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Or is it caffeine fowl? You decide after listening to Erick and Rich discuss why venture capital funds are flooding into makers of AI software for SMBs and MSPs, plus tips on the most effective ways for MSPs to get lead generation mileage out of brief local speaking opportunities. Then they’re joined by Jennifer Anaya, SVP of global marketing at Ingram Micro, and Cheryl Rang, Ingram’s VP of technology solutions, for back-to-back interviews about the power of community, the opportunity for partners in AI and security, and much more. And finally, one last thing: a story about a parrot in South Korea who resembles humans not only in its ability to speak but in its love for coffee too.
Discussed in this episode:
Coffee-stealing parrot captured at South Korean cafe
Some guests on this podcast are clients of Channel Mastered. Compensation plays no part in their appearance or the content of the discussion unless the episode they appear on is a “bonus episode” explicitly labeled as sponsored.
Transcript:
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[00:01:00] Visit datto.com to learn more about Datto endpoint backup. That’s datto.com and 3 2 1 blast off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome from another episode of the MSP Chat podcast, your weekly visit with two talking heads, talking with you about these services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big and manage services.
My name is Rich Freeman. I’m Chief analyst at Channel Mastery, the organization responsible for this show. I’m joined virtually this time by your other co-host or CEO and chief strategist at Channel Mastered Erick Simpson. Erick, how’s it going? It’s going great. Rich
Erick: winding up a busy week here before I take a little personal travel for some enjoyment.
And as opposed to you rich tuning from travel from
Rich: work. And we will get into what that work trip was. I just actually got back late yesterday, but I will simply point out that before I went to Arizona on this [00:02:00] work trip. I was down in southern California, hanging out with Erick and the great Riley Simpson, who you hear us mention, he helps us on the editing on this show.
And his son, Connor and the four of us went off to see their Los Angeles Rams play, my Seattle Seahawks. And if you know anything about the outcome of that game you know that the beer we drank and the social time we spent together with much more satisfying for me than the outcome of that game.
But it was a really good time, Erick, and it was good to see you and and Connor and Riley in the flesh.
Erick: Yeah, it was a great time. We had a fun, exciting day at SoFi. Watching the Rams and the Seahawks battle it out for the NFC West Championship. Let’s just leave it there then Rich shall we?
Rich: And it’s very gracious of you, Stuart, that I just opened the door to some smack talking and you declined that invitation.
So I do appreciate that. And I will say that the very actually, I’ll say something else. First of all for those who pay attention to such things, this is episode [00:03:00] 100 of MSP chat. Now I looked this up recently, only about 5% of podcasts ever make it to episode 100. So we are in an elite cohort right now, a podcast with a hundred episodes out there.
I guarantee you we’re going way past 100. We are not actually going to celebrate this important milestone on this episode of the show. We’re gonna do that. Next week on episode 1 0 1 and the method to the madness there is next week’s show will air during the Thanksgiving holiday. We traditionally do an abbreviated episode anyway.
We don’t wanna spend a ton of time thumping each other on the back for making it to a hundred episodes. So that abbreviated Thanksgiving week edition or episode of the show will be our celebration of a hundred episodes. Until then, I will simply say for all of you, whether this is your first episode or your 100th of the show, thank you for coming along with us on the journey.
We really appreciate. Your listenership, your viewership, and your support, and we look [00:04:00] forward to bringing you lots more high quality content and interviews, like the two interviews we’re gonna bring you in This show that Erick and I recorded from the Ingram Micro One event just a few weeks back.
We’ve got the global head of marketing, Jennifer Anaya and their VP of Technology Solutions. So think anything advanced solutions, AI iot. Cheryl rang, they’re gonna be with us on the show. Coming up in a little bit, but first let’s talk a little bit. I’m just back from Arizona where I went after the football game The next morning Erick was to attend an event staged by top-down ventures.
Now we’ve had top-down on the show before, this is a venture capital company, a hundred percent focused on startups that are focused on the MSP space. And they put an event together, a two day event. It was a combination of some of their portfolio companies investors in those companies, potential investors a wide range of luminaries.
It was a really, for [00:05:00] somebody like me who’s into that thought leadership stuff, this was two days of heaven on earth in Arizona, even if it was raining a little bit while I was there. The thoughts I’m gonna share right now come out of both that two-day event and a white paper that top down published in a coordination with that event.
And I’ll link to a press release that kind of summarizes the report and has a link, if you wanna read the whole thing. It’s a little over 60 pages, but time well spent. Trust me, this is really good stuff. But based on the two days, based on the white paper, here’s at a high level what I’m thinking right now.
And the gist of it is this, there are going to be a lot more applications out there targeting you as an MSP over the course of the next few years. And I think this is going to be a good thing for you as an MSP. And the reason this is going to happen, and we’re already starting to see it now, is venture capital.
Is getting very interested in managed services. Now we’re all familiar [00:06:00] with the fact that private equity has been very interested in the managed services sector of the IT economy. For a long time, they’ve been buying vendors, they’ve been buying MSPs and rolling them up. That is ongoing, that is continuing.
Venture capital firms aren’t new to this space either. A lot of companies you’re familiar with and off the top of my head, I can think of Huntress and Roost and Lion. There are a lot of companies out there that have done very well with MSPs and got their start with venture capital funding, but we’re seeing a lot more VC money come into the managed services space right now.
And I’m gonna give you a few statistics that were shared with the audience at this top down event and in the white paper that will help explain this. And 595 billion according to oia, formerly known as canals. The total spend on managed services this year, 595 billion. It’s on its way to 950 billion by 2030, just shy of a trillion dollars.
That’s a 13% compound annual growth rate in [00:07:00] 2026 next year, Erick, and this is huge according both to IDC and some data from Microsoft. Global spending by SMBs on it will exceed global spending by enterprise businesses for the first time. The SM B space we’ve all known that, in terms of just the sheer numbers of SMBs, they outnumber enterprise and they spend a lot of money on technology, and that’s a very important market.
It will actually be a bigger, more important market in terms of total addressable market than enterprise beginning next year. That’s gonna attract attention from venture capital firms and others. AI native startups are selling a according, and the top down folks know this pretty well. This is their bailiwick.
AI native startups are selling right now for about 10 to 12 times their next 12 month revenue. That’s versus five x for a traditional SaaS company. So double or more than double. [00:08:00] Very valuable right now. And manage what the top-down folks call managed AI platforms basically. So AI specific and AI native tools.
That’s estimated to be a $1.3 trillion market globally by 2030. Between numbers like that and all of the attention private equity has been paying to managed services. The venture capital world is paying attention to managed services in a much bigger, deeper way. You are, we are already seeing more money come into this space.
You’re gonna see even more than we’re seeing come in 2026 and 2027 and beyond. And what that’s gonna mean obviously is there’re just gonna be a lot of startups out there. Going after your business as an MSP. This is how it works in venture capital. They invest in 10 companies. They assume nine of them will be a disaster, and they hope that the 10th is gonna make them a huge amount of money.
And so you’re just gonna see them place lots and lots of bets. There are gonna be a lot of companies out there. The only downside for you as an [00:09:00] MSP is all these vendors are gonna be competing for your attention and trying to convince you that you should be buying what they sell. But you’re just gonna have a lot of interesting tools coming at you, a lot of options to choose from.
And ultimately, that’s gonna be a good thing for you. You’re, you are going to have innovative, interesting, new tools in AI and beyond, in much greater volume than you have it right now. Because there are a lot of people out there who are thinking that they can make a ton of money by investing in these startups.
Erick: Wow. Way to validate the MSP business model. Rich, that’s those are pretty amazing statistics. We know that there’s ma, there are many more SMB businesses out there than enterprise businesses, so this is exciting to hear that for the first time the SMB it spend is going to outpace that of enterprise spend good news for MSPs because, that’s their bread and butter.
We know that they’re, punching a little bit above the SMB weight class, if you [00:10:00] will. Recently since COVID trying to get more into co-managed it in mid and enterprise engagements. But wow global IT spend being eclipsed for the first time by s by SMBs versus enterprise purchasers of IT services.
That really stands out to me. And the other stat that you mentioned that is. Interesting to me. The AI native startups selling at multiples of 10 to 12 times their total revenue. So this is of SaaS valuation, right? So they’re not valuing them based upon, ebitda, but they probably are. But I’m saying the 10 to 12 times top line revenue is different than what we’re seeing when we’re seeing MSPs being purchased and rolled up, or we’re typically seeing a multiple of their ebitda.
Because there’s a lot more cost in delivering these types of services and solutions and, not for nothing, but, s valuations in general. If I can [00:11:00] recall, I think it must’ve been a couple of years ago when I was looking at the difference in valuations for SaaS companies can exceed even 20 to 30 times top line revenue.
Sharpshooters in our listener audience, keep me honest and post a comment and let me know if I’m remembering that correct. So that’s super attractive. And we know several MSPs, personally, rich, you and I that are starting up AI practices, right? So taking advantage of where the puck is going to be as the great Wayne Gretzky used to say.
And then that $1.3 trillion growth forecast for native AI companies is definitely telling a story here. And we talked a lot Rich recently, and we will continue to do about, is it a bubble? Is it not a bubble for ai? I think there might be a little bit of a bubble. I was a little more, more certain that there was a bubble, maybe a month or two ago when we were talking with some other folks that were giving us some feedback.
But if it is it, we’re gonna get past it very quickly and [00:12:00] AI is going to be the transformative technology. That takes us through the next 20 years and beyond for IT providers, for MSPs, for the businesses they serve, for enterprise. It’s a juggernaut,
Rich: A few things there. I believe there is a bit of a bubble here, but and this goes back to conversations I had with the AMIA analysts there event a few weeks back.
If and when it that bubble pops, it doesn’t change any of the statistics that I reeled off there before. It is still going to be a good time to be an MSP for all of those reasons right there. I will point out the $1.3 trillion number is actually specifically for managed AI app applications.
So that’s actually a subset of AI native applications. This is the software that you as an MSP are either using internally or selling through to your customers. So that’s. That’s just a huge and an enormous number there. In terms of why the focus is on top line revenue as opposed to ebitda.
These are startups that we’re talking [00:13:00] about. A lot of ’em don’t have earnings. They, they are, free revenue earning. Yeah, they’re burning through cash. And that’s why it’s not even just top line revenue, like prior 12 months. It’s next 12 months. You, here’s what we’re on track to do.
That’s the number that gets looked at there. One last quick little observation. I didn’t bring it up before, but the fact that SMB spend in IT is going to exceed enterprise spend. It’s already attracting venture capital interest, but it’ll be really interesting, Erick, to see how it changes the behavior, the roadmaps, et cetera, of these traditionally enterprise oriented companies do businesses like.
Cisco or ServiceNow that do business in SMB. Plenty of it, but it’s always been a second order priority next to enterprise. Do they begin to catch onto this trend? Do they begin to see it in their sales results and does it change where they focus their r and d and field resources and all that other good [00:14:00] stuff?
I don’t know. I would think it, it would, you would see that behavior shift over time. And if that’s true, that would be a good thing for MSPs as well and something to watch.
Erick: Yeah, I think absolutely. These large vendors that primarily their bread and butters in the enterprise have to adjust and adapt to this huge opportunity that’s shifting more into the SMB.
And whether that means that they’re releasing, more SMB focused gear and services and platforms and solutions, or it’s just, some version of their enterprise light kind of services. Remains to be seen. But yeah, they would be remiss and the, the shareholders wouldn’t be happy rich if, they weren’t trying to grab more of that opportunity in the SMB moving forward.
Rich: Erick, that brings us to your tip of the week now, before I went to Arizona for the top down event and before I watched my Seahawks lose to your Rams, the two of us met up last week at a Channel Pro event. And that is actually, I think, a nice lead into your tip of the [00:15:00] week. Fantastic. Thank you for that, rich.
Yeah.
Erick: MSPs are, as we understand and we talk to MSPs all the time and we hear what their pains and challenges are, and one of the top challenges and pains that we hear pretty often repeatedly rich is, we need more leads, we need more opportunities. MSPs believe that once they can get in front of a qualified.
Prospect, there’s a need. There’s a solution and they have budget that they can close that, but they’re, they struggle with marketing and, sales as well. But we’re gonna focus on the marketing aspect, the lead gen aspect in today’s tip of the week, rich. So how do we compete as MSPs when everybody is targeting the same audience that we are?
They’re doing the same, they’re executing the same marketing tactics, email marketing, social media, marketing link. And we’ve talked about all these different things. I wanna shift into more of a in-person type of a lead generation strategy, [00:16:00] rich. And this is becoming the local authority in your community by attending events.
And I’m not talking about giant conferences here. Obviously that’s an opportunity if you can, work your way up to becoming a speaker on stage. Building your authority that way as an influencer and thought leader. I’ve got a few tips for you guys as well maybe on another episode on that side of the fence.
But we’re talking about the local events. I’m talking about these chamber functions, these b and i groups, these cocktail mixers, these happy hours. And I’m not promoting that We have to build out a huge presentation. A lot of MSPs that are first starting out rich, get, dipping their toe on the water.
They may not feel very comfortable speaking to large groups and things like that, especially if they’ve got remember, a big script and present a slide deck and things like that. I’m talking about just these little micro speaking engagements. Think about. That speed dating vendor shootout type of a [00:17:00] presentations that we see a lot at conferences that we attend, but make it more about asking very candid questions of the audience.
If anybody in our listener viewership has seen you and I present, we have a very unique style of presentation. I like to get right down into, the audience and ask very direct questions. It’s almost like a, just give me a question I’ll pose, a strategy and then ask for feedback.
So here we’re talking about just creating maybe a five to 10 minute speaking slot, get into some of these micro speaking slots. And even if there’s an agenda at a local mixer and things like that, they typically will let somebody stand up for five or 10 minutes. So perfect that, that strong five or 10 minute presentation and.
Focus in on really timely topics right now. What are the timeliest topics that we talk about all the time? Rich, cybersecurity compliance and ai. So if we can craft a really compelling five or [00:18:00] 10 minute in thought leadership, remember, we’re not pitching from the stage, we are not selling, we are presenting something that these SMBs that are gonna be spending a lot more money on these services and technologies in the next few years are eager to hear.
We know that the SMBs are hungry for ai. They’re hungry for process and workflow optimization in inside of their businesses to see data. So I would talk about governance, cybersecurity, ai, and then ask some questions. I would next tip. So that’s the first tip. Get that that strong five or 10 minute presentation you’re educating.
And then have a handout, a one page handout. Don’t print a big book. Don’t spend a lot of money. It’s a one page handout. That covers some of these topics that you’ve just shared. It shouldn’t take you that long to put it together. Remember, this is not something that we’re gonna, frame and put on the wall.
This is something for those attendees to get them thinking and maybe even a couple of, areas where they can ask questions and hand them back to you. Of [00:19:00] course, you’re gonna have your contact information on there, on the bottom and what you do, but again, you’re educating, you’re listening, and you’re providing feedback.
And then just keep the message simple as you close. Thank you. Everybody just wanna remind you that we help local businesses stay protective, productive, and profitable. Don’t do a big sales pitch. You’re in there to educate. You’re in there to get people to remember your name. I’m an old school guy, rich.
I say bring business cards because I’m, I can’t keep up with all the digital business card apps. I must have eight of ’em on my phone every time I meet somebody near, they’re like, oh yeah, download this app and scan this. And I’m like, oh my goodness. I can’t keep up with all that. Just make it human, make it simple.
And then invite folks to to meet with you for coffee after the event. Hey, come out. I’ll buy you some coffee. I’ll buy you a drink at the bar. Bring some of those folks. Or, Hey, can we have lunch together? Join me at my table. So budget a little bit because now you’ve educated, they have more questions.
Hey, I’m out of time, but I’d like to [00:20:00] invite you to go, share lunch with me. Break bread with me. Have some coffee. And then you have continue that conversation. You make that connection. And I think rich, those types of live events are something that, folks have, they’re not doing enough of anymore because they don’t feel that’s where their prospects are.
Or they think that’s just a sales pitch and things like that. If we’re marketing for leads, we have to market everywhere that our prospects are, and they’re going to these little mixers, these events, maybe these lunch and learns. Then as you expand that rich, then you can start talking about inviting folks to your lunch and learn or your business breakfast that you’ve got a bunch of your vendor sponsors that are helping provide MDF or swag or speakers, right to defray the costs and help you generate more leads.
But keep it simple. First, get your toe in the water. Get really comfortable with that five or 10 minute presentation and mingle with the folks and raise your image in the community as that expert, that thought leader that people can, send an email to pick up the phone or call if they have a question.[00:21:00]
Rich: Yeah I love it. And it, it raises a few thoughts. First of all, I’m totally with you. If you’re gonna do a five, 10 minute talk at one of these events, the two obvious candidates in terms of subject matter are AI and security. And obviously you’re gonna have to get a little bit more targeted than that.
And I, as it happens we are recording this episode of the show, I think two days after Google released Gemini three, and I was just an hour or two ago listening to a podcast where some guy was talking about doing demos of some of the new capabilities. If you’re standing up in front of the Chamber of Commerce, you probably don’t wanna be talking to them about Gemini three, but, copilot, could you build a really interesting five, 10 minute presentation around one thing that copilot does that the people in the audience probably don’t realize it can do not, I’m not talking about writing your emails, but something a little bit more interesting than that.
I, it that’s. That’s thought leadership to me, that’s not you pitching a product or your business that’s helping people understand why this AI [00:22:00] stuff is so powerful and interesting.
Erick: Yeah
Rich: I love that.
Erick: And if you’re really savvy you’ll create, the, an opportunity for you to show up at every one of these events just for five or 10 minutes and give them a new we are doing a tip of the week every week, right?
Rich, right? Hey, I’m gonna come in and give you, this meeting’s, technology or security, or AI or co-pilot, whatever it is, tip of the week for you guys, and then become that mainstay.
Rich: No, that’s a great idea. That’s great. If the first presentation goes well just pitch that I can do more of these and that would be phenomenal.
A statistic that came up and I haven’t been able to verify, but during the top down event some folks who work in the cyber insurance space said that about 18% of businesses have cyber insurance right now. This sort of floored me. Can you do a compelling five to 10 minute presentation about the threat landscape and why that means you really need to have cyber insurance?
Absolutely. And that’s valuable content for that audience there. And then I, like you were hinting. I think Erick had a more open-ended kind of format, an ask me anything [00:23:00] yeah. Okay. 10 minutes on ai, ask me anything and I’ll bet you some questions are are gonna come up or cybersecurity.
So lots and lots of great possibilities, options out there. None of which should really take anyone in our audience way outside their comfort zone basically. And just in terms of what they know and what they can demonstrate in front of a live audience. And it will establish you as a thought leader in this space.
And even if you don’t spend the final 30 seconds if you’re pitched saying, Hey, we help businesses. So I could even if all you say is, Hey, here’s my email address, and my phone number, gimme a ring. If you wanna talk more about this stuff, I really do think it’ll pay off for you. Absolutely. With that, let’s get into our interview twofer for this episode, our 100th episode of the show.
And we’ve been doing time travel with you if you’re a regular member of our audience, where, one week we’re at an event that we attended two weeks ago. And so in any event, we’re gonna have two [00:24:00] interviews for you with two executives from Ingram Microbe coming up. These were recorded there one event in Washington, DC just a few weeks back.
Both of them are really interesting. I will point out quickly to regular viewers who watch us on YouTube. You’re gonna see Erick and me magically show up in this very sophisticated looking studio set. That was something that Ingram set up for its own use during the show, and they were gracious enough to allow us to use it for these interviews if only we had the kind of money Erick to, to go out in the road with that kind of set.
But it was great to be able to use it. For these interviews. Stick around for us. We’re gonna take a break. When we come back, we’ll be joined first by Jennifer Anaya and then Cheryl rang both of Ingram to talk about a number of different topics relevant to the stuff we’ve been talking about here today.
And welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast, our spotlight interview segment, [00:25:00] where we have actually got a twofer for you. This week we’re coming to you live from the Ingram Micro for a one event in Washington, dc. This is the first of two interviews you’ll be seeing and hearing with executives from Ingram Micro.
Our first guest is Jennifer Anaya. She’s the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Ingram Micro. Jen, welcome to the show. Thank you, rich. Glad to be here. We, Erick and I have both known you for quite a while. For folks in our audience who are not familiar with you, I tell them a little bit about yourself, about what you do, and then also because you are much in the news this week at this conference with respect to trust X, maybe give them a little view for what the Trust X community is.
Jennifer: Okay. I manage marketing for Ingram Micro Globally. That includes the company marketing. We also have a marketing agency inside of Ingram Micro that I am responsible for leading an amazing team and then Trust X Alliance as a community. I’m also the executive sponsor for that. And this week we did [00:26:00] announce more global expansion for Trust X.
We have a big hairy goal of going to 20 countries with a thousand members by 2027. And so the the expansion that we just did was more countries in Europe. We’re adding Latin America and also Australia. So it’s very exciting.
Rich: So you’ve gone if I’m not mistaken, from seven countries, two 11 on your way to 20, correct?
Jennifer: Yes.
Rich: Clearly Gram Micro is investing in Trust X. We will get into why that’s a good thing for your partners in a moment. But for now, why is that a good thing for Ingram Micro? Why are you folks in investing and expanding to 20 countries?
Jennifer: Ingram Micro, we put the customer in the middle of everything we do, and our customers really need the right partners, especially with AI and all the AI technologies coming on board.
There’s just technology now is in [00:27:00] need of integration. There’s so many different technologies that are working together for a single solution, and I think AI puts that whole concept on steroids. So having the right partners to be able to deliver the technology and the outcomes that it needs to do for the people and businesses buying it.
Really important and trust X plays a key role with that.
Erick: Jen, let’s look at it from a partner point of view. For partners that may not have experienced or heard of Trust X, what are the tangible business benefits? Yeah. For joining the Trust X Alliance and maybe the intangible benefits that Harmony’s received.
Jennifer: Yes, so Trust X Alliance has been around for over 35 years. It is an well established community of members and really they partner together more than 90% of the time to go to market. And I was actually just speaking with Tiffany Bova as we were prepping for our panel later today, and she was talking about how peer-to-peer partnering is tough.
[00:28:00] Because how do you manage the end customer? How do you make sure that everybody stays accountable to each other and delivering on SLAs and a laundry list of things that can happen when you do partner and really trust? X Alliance has written the book on that. They manage a lot against the values that we hold as a community and also the values that they hold as members.
And they’ve worked out a lot of the ways to go to market and very smoothly and successfully. In addition, those partners are getting access to demand generation that we’re starting to create for them to help them find new customers. They’re also able to get access to SME groups. So we’ve got a group around engineering.
It’s a technical advance. We have a sales advance, whereas salespeople can go and learn more and more ways to be able to get to market, to be able to manage their customers, to be able to work pipeline. And so [00:29:00] those are really tangible things, helping those partners actively grow their business.
Rich: It is an interesting moment for community ’cause we are in, more than ever, we are in a an era of digital everything. Yes. And people chatting with ai all day long, and people chatting with each other via Zoom and teams. To what extent, in your view, is a community like trust X even more important right now in, in this particular digital first kind of moment?
Jennifer: Yeah, honestly, relationships are everything, and businesses thrive on having the right relationships. People buy from people. So you can use a lot of technology to make people more effective, to be able to help all of us be a lot smarter perhaps in how we’re managing those customers. Or, smarter in the way that we’re able to deliver on things.
But at the end of the day, the service delivery, the quality, the experience comes from people and that’s [00:30:00] why that’s important.
Erick: So Jen, we’ve been in the community a long time. Yes. All of us. Yes. Yes. One thing that I really appreciate about being in the community that we’re in, because I feel like it’s unlike any other community I’ve ever been in before being involved in this community.
It’s a community of givers MSPs, vendors, distributors, all collaborating together. It’s kinda like that rising tide lifts all boats mentality. Instead of being all this. Co-opetition or competition, I would say, right? Everybody trying to feel like, oh, this is our secret sauce, and things like that.
Why is our community so different, unique and special, do you think?
Jennifer: I think it’s because the way that technology works really is about a solution. You’re not just selling a point solution any, especially anymore. And so I think this community has been built and the channel itself has [00:31:00] been built on relationships.
And those MSPs are often the experts for the businesses that they’re serving. And they need a group, a team behind them to help them do what they do every day for those businesses. And I just feel like that’s a natural motion of the way that we work in this industry. And especially those relationships are very solid in this community in particular.
Rich: So Jen you are a marketing executive, a professional marketer, a marketing executive at Ingram Micro. You are also a a marketing icon. A certified marketing icon.
Jennifer: Oh
Rich: wow. ’cause you won the marketing a marketing icon award last week from the Channel Marketing Association. Congratulations for as somebody who has been doing marketing for a while, I’m very curious to get your perspectives.
We were talking about AI before. In what ways is AI a good thing for marketing and in what ways has it been maybe not a [00:32:00] great thing for marketing? Great question.
Jennifer: It is a good question. So AI is helping us to do two really good things. One, make the marketing, we’re doing more personal. And honestly, you can’t get enough of that.
Anyone hates that. Form email or that form, note in LinkedIn is of hey, and you know that it’s a form letter. You want somebody to connect with you with what you need, when you need it, how you need it, why you need it. And that’s really what AI and the data is allowing us to do is make things much more personalized and timely.
The second thing that it’s doing is allowing us to scale the work that we’re doing. Writing good content is hard, creating good content is hard. You two know that, right? How do you scale that? How can you use AI to also bring it to other parts of the world, translations and helping us to be able to, [00:33:00] again, make things more relevant to the audiences that we’re marketing to.
So those are two really good things. I’d say the tough thing is it’s technology that needs to be integrated and. Marketing uses a lot of technology. I was talking to forest Smith, who’s actually here, and he is our ciso and he also manages all of our infrastructure. And we gave him a list of all the technology we use in marketing, and I think he was surprised.
It’s a lot. And it’s growing and, the MarTech industry is, multiple billions of dollars, right? So there’s a lot of integration that’s needed for the AI to work properly within the tools and the tool stack that we have. And so that’s, it requires, it’s that extra step to be able to make it all work together.
Erick: Jen, as we record this, we’re in Q4. Of 2025. Yeah. Which means pretty quickly everyone’s gonna start thinking about 2026 and growing their businesses. So what marketing [00:34:00] related. New Year’s resolutions should partners be thinking about as they go into 2026 to wing?
Jennifer: Yeah. So Erick, I’m gonna go old school on this answer,
Erick: bring it,
Jennifer: get a plan.
I don’t know of many partners who actually have a comprehensive marketing plan in place and one that allows them to not just use and, manage and work effectively with the teams they have, but also work effectively with their partners and their teams. There’s so much available to partners today when it comes to marketing.
So many lead generation programs, so many events that we all go to. How are we maximizing all of those touch points and op opportunities? Getting a plan helps a lot with doing that.
Rich: Jennifer, we really appreciate you taking some time out from a busy show to join us here right now. For folks in our audience who would like to learn more about you, get in [00:35:00] touch with you or learn more about Trust X, where should they go?
Jennifer: Yep, just ingram micro.com is always a good place to go. Or you can check us out on Ingram Micro Advantage, and there’s a lot of information there for you as well.
Rich: So once again, thank you Jennifer for joining us on the show. Folks, we’re gonna take a quick break here. Don’t go far. We’re gonna be right back with another interview for you from the Ingram Micro One Conference.
This one will be with Cheryl Lang, the Vice President of Technology Solutions at the company. A lot of good, interesting topics to get into with her. So stick around. We’ll be right back. And welcome back to the second of our two interviews here on the MSP Chat podcast recorded live at the Ingram Micro One Conference in Washington, dc.
This time we are pleased to be joined by Cheryl Rang. She’s the Vice President of Technology Solutions at Ingram Micro. Cheryl, welcome to the show.
Cheryl: Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting.
Rich: You and I have spoken a number [00:36:00] of times. For folks in our audience who are new to you and new to the Technology Solutions Group, tell them a little bit about both.
Cheryl: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been with Ingram for quite a few years in various roles, but I lead our vendor organization, and so my team collaborates with our vendor vendor partners and our customers to be able to bring together solutions to help them deliver technology in a unique fashion.
Rich: So I I wrote an article recently about the AI bubble that everybody seems to be talking about, and you can make the case that in the hyperscaler segment of the market right now, there may be some overinvestment going on, but I really don’t get that feeling at all.
About the segment of the AI world that attendees at this event would be playing in. What are you seeing right now around AI infrastructure and where in particular is there the most market activity.
Cheryl: That’s a great question. And actually I, I think if AI is a bubble, it’s also the arrow that’s gonna just blow everything up and continue to [00:37:00] drive things forward faster.
We have a ton of vendor partners that we work with, and what we hear day in, day out is AI is not only the technology. That’s being used to help, solutions move forward faster and be able to change the landscape of how people interact with technology. But there’s also a lot of investment in creating AI solutions.
So think of it, AI as the technology that you’re building for and with, and what we see is that happens in, in any segment of the business. So whether you’re talking about networking and security, you’re talking about an infrastructure either albeit in the cloud or in a hybrid environment or down to the end points of things like I, PCs and, video capability of being able to translate, real time, like the use cases for it is endless and it’s really driving everything that we see and hear from our partners.
Erick: Yeah, Cheryl, it really sounds like AI is like the headline for [00:38:00] every story. Everything that people are thinking about infrastructure, opportunities to support, these data lakes and hardware. From where you’re sitting, where do you see some low hanging fruit opportunities for partners to take advantage of some of the AI solutions, not only for themselves and their organizations, but maybe to, introduce to their customers?
Cheryl: Yeah. At Ingram we’ve certainly invested a lot together with the hyperscalers, so I’ll start there because I think that the solutions, their name and their brand continues to be very closely tied with ai. If I think about our partnership with AWS, we do everything from services solutions and leveraging AI on workload placement, evaluation migration and assessments down into creating solutions together with a partner like AWS creating an agent as an example, and helping that get that into the hands of the end users.
So I think that. Just leaning in where the opportunity is in the infrastructure [00:39:00] space and through AgTech is gonna be a very I don’t wanna say it’s a light lift, but it can be when they lean on Ingram to help them do it.
Erick: I think that’s the next evolution, right? Going into AgTech opportunities, right?
Yeah. It’s
Cheryl: gotta be actionable. The AI always sounds great when you’re interacting, and I’m sure everyone has their preferred LLMs that you’re using, whether it’s a copilot or perplexity or Gemini. There’s a lot of different use cases out there, and it’s very reactive today.
You ask it a question, it gives you a thought provoking answer. Agentic is then, now how do you put that answer into work for you instead of just draft me an email, how do you make it and do send an email on my behalf.
Rich: That was something I wanted to get into into with you a little bit, the whole agentic opportunity.
And one of the things I was gonna ask is, where are we in terms of being able to actually deliver AG agentic solutions to customers? It sounds like that is happening now.
Cheryl: Yep.
Rich: Talk a little bit about Ingram’s role in enabling partners to assemble [00:40:00] and deliver ag agentic AI solutions.
Cheryl: Yeah, so we as mentioned and I have a main stage where we’ll be talking with partners about their experience and leaning with Ingram in a services capability, building out agents. And so it’s real time, but I think a lot of times when. Partners think about agentic AI or an end user. Does. They think it has to be a level four expert of creating, a fully automated autonomous machine that you’re en, that you’re working with.
And it doesn’t need to be that complex. And so our journey through both enable ai, our program of helping partners get comfortable with AI solutions, as well as the services that we can provide. Just start taking one step. It’s, instead of making it big and robust, just have fun. Try it, play with the technology first.
Build an agent. See what you think. Get some trust going with the machine. That always makes a big difference. And then, you can continue to scale out from there. And getting agents working with other [00:41:00] agents is when the technology is really gonna start booming.
Erick: So Cheryl, let’s pivot to security.
A lot of partners are really building out their security competencies, their solution stack for their customers. Obviously AI introduces a whole other opportunity for security solutions. Are there other under exploited areas where partners can take advantage of some security solutions and maybe distinguish themselves against their competitors from where you’re sitting?
Cheryl: I think that the security realm in general is is. Changing, we see AI playing good cop and bad cop. You can’t go on a social without saying is that a real fact? Or is it fiction? You see a video and it’s, is that a real video or is that, someone a deep fake taking over and giving you fake information.
So you really have to be cognizant about what kind of threats are happening. And then, what I love is our portfolio of vendor partners are coming up with the next gen [00:42:00] technology to help really bring solutions forward faster and keep partners and their end users secure. So you think of companies like Fortinet Proofpoint, Palo Alto, they’re all coming up with using AI to help their solutions be more secure against AI, potentially as a threat,
Erick: right?
Because the threat actors are leveraging AI for bad
Cheryl: things, right? Yes, absolutely.
Rich: So she, I’ve been writing about the Internet of things for years now, and it’s perennially been the partner opportunity. It’s just over the horizon. But, coming fast, iot, I believe is one of the technology solution to your group is responsible for.
So what is the state of play right now in iot? Where within that area are partners in fact going to market now with solutions that folks in our audience should be thinking about delivering to?
Cheryl: I would say certainly the network has been an area where it’s bringing the devices at the edge faster, closer to the source.
Being able to [00:43:00] process data, clo data closer to the edge. And so the network piece of it moving from, 4G to 5G and now seeing things like 5G wifi come out are creating a heightened use case for IO ot. So it’s not just, a smart home, but it could be smart manufacturing, it could be in healthcare, in banking, in finance, you see a lot more technology closer to the source, which is part of IOT and where we really see partners leaning in.
So there’s a big still opportunity out there for it. I think we’re seeing it become more normalized and now it’s how do you get it working smarter at the edge and faster at the edge and being able to bring more and more of those IO OT pieces together to create a unified solution.
Erick: Cheryl, for those folks in our audience that aren’t really as familiar with IO ot, can you describe some plays that partners can make from a professional services perspective in helping their customers understand [00:44:00] what, these devices are in their network, how they can assess them, maybe secure them, maybe, identify opportunities to add more professional services, maybe from even an MRR perspective?
Cheryl: Yeah, I think a lot of it from, if you think of IOT, internet of Things, it’s really how do you connect devices together to create a better experience. And so if you look at, unified collab space, and you wanna bring together the digital video together with your laptop, together with a smartwatch, together with a network, you need a lot of things to be able to work together to have it actually deliver the experience that you want for an end user.
And that in and of itself opens up a big services opportunity for our partners. So our vendors suggest, working with them to help bring pieces together. But then if I were looking at partner opportunity, it’s how do you help make sure that the experience is identified that you’re trying to create?[00:45:00]
And then do you have the capabilities to do that in-house? And if not, how are you leaning on a partner like Ingram Micro to help expand your bench and bring more and more things together?
Rich: Last question, Cheryl, in a bit of a change of topic, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you are a finalist for CRNs.
Woman of the Year award specifically as role model of the year. So congratulations.
Cheryl: Thank you. Yes. It’s a very humbling honor and I’m excited just to be part of the amazing group of women that are being nominated as well.
Rich: We need as many women as possible in this industry right now.
We need as many talented people in this industry as possible right now. And clearly you have had some success personally as a role model to women in the tech industry. For folks in our audience what are some tips some point or some things you’ve learned maybe that might help them be role models too?
Cheryl: Yeah, I think it’s, man, there’s nothing more gratifying than when you have the opportunity to give back [00:46:00] to the next generation, the next future leaders. And it’s not it’s not always just someone junior to you in your role or someone junior to you and experience. But it’s really how do you just bring together and bring up and support women in the industry?
We’re still underrepresented. We have great opportunities ahead of us. I’ve been very fortunate to have amazing support systems, both men and women at Ingram. Encourage me along the way, but there’s that give back. It’s finding time and being purposeful and intentional with what you’re doing and it’s being realistic on the opportunities are there.
Encouraging and giving confidence back to women who aspire to do more, to do things differently with their career is it’s amazing to see when it actually comes together.
Rich: Cheryl rang vice President of Technology Solutions, Ingram Micro. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.
For folks in the audience here who wanna get in touch with you, learn about more about you, learn more about the Technology Solutions [00:47:00] Group at Ingram, where should they go?
Cheryl: Absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. So I’m Cheryl rang and happy to connect with everyone and see how we can continue to.
To bring technology into the hands of the future.
Rich: All right. Thank you very much for joining us on the show again. Folks, Erick and I are gonna take a break here. When we come back on the other side, we’re gonna share a few final thoughts about both of these interviews that you just heard on the podcast here.
Have a little fun wrap up the show. Stick around. We’re gonna be right back.
And back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. Thanks once more to Jennifer Anaya and Cheryl rang of Ingram for taking time out in the middle of easily the Ingram’s biggest conference of the year to speak with us. And obviously we just spoke with Cheryl about some of the technologies that we were talking about at the beginning of the show in terms of AI and security.
And so very interesting to get the perspective of somebody [00:48:00] like her who is on the front lines, both on the vendor side and with the partner side, solution provider, MSP side in terms of where the opportunities and where the growth is right now and what folks in our audience should be thinking about.
Also really great to have an opportunity to discuss community with Jennifer a little bit. And what’s interesting about that and ties things. Together for me on this episode a little bit. I top down we were talking about at the beginning of the show. This is a venture capital firm.
It’s not a community, but it’s totally focused on the MSP space and everyone involved in it understands how important community is, how defining community is as an element in the MSP world. And it’s something that they’re building into their model as a result. They’re all sorts of kind of peer-to-peer things they do with the founders over there.
They a lot of their limited partners are former MSPs or former vendor executives, and they’re in the [00:49:00] process of setting up this new resource. That’s going to allow their portfolio company founders to tap into the expertise of people. You and I know really well from the vendor world and the MSP world.
And so they’re, they understand the power of community and they’re building it into their business there. And and, that just reinforces and plays into the community related part of the conversation with Jennifer.
Erick: Yeah, we, we all, we both appreciate the the community the MSP community and, for all kinds of different reasons, but, it feels like home to me and everybody’s giving and helping each other out.
So that was a great conversation with Jen. And then the, you know with Cheryl we’ve had guests on the show before, rich, that have talked about the AI opportunity does not simply. Software and the workflows and the agents and all this, but there is a really strong hardware pull through requirement to build this stuff.
And I [00:50:00] really am beginning to appreciate a lot more directly unlike I’ve done before, just how much opportunity there is. Because I remember, back in my MSP days, so aging myself a little bit, we made pretty good money selling, infrastructure upgrades and devices, device upgrades, laptops, desktops, servers and things like that.
I think AI might op, allow MSPs an opportunity to see a resurgence of more hardware sales as they’re building out the capabilities. Ai, ready or AI enabled hardware and storage and things like that. I’m starting to track that a little bit closer than I might have in the past.
Rich.
Rich: And it’s funny you say that because I believe it was last week Gartner posted some some projections and so some projections for where spending will come in 2025 and then looking ahead to 2026. And they have a list of six categories that they will traditionally use in these projections.
And it’s, desktop hardware and server hardware [00:51:00] and application software and so on. And you look at the year over year growth projections for 2025 and all of those different categories. And in the hardware related ones it’s maybe five to 9%. In the SaaS ones it’s maybe 10 to 15%.
And then there’s this one category they always use, which is just data center infrastructure spending. And off the top of my head, I don’t have it in front of me. It was something like 43% year over year growth this year. I. That’s where, and we know where this is coming from, right? It’s all about AI and the NVIDIA processors and the server rack and the cooling, the whole thing.
That’s where the ai, that’s where the AI bubble is inflating. That’s where the AI spend is right now. And anyone in our audience who has any kind of opportunity to tack into that with their customers, that’s where, that’s a great place to get started. As you’re building that business process optimization muscle with AI for, next year, 2027 and beyond, right?
Think about
Erick: processing, think [00:52:00] about storage, think about backup, and the size of the data just keeps getting larger and larger. So this is definitely a very attractive consumption based billing model. You know what I mean?
Rich: I do indeed. And I agree. And folks, that leaves us with time for just one last thing.
And animals, Erick, they’re just like us. They’re just like people. And we are animals after all. And if there’s any animal that is really most just like people, it’s gotta be a parrot, right? Because they can actually talk a little bit just like we can. But it turns out, based on a story coming to us from South Korea.
Some parrots at least, are just like people just like me at least because they love coffee. So it seems recently that the Korean Animal Rescue and Management Association was called by a coffee shop in South Korea. They said a loose parrot had wandered into the shop and it was stealing coffee from the patrons.
And they wanted somebody to come and take the parrot away. Now I will this [00:53:00] story ends. I will say for the parrot the proprietors of the coffee shop fed its snacks. People were petting it. So it, it had a great time. It had some coffee, it had some food, it got attention from people.
This rescue association comes and takes it away. I’m sure they found it. A good home. I will simply say this, Erick, the the bird is believed to have been a yellow crowned Amazon parrot which is native to Central AmEricka. Nobody knows how one of these wound up in South Korea the species is endangered.
Erick and I say, you better believe it is because if you’re a parrot and you come after my coffee in a coffee shop, you’re in danger. You caffeinated and foul you.
Erick: Nice.
Rich: I would share almost anything with a parrot, but simply not my coffee. Folks, that is all the time we’ve got for you this week on this episode of the MSP Chat podcast.
We thank you for joining us. We’re gonna be back in another week’s [00:54:00] time with our abbreviated 100th episode celebration in episode 1 0 1. Until then, I’ll remind you this is both a video and audio podcast, which means that if you’re listening to us right now, but if you’d like to check us out on video, go to YouTube, look up MSP chat.
If you’re watching us on YouTube, but you’re also into audio podcasts, go to Spotify, apple, Google, wherever it is. You get your audio podcast. You’re probably gonna find us there too. And wherever it is you do find us, please subscribe, rate review. It will help other people discover and enjoy the show just as you do.
This show is produced by the Great Rust Johns. It is edited by the great Riley Simpson. They are both part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered. They can do a podcast with you if you’d like. Podcasts really aren’t what we’re about. At Channel Mastered. We are all about helping vendors build, grow, and optimize MSP channel programs.
Check it out at www.channel Mastered.com channel. Mastereded has a sister organization called MSP Mastered. That’s Erick working one-on-one with MSPs to help them grow and [00:55:00] optimize their business. You can learn more at www.mspMastered.com. So once again, we thank you for joining us. We’ll see you in a week. Until then, we will remind you, as we always do that you can’t spell channel.
Without MSP.
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