven, eight years, something like that. Maybe nine years running, something like that. Um,
[00:25:43] Scott Sacket: hopefully more. Yes, yes. You know, as we go. But, um, you know, similar, similar to, to, uh, everyone, we spend a lot of time understanding Microsoft School. Right, what outcomes they’re looking for.
Yeah. And, and we really do build our messaging, our, our stack, even our commercial bundles. Around those outcomes. Right? So, you know, our MSPs, our resellers, ultimately our partners, I mean, everybody, um, needs to understand sort of, you know, we’re revolving around the sun, right? Yes. Microsoft is sort of the center of that, that solar system.
And we want to make sure that Microsoft wins, we win, our partner wins, right? That power of three story is really, really critical. Super
[00:26:26] Vince Menzione: critical.
[00:26:26] Scott Sacket: Um, and when we do that, this, it’s very simple to partner. It’s very simple. Right, because we understand that Microsoft wants everyone to get into co-pilot.
Microsoft wants people leveraging AI workloads or, or, uh, Azure workloads and AI workloads. Certainly, yeah. Right. Um, this is what is very clearly written. I mean, we’re in, um, you know, in a new fiscal year, right. Microsoft new fiscal year. Yeah. We’re all kind of unpacking, uh, what the new program is. Right.
It’s, it’s not always easy to figure it out. That’s right. Right. But there’s some obvious themes, right. Ai, Azure, right. Building workloads and, and technology on there. I mean, agents are starting to become really prevalent, right? And we have a story around even agents and governance. So there, there’s a lot there that, um, you know, we, we think about it in the, in the Microsoft lens, right?
And how we deliver that ultimately to our partners, which empowers them to be successful. Which, ’cause that’s the key here. We can’t, you know, just sell, right? That’s right. We need to enable our partners with technology, with support co-marketing, as Nabil alluded to, right? Co-marketing is so important.
Co-sell. Unbelievably important, right? Really important. It’s, it’s really finally, finally, co-sell is so hard, right? We build our whole team around, co-sell with partners. So it, it’s a, it’s a huge opportunity, but you have to think about it in, in sort of the lens of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish.
[00:27:49] Vince Menzione: Let’s dive in a little bit on ai. We’ve kind of, we’ve skirted around it as a subject, but let, let’s talk about a couple things. First of all, Nvidia, $4 trillion market cap and growing, by the way, they just, they just got. Entry now into China in a big way. The Trump administration has approved them selling some of their better chips into China, so we’re gonna see this thing continuing to grow.
Data center movement is huge. Power companies, utility companies are becoming huge now, by the way, because they’re, they’re downstream of this. Somebody’s gotta drive the power consumption. And we’re seeing big deals right in, in, in the Middle East. We’re seeing big deals here worldwide. Tons and tons of these data centers, big chips.
Uh, Microsoft leaning in big with it, with chat, GPT and copilot, but you know, also more, more involvement here. And people are starting to see the benefit finally. Right? Because we talked about the early days, like people overestimated what you would see one year and they underestimate what they see in 10.
And that’s what we saw with AI the first year was like, eh, it was underwhelming. And then the first couple years of selling copilot, eh, I didn’t see the results right. Well, now we’re getting to this point where now AG agentic is starting to get layered in. We’re starting to see Microsoft, in fact, creating a separate group for, for startups where they’re gonna be laying in, Jason Grey’s gonna be running this new initiative to go and embed AI into all these organizations.
You’re starting to see more of that motion happening, and this means also, this is where the MSPs are gonna come in the, the layering in the, somebody’s gotta layer in all the agenda ai, all the AI across these platforms. And who is gonna do it? Let’s talk about ai. I know we, we all have points of view on it.
I think we all are very passionate about it. I believe personally, five years our world is gonna be radically different than it is today because it’s happening so fast. We’re starting to see this hockey stick. What would you have to say to that, Scott?
[00:29:40] Scott Sacket: Yeah. I mean, we think about AI in, in really multiple angles, right?
We of course think about AI in what we can build into our own technology. Right. We wanna make our technology smarter and leverage best of, you know, breed technology. We think about AI and how we can build a better company. Right. Of course. Right. We’re an organization. Yeah. That wants to be more productive.
That’s right. And we think about AI in how we can help our partners get their customers there. So we have like three different work streams when we think about ai and we’re leveraging all three, right? So we build technology that ultimately. Is smart and scales right, and is automated and, and comes up with, you know, suggestions and, and different ideas for the person using the technology ultimately to make the right decisions.
Um, we think about AI readiness and security, right? The number one reason why people don don’t. Deploy copilot today is data security risk. Yeah. Right? And, and it’s a really public cloud. I mean, right. It’s a really, really important problem today, surfacing that risk. You know, are you oversharing? Um, you know, do you have proper governance on a, on a team, right?
Yeah. All of those different complex issues. Um, and then once again, internally, we’re building agents, right? How do we get smarter? We have something called chat, A VPT, right? And we use that. I mean, I think Microsoft did a really nice, um, case study on us actually. Uh, about how we’re leveraging AI today internally.
So we, we, we think AI is once again disrupting everything. It’s changing the way we think about business. I am, you know, just astonished to see what will become right in the next few years, of course. Um, but it, it’s layered everywhere, right? Everything we do should be thinking about, you know, prompts. Yeah.
And, and, and, you know, that should be our first, you know, reflex, you know, reflexive ai, right? You know, first thing you think about is, well, how can I use AI to do. Task X, Y, Z. Yeah. Right. So it’s very interesting times.
[00:31:33] Per Werngren: So we use, um, ai of course. Um, internally, we want to be a good customer, zero. And, uh, we use it, uh, to, um, make ourselves more efficient, more intelligent.
We also use it, uh, when it comes to, uh, operating Azure, and we have our own service called AI Operations, which is about taking care of all these AI workloads and make sure that they run 24 7. That’s a beautiful service. So we live and brief. Ai, but looking outside, um, our company ID next, I think that MSPs in general need to think about how can they swing ai.
Um, the low hanging fruit is, of course, using it internally, but then making sure that they are exploring if they can set up services. Subscription services that are based on AI and that leverage this momentous that we got in AI right now. So perhaps we are used to, uh, renting a car at the airport, Hertz rent a car.
We, we might see Hertz rent an agent. So like, think about it because if you are not thinking about it, someone else will.
[00:32:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Good
[00:32:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: point. Uh, per. But per just said it all, so, but uh, no, the way I look at it, uh, for us as an MSP, uh, when it comes to ai, first of all, we need to drink our own Kool-Aid.
Yes. Alright. I think the same thing went with a lot of companies. They were promoting a lot of AI and they were not using it internally. Didn’t even know what it meant. So I feel like for us, uh, at FSI, we already, uh, we are using AI copilot in our help desk. We even moved our, uh. ConnectWise moved it to Dynamics where in the CRM we run our, uh, ticketing system through Dynamics.
Uh, we run our sales through dynamics. We run our marketing through dynamics and all that. We have ai, uh, involved in it. I love it. And we are trying to change the culture internally with our people. It’s to push people to, uh, be using more AI because the reason why we are already helping customers. With ai, if we don’t know about ai, how are we gonna be helping someone else with ai?
That’s right.
[00:33:56] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So what per said, start thinking about it because ai, it’s exactly what happened when the internet came. What year did the internet, uh, uh, appeared?
[00:34:07] Vince Menzione: Oh, it was in the nineties. Yeah, in the
[00:34:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: nineties. Yeah. It was the same thing. What’s happening right now. No one knew what was, what was going on, what’s happening, and so my only advice I will give to any MSP.
Get on AI because if you don’t, someone else is gonna come and take it from you. Well,
[00:34:25] Vince Menzione: you’re gonna
[00:34:25] Nabil Aitonumeziane: fall back. Somebody else is gonna support your customers. With ai,
[00:34:29] Vince Menzione: I feel like every day you wait, you’re falling a month or a year further behind. It’s happening. Absolutely. So rapidly now,
[00:34:36] Scott Sacket: it took chat GPT two months to get to 100 million users.
Yeah. That’s crazy, right? I mean, it took cloud Facebook years. To accomplish those things. Yeah. Imagine where we’ll be in a year. You cannot wait and the
[00:34:49] Vince Menzione: hallucinations are dropping dramatically. The power and the the quality of the output is so much better than it was even just a few months ago. Go ahead.
[00:34:58] Nabil Aitonumeziane: No, I was gonna say, uh, when it comes to ai, we have to learn it because we have to think about it ourselves as executives. It only be makes us better.
Absolutely. It’s
[00:35:10] Nabil Aitonumeziane: the same message we need to take to the leaders out there. Telling them ai, it’s only going to make you better. Make your business better, think faster.
That’s why I’m telling all to all the MSPs out there, learn it, do research, start working on it, because actually, ai, believe it or not, for an MSP, is gonna open up a lot of opportunities. For example, security. Data cleanup, so all that. So you need to be part of this, uh, era.
[00:35:39] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna put you on the spot a little bit, NABI.
Sure. Because we’ve had this conversation for a while. We’ve been doing Ultimate Partner for years. The podcast, about two plus years ago, we started doing events. We did our first live stream and then our first in person. And we’ve continued down that route. We, one of the things I get from MSPs quite often is, I don’t know where to start.
I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? What do you say to some of those MSPs to help them be more successful?
[00:36:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the biggest advice I will give over here, join a group. Like for example, I joined Ultimate Partner. That’s how, believe it or not, that’s how I’ve met Docs, Scott Pair, and those are the people who became part of my life, my Microsoft life.
Yeah. Alright. But I had the exact same question few years back where to start because. For example, as uh, FSI, working with Microsoft, it’s not very easy to work with Microsoft. So I have to start somewhere, right? And my beginning, it all started, believe it or not, it was an ultimate partner in Dallas at Las Colinas.
Yeah, when we’ve met the original
[00:36:48] Vince Menzione: event, yeah. It was, I think one of the
[00:36:50] Nabil Aitonumeziane: best, uh, shows ever and it just opened up my eyes to the Microsoft world because. I was never able to be, uh, anywhere near president of Microsoft or a C-level executive who is in the same room as you. And then you can ask the question or other partners who are just like you, who either they have 20 years of experience and they’re doing $10 billion, or they are five years and doing 5 million.
But that’s what I met the people through Ultimate Partner. That’s what I started to meet the right people, the exact people that I needed to meet with Microsoft, for me to start working directly with Microsoft. So that’s what I was talking earlier. Partnership For me, uh, personally, as an MSP owner, it’s one of the most important thing.
[00:37:37] Vince Menzione: And you’re not gonna find that surfing the web or going on a LinkedIn profile, right? No. You will
[00:37:41] Nabil Aitonumeziane: not find this, these things you have, uh, to meet either the right group or the right people. Yeah, to put you in touch. And there is a lot of groups out there. Like I said, I was lucky enough, uh, to be in Dallas for the ultimate partner and I was, uh, privileged to meet with Kevin Piker at the time, which was a big deal.
Was a president of Microsoft. Uh, but yeah, for me, that’s, uh, how we work. I think partnerships are very important. Yeah. And
[00:38:08] Vince Menzione: then you met up with Ducks, Raymond Sa, who you knew from many years ago, but you hadn’t seen each other funny enough.
[00:38:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Uh, the story with Ducks, I think I, uh, keep repeating that story over and over, but it was here in Boca about a year ago.
Uh, went to breakfast with Ducks and Per was there, uh, docs opened up a laptop while we’re having breakfast. Like, oh, let me show you a product. We have no joke. Within five minutes I picked up the phone, called my office, I said. You need to see what this company has to offer. And believe it or not, it’s been a year, it’s been one of the best partnerships we’ve had because we also get a lot of support from our partner.
So by the way, partnerships is two ways. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s why I was talking earlier when I said about Microsoft. For any MSPs out there, don’t go ask for hands out. So, you know. Do something for them. So they do something for you. It has to go both ways.
[00:39:01] Vince Menzione: So I was at one of the, on one of the AF point calls just about a month or so ago, and they were talking, they were glowingly talking about your company and how much business you’ve generated for them.
[00:39:11] Nabil Aitonumeziane: We actually have generated a lot of business things to, uh, our, uh, partner a point. Uh, and again, a point has been a big help for us when it comes to the whole AI era as well, because. It started all with copilot readiness, which was ai. And through that we got so much going on with helping our customer clean up the data, you know, uh, secure their data.
Like all that is created projects for us. And it’s funny because AF Point kind of introduced us to AI and directly ’cause we were doing the copilot readiness. I love it. That’s how it all started. So
[00:39:49] Scott Sacket: you’re gonna make me blush. Yeah, please don’t. I love that. I love to see that
[00:39:53] Per Werngren: there. You’ve been talking about this.
Yeah. A small thing that you said that I want to emphasize a little bit. You made a technical decision, which vendor should we go with? Which vendor’s? Technology. Yep. You made it as a business person, and that is often more successful than technical people making decisions that
[00:40:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: absolutely. Absolutely. I think decisions have to be made in as a business, not as technical.
[00:40:19] Scott Sacket: Yes, but, but also, right. The product solves a really hard problem. Of course. That’s right. But what has taken the partnership to another level? Co-sell, co-marketing, personal relationships, advocacy. Yes. Right. That is sort of the difference between when you think about, do I take on a vendor, do I onboard a vendor, or you know, nah, not for me.
Right. That’s the piece that separates, you know, many MSPs from Good to Great.
[00:40:44] Nabil Aitonumeziane: And they feel like when it comes to vendor, you have to work with the vendor that you love. Yes. It’s like really, it’s like a marriage. ’cause don’t forget that you’re selling this product to your customer. That means you gotta be selling them something that you believe in.
And that’s why when you said it’s the trust and that personal relationship with the vendor, because you know why, when you have a personal relationship. You can run ideas with them and they can run ideas with you as well because you are in it together. When you grow, they grow. Your customer grows. It’s everybody wins in here.
So,
[00:41:16] Vince Menzione: you know, we talk about the principles of success, but it starts at the to top with the growth mindset and the executive commitment, and you see the difference in organizations like a point that maybe some other organizations out there that maybe are not as. Little bit more reticent on the partnering side.
Maybe not as, not as the trust is. What
[00:41:33] Nabil Aitonumeziane: a good point, Vince. Honestly, it makes all the difference in the world that personal relationships and when you have C-level, uh, executives who are open to talk to any of their customers, whoever, like, that’s what I had my relationship with that point today, uh, I feel very comfortable.
If there’s an issue, I’ll call because I have, I feel comfortable to say good or bad. ’cause we’re in it together.
[00:41:56] Vince Menzione: Agree. I wanna stay on this topic of communities and a little bit of a call out to p who’s been around for me for several years. We, we started having conversations five during COVID about the fact that we really needed to do something here to bring, ’cause we had the people, we just needed to get them all in the same room back in those days.
P So
[00:42:15] Per Werngren: what happens when you bring people together is that you build trust. And when you have built trust, you start helping each other and that builds even more trust. And even if you’re not doing business together, you will influence each other’s business. You will help each other, and that’s good for the group.
As a whole, and it’s also good for all individual members, but you need to have a mentality where you’re willing to share, where you’re willing to expose yourself and talk about what is not working well and get help from others. And that is the essence of a great community and ultimate partner has really become a wonderful community.
Where the trust level is super high
[00:42:59] Vince Menzione: because of people like each of you. And AV Point has come on as a big sponsor, a big supporter of our, of our events. I wanted to talk about this for a minute ’cause we are gonna only have a few minutes left. So unselfish, plug here a little bit. Right? So these gentlemen were just at our event in Redmond just a couple of months ago, right?
May 1st and second. It seems like it was yesterday. In some regards. And, uh, you’ll be back again. October. We’re gonna be in Reston, Virginia, Washington DC area. Really the tech hub of the Washington DC Metro area, but also
[00:43:28] Nabil Aitonumeziane: must attend.
[00:43:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah, must attend. And that’ll be on the, we’ll start on the 27th of October with a beautiful reception.
And then we have two full days of content at Csof, which at point is responsible for us hosting that event and co-sponsoring the event with us. And then we’re hoping to do something also around the Ignite Conference as well. So we’ve got a, we’ve got a rich fall coming up, and then we’ll be back in the studio in the winter.
We’ve, we’ve all agreed that this is our favorite place to come in, like January and February. So we’re probably gonna do a couple of our, our live. And it’s, and
[00:43:59] Nabil Aitonumeziane: it’s also, people need to know, I mean, for the MSP uh, community out there, it’s the place where you’re gonna come and learn everything. How to do business with Microsoft, by the way, at those events, this is what I’ve learned.
Uh, how to work with Microsoft. It’s through building relationship with people who are coming to the Ultimate partner, uh, event. And this is the place to be. You have to come, there will be Microsoft people, there will be other ISVs who are gonna, uh, share stories with you, other sis who are like, just like you, who can tell you what works, what doesn’t work, you, you know, it’s kind of basically it’s a peer group.
That’s why I love it. It’s, uh, I built new friends.
[00:44:36] Vince Menzione: And we’ve had some mentors and we’ve had some of the other vendors come in like PAX eight and Ingram in the last event. So we’re starting to see, again, this ties into what App Point’s been doing already in getting, I, I call it the long tail, but it’s the, it takes you all through the mid-market, all the way down to the smallest customers.
You need a mechanism to get there, and this is what we’re talking about now. And then even the large organizations need to become more like MSPs. So we’re hoping to get some of the resellers in the room because they, the ones that are successful, the ones that are building their own ms. MSP or they’re a requiring MSPs.
We could talk about some of that as well if we had another hour today. But,
[00:45:12] Per Werngren: and that blend is beautiful, that you have members that are coming from different corners of the industry and that makes, uh, good network o opportunities. Yeah.
[00:45:22] Scott Sacket: Yeah. The, the partner ecosystem is changing rapidly. Um, everyone has to learn quickly how to do service delivery.
Um, you know, you, you feel it when you understand, you know, licensing and margins and kind of where the world is going in AI as well. Um, and this is a really, a great community right, to start investing in, frankly, because it, it’s gonna help you on that journey. And I, I love to see, um, distributors and LSPs and all different sorts of partners that we know are doing great service delivery, right?
They need to do it at scale, they need to be automated, right? And they need to do it profitably. Um, and this is really a great combination of vendors and other partners to, to kind of have that peer group and no group is greater from a peer to peer perspective than the MSP community. Yeah. I am always blown away with how well everyone works together.
Yeah. Well,
[00:46:12] Vince Menzione: thank you Scott for that. And I wanna just call out these gentlemen all flew in today just to be here in the studio. I’m just, I feel so privileged to have you as friends and supporters. You came in from New New York area, Stockholm, Sweden. Right. And the DC area as well. And all flew in today just to be here to help you, and I want to thank everyone.
I know we’re basically at time right now. I want to thank all of our supporters, what an incredible community we’re building with, with you. Uh, I have a personal mission to help each of you achieve your greatest results. I’m very fortunate to be here and I, I, I don’t discount that in any way. So, uh, come to ultimate.
The, the ultimate partner.com or ultimate Guide to Partnering, you’ll find us at the same, I’ll take you to the same website. Um, the event in rest, and the registration is opening either today or tomorrow. So you’ll be able to register. We’re gonna have, these gentlemen will be in the room again. Uh, we’ll have a deep conversation.
We’re gonna have an MSP track. We’re gonna be growing that. We’ll have some of the other top ISVs in the room, some of the Microsoft leaders, some of the other leaders in the hyperscaler market will be in the room with us at this event. Helping, nurturing your growth. This is what it’s all about. We also bring the top partner tech companies in the room that support us.
Companies like Sugar and Tackle and Work Span all come in and support our events. And then some of the top consulting companies are also in the room, the Carve partners, the the Bridge partners, uh, all of those organizations to help nurture your growth. And so one ticket, a couple of days of time, you’re gonna learn more in that period of time.
You heard p talk about that. So come to the ultimate partner.com and then you can also watch us. You’ll wa you can watch this recording. Um, the edited version of this will be on our YouTube channel, ultimate partner.com or ultimate partner YouTube channel. You’ll find us there. And then if you wa would like to listen in your car or while you’re taking the kids to soccer or riding your bike or doing whatever exercise you’re doing, just you can watch this on Ulti, whatever.
Wherever you listen to the Ultimate partner or the ultimate guide to partnering, you’ll find us. So I want to thank each of you. For your support, for being so supportive of this. Great, these great gentlemen, this part of this great community that we are building together, and, uh, we’ll hope to see you all in Reston, Virginia in just a few months.
And thank you for joining us today. Thank you.