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Coming to you live from Nerdio’s NerdioCon event in sunny Palm Springs, CA, Erick and Rich discuss why Anthropic’s new AI services venture for midsize businesses is the latest reason MSPs need to get moving on an AI strategy, as well as techniques for building a strategic, sticky AI roadmap for your customers. Then they’re joined by Nerdio President Joseph Landes for his take on underappreciated MSP opportunities in Microsoft 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, and Microsoft Copilot. And finally, one last thing: How Bebop the robot inadvertently delayed a flight to San Diego.
Discussed in this episode:
Robot passenger causes flight delay in California
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:
Rich: [00:00:00] This episode of MSP Chat is brought to you by MSP Mastered. If you like co-host Erick Simpson’s tip of the week, you’ll love the comprehensive growth advice Erick and his team provide at MSP Mastered, your go-to resource for overcoming business challenges, improving service efficiencies, selling more profitable MRR agreements, and increasing the value of your MSP business.
From sales and marketing, to service delivery, to hiring and retaining high-performing talent, MSP Mastered offers access to over 90 online master classes, 150 on-demand webinars, and 250 advanced MSP tools and resources, along with regular group coaching sessions and unlimited strategic email support, all for one all-inclusive membership fee.
Unlock your true [00:01:00] MSP potential by joining MSP Mastered today.
And three, two, one, blast off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the MSP Chat podcast, your weekly visit with two talking heads talking with you about the services, strategies, and s- steps you need to make it big in managed services.
My name is Rich Freeman. I am chief analyst at Channel Mastered, the organization responsible for this show. I am joined physically side by your other co-host, our CEO and chief strategist at Channel Mastered. His name is Erick Simpson. Erick, I am tempted to tell people we are coming to them this week from paradise, but where are we actually?
Erick: It does start with a P, Rich. It’s Palm Springs, California, where we are attending NerdióCon 2026.
Rich: And I’ve just gotta say we’re, for those who are listening as opposed to watching, we are doing this outdoors, and even in May, in, in my home territory of Seattle, it, it just doesn’t get like this.
This is really nice. So lots of [00:02:00] good reasons to attend NerdióCon some of which we’ll get into later in the show. We’ll be joined by Joseph Landis, the president of Nerdió, to talk a little bit about opportunities for MSPs in the cloud and in AI. But just the opportunity to record this out of doors on a day like today is pretty amazing.
It’s
Erick: quite idyllic, isn’t it, Rich?
Rich: It is. It is. Let’s dive into our story of the week, which appropriately enough is about opportunities in AI for MSPs, and I’m gonna talk a little bit about that, and then reveal why this is on my mind this week, and it has to do with more than just being at NerdióCon.
So we, you and I spoke last week during the Kaseya conference with Will Conner from Enforcer. One of the things we talked about with him was just where MSPs are in general with respect to AI right now, and he said, there’s a small percentage of people who really just aren’t even thinking about it much.
There’s a small percentage of MSPs who are building agents and doing really sophisticated things with their [00:03:00] clients right now. Most MSPs are somewhere in the middle, and the reason they’re stuck in the middle there right now is because they are looking for a strategy, something repeatable and scalable that they can bring to their customers.
And that is exactly what I’ve been hearing from the executive team at Nerdió as well. They’re seeing exactly the same thing right now. And in conversations with Nerdió, they kinda call out some reasons. There are a number of different reasons why this is true, but, some of the ones that they called out in particular people are still trying to figure out what’s the most effective monetization model as an MSP around AI.
People are still trying to acquire the skills, and they don’t have the time and necessarily the money to acquire the skills they feel they, they need to bring an AI offering to market. There’s something that I sometimes think of as the moving target syndrome, which is just when you start to feel like you know what’s going on, there’s some new model, some new product, and you’ve got something new that you need to learn.
So there, there are a lot of reasons. [00:04:00] And another thing worth probably bringing up is Rob Ray from Pax8 was on stage here yesterday talking about, what he referred to as culture debt, which is just the attitude change that some MSPs need to make to really pivot the business around this AI opportunity a little bit.
So there are some very real issues out there. If you are in that middle where you’re still trying to come up with a strategy that you feel like you can take big to your client base, you are far from alone. Nerdio would be happy to tell you they have some tools and suggestions that will help.
Enforcer just recently came out with something they’re calling Copilot Manager, which is explicitly designed to help MSPs build a go-to-market around AI. I did an interview with somebody I cannot name right now who has a product in stealth mode right now. It’s going to come out right at the beginning of June.
I have a hunch we’ll end up talking about it here on the show. [00:05:00] That product too is 100% about helping MSPs build something repeatable and scalable and secure in AI. So there are options now. There are more options coming. You absolutely need to be working on this. It’s okay if you’re not in market with something, a strategy yet, but you need to be working on this.
And this brings me around to why this is suddenly, not suddenly, but why it’s particularly on my mind this week. Because while we were here at NerdioCon, Anthropic announced that they are working with Goldman Sachs and Blackstone and Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic and Apollo Global Management huge private equity and venture capital firms.
They are launching some kind of a services business. There’s a lot we don’t know about this yet, but it is a services business explicitly focused on bringing AI to midsize businesses, not giant businesses. They’ve been working with the global system integrators, the Accentures of the world and some of the big [00:06:00] private equity firms.
But now they really are building something that is going to be very kind of hands-on, it appears, with midsize businesses. Anthropic calls out community banks, regional health systems, midsize manufacturers, companies that some of the attendees at this show, the MSP attendees sell to. And the thinking there clearly is they are in a race right now for market share in AI at businesses of all sizes.
They’re in a race with OpenAI and Google specifically, and they’re a little impatient. They’re not necessarily willing to wait for MSPs to make that happen and bring the Anthropic toolset to end users out there in the midsize segment. So they’re going to go out and they’re going to do it themselves.
This is essentially a new version of those AI consultants we’ve spoken about. Not MSPs, but AI consult- They’re gonna be talking to some of your customers out there, folks. So get it right, by all means, but get started on getting it [00:07:00] right now because this market is moving fast, and you’re gonna be competing with Anthropic and probably other companies as well soon.
Erick: Or try to identify, ways to partner early and be in the know, right? Knowledge is king Rich? So bringing this kind of information to your clients, having an, kind of an insider’s kind of a persona with your clients, knowing that, you’ve been, in the channel, in the business for so many years.
It’s your job to stay abreast of all these things, and making sure that you’re having these conversations with your clients, specifically during, strategic meetings. Again, as we always talk about on the program, Rich, trying to move those conversations and that value proposition into the boardroom from a boardroom perspective and business outcomes, and how are we helping these clients move the needle?
How are we helping them adopt these technologies that they so much want to adopt quickly, but in a thoughtful and governed manner and walking them through this? [00:08:00] So the MSPs that position themselves now as those thought leaders, as the folks that they, the clients can rely on to, to take them through this journey and realize these outcomes are the ones that are gonna stick with these clients, and they’ll be able to expand.
The ones that don’t will be replaced, not only by other MSPs now it sounds but by some of these big LLM companies themselves.
Rich: And at Anthropic and whatever it is they’re building with with Wall Street right now this will not be a managed service provider business. But just as you can expand beyond traditional managed services into AI services, they can absolutely expand from AI services into managed IT services, and probably will.
They, it they will start the conversation talking AI. Who knows where it ends?
Erick: Who knows?
Rich: You clearly, for the reasons we’ve just discussed, need an AI roadmap. All of your clients need a roadmap of some kind or another as well, which gets us to [00:09:00] Erick’s tip of the week.
Erick: Absolutely, Rich. And it was, the tip of the week is really about establishing a roadmap for each and every client, but really this becomes much more relevant now with AI. It’s imperative for partners to sit down and really think about having a roadmap that is different than how we’ve considered the work and energy and effort that goes into creating these roadmaps- And how to deliver them in the past.
I think that a lot of MSPs, counting myself, in, in this group, always thought that when we’re having QBRs with clients, we’re gonna show up with a strategic roadmap, right? It’s gonna be a 12-month, 24-month, 36-month roadmap that kind of governs the assets, the licensing, the warranties, right?
Kind of more of a how do we keep the technology and the infrastructure up with what the business needs. Today, Rich, it’s completely opposite now. With the cost [00:10:00] of gear being so high, RAM going through the roof, who knows what could happen with more tariffs and the cost of this equipment going…
getting higher and higher. We’re seeing a lot more movement around, virtual desktop technology and moving things into the cloud and securing data as more and more customers are leveraging SaaS applications and MSPs are being forced to govern and manage all those things. And now with the advent of AI.
So now when I think about putting together a strategic roadmap for every client, it’s more about business growth, business continuity, business resilience. We’ve been talking about that on the show the last few episodes really specifically. And thinking about maintaining that resilience in the absence of specific hardware costs and renewing hardware and things like that.
So now with the advent of AI and the advent of the cloud and the advent [00:11:00] of more and more virtual desktop opportunities, especially being driven through Microsoft, we’re now able to create a… an ROI savings and planning calculator that’s much different than the stuff that I used to use in my MSP, right?
It was more… If now it’s more about, okay, business continuity and resilience and security for AI could be the leading conversation that we have with clients today, and then mapping out what does the 12-month roadmap to help them attain the outcomes that are potential, that are potentially possible for them, but in a governed manner.
And when we s- And when we roll out a roadmap, Rich, it becomes much more real and tangible to clients. And when we’re having these conversations with them, we’re including them and their role in helping execute what needs to be done for us to achieve these roadmaps, which typically means approving budgets, right?
Giving us the [00:12:00] ability to engage with hi- higher level decision-makers in the organization to make sure that we’re mapping things correctly. And again, strengthening our value to the C-suite And the executives and being much more valuable that way. So again, throwing out the old roadmap designs that we used to, leverage.
Now it’s much more about how do we map a roadmap? How do we create a roadmap that helps you achieve your business outcomes in today’s environment of cloud and AI, right? And of course, we’re gonna manage licensing and all these other things, but it’s not a leading agenda item during these roadmapping sessions.
Rich: It’s interesting because just within the last, call it two weeks, I’ve come across multiple research studies that have shown boards are pushing C-suites to come up with some kind of AI transformation roadmap. C-suites are pushing middle management and end users [00:13:00] to embrace the plan that they are assembling with their technology partners.
So if folks build the kind of roadmap you’re talking about they are going to meet with a receptive audience among the people who own the budget and own the r- they are hungry for that kind of advice right now and that kind of assistance. And so yeah, that’s it… That’s going to be a way to generate some appreciation and gratitude and therefore stickiness with customers ’cause there is an enormous need and demand for that kind of a roadmap.
Erick: Yeah. It’ll change the entire conversation, and I will gamble and say that it will get folks to, to attend these strategic roadmatti- roadmapping meetings when pr- potentially in the past they would just blow off a QBR meeting and things like that because, we’re talking about something that is so vital to that business’ survival and growth, [00:14:00] and the promise of AI and agents and automation and things like that.
Just like we look at it from an MSP’s perspective, like wow, the promise of what AI can do for us in our MSP practice in identifying security threats, taking action from an autonomous perspective. We’re hearing crazy statistics like, “Hey, up to 70% of level one tickets will be solved by agentic AI in the future,” and the future means 90 days from now every time we hear it, right?
It’s It’s moving so quickly, and the MSPs that take the lead and require these meetings with their cl- clients and start developing these roadmaps are the ones that are going to be the most profitable and valuable in growing MSPs because now we’re expanding our revenue opportunities and our strategic value to that existing client base in ways that- po- potentially we struggled with before all of this happened, cloud, AI, security, now’s the [00:15:00] time.
Rich: All right. Speaking of cloud and AI in particular, we are here at NerdioCon. Let’s seize the opportunity here to spend a little time with Joseph Landis. He is the president of Nerdio, master of ceremonies here at the show. He’s gonna join us for an interview segment coming up right quick here, just after this break.
Stick around. We’ll be right back.
And welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat Podcast, coming to you live from the NerdioCon conference in fabulous Palm Springs, California, where we are very pleased to be joined by the master of ceremonies, a very busy man at this show. He is the president of Nerdio, Joseph Landis.
Joseph.
Joseph: Good to be here with both of you. Thanks for coming.
Rich: We are-
Joseph: Your, this is your fourth- Correct … NerdioCon. This is your second?
Rich: Second.
Joseph: Yes. Good. My fifth.
Rich: Yes.
Joseph: Yeah.
Erick: Yeah, we’ll never catch up.
Joseph: [00:16:00] Yeah.
Rich: We… This is, for us, this is always a great opportunity to catch up. I, almost no one in the industry is more plugged into the Microsoft cloud and now the AI universe than you gu- guys are, and obviously that’s very important territory for MSPs right now.
Yeah. There is a tendency to think about the Microsoft cloud as this already mature ecosystem. Yeah. And particularly Microsoft 365- … which is one of the things that you guys are deep in. And yet we’ve done some research at Channel Master recently about how few MSPs are selling, Purview or some of the paid Defender SKUs.
It feels like there’s some more upside and cross-sell possibility out there for MSPs, specifically in M365. Am I right?
Joseph: Rich, when I speak at different industry events, I love to show this slide that, that’s basically a scrape from some microsoft.com website- … which shows all the services and features that you get when you buy Microsoft [00:17:00] 365 Business Premium.
And I love showing you because you actually can’t read it because there’s so much that you get, right? So when you go out and you speak to an MSP and you say, “Oh, are you using Microsoft 365 Business Premium?” They say, “Yes.” Then you ask them what are you using in that suite?” “Oh, I’m using Teams, I’m using SharePoint, I’m using email.”
“Oh, okay. What about Intune? Are you using Intune?” “No, we’re not using Intune because, it’s not multi-tenant. It’s hard to use. It’s not really… Feels like it’s designed for MSPs.” “Oh, okay. What about Defender? You’re going out and you’re buying all these point solutions from many vendors so that you can secure your stack,” which is a great thing to do, no question about it.
What about using Defender, which actually comes as part of your subs- we’re not really using that so much because it’s not multi-tenant, it’s not really designed for us. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for MSPs to leverage much more of what they are already paying for in that 20 to $22 license than they [00:18:00] are.
And I think when we started Nerdio, as you recall, Rich, in the early days when we chatted with you, Nerdio was all about abstracting the complexity of Microsoft Azure, making Microsoft Azure easier for MSPs. And as, as time went on, MSPs said that’s really great, but, there’s this one product that 100% of us buy.
It’s Microsoft 365. Can you help us with more of that?” And that’s how we really got onto simplifying Microsoft 365 and ex- and exposing to MSPs, as you say, the ability to use more of what they’re buying and to expose more of that technology to their end customers. So that’s something I think that’s been quite fun for us and, I think, quite rewarding when we go out and speak to MSPs.
Erick: I couldn’t agree with you more, Joseph. I think when I work with MSPs and we start looking at what’s in their solution stack, and they’re getting all these different security products from multiple different vendors, and we compare it against what their clients are already paying for, and maybe with a little bit of a uplift on a license or two- they [00:19:00] can get a lot of that, reducing the complexity making it more efficient and, leveraging what their clients are already paying for some of these licenses. The challenge that I typically find is that MSPs see the Microsoft relationship almost as a licensed resale model instead of really thinking about building a program around going deeper and wider with all of these Microsoft solutions.
So how would you guide partners into thinking differently about this and not thinking of this as just “Oh yeah, we’re gonna m- manage those licenses,” and really thinking about growing and expanding and adding more additional pull-through services- Yeah … that they can charge even more for on top of this?
Joseph: Yeah, the license relationship exists, and I would argue that the license relationship that you explained, Erick, I kinda think that relationship exists not with Microsoft, but with their distributors. That’s really where they’re getting Microsoft 365 and Azure, and that’s a very, I would say, in some ways, a transactional [00:20:00] relationship.
Microsoft, and I know, Rich, we’ve talked about this over the years, and I spent 23 years at Microsoft, so I feel like I could talk a little bit intelligently about this. There, there’s never really been, at Microsoft, this center of excellence for MSP. If you were to look at the 200,000 or so people who work at Microsoft and you say who’s in charge of MSP?”
You wouldn’t actually find a person who’s in charge of it, right? Either on the engineering side or the sales and marketing side there’s no center of gravity there. More and more recently there’s become a, I would say, a realization at Microsoft that to effectively go after the SMB market the way to do that is through MSP.
So you’re starting to see more initiatives sprout up. The Lior Bela who spoke today at the event, he launched something called Intune for MSPs, which is really a dedicated effort by Microsoft to expose Intune to more MSPs to make sure that they’re going out and speaking to them about that.
One thing I would say, Erick, is I would encourage MSPs to try to get more [00:21:00] involved in some of those programs that Microsoft has, beyond just licensing, beyond just, “Hey, I’m a Microsoft partner and I’ve got this certification,” is really trying to understand where is Microsoft making investments, and latching on, whether it’s a training or a program or something else.
I think that’s a really great way for them to do it. Because otherwise, it just remains a transactional relationship, and honestly, the transaction’s not really with Microsoft, it’s with an indirect provider, like a distributor.
Rich: So we’re talking about cross-sell and upsell opportunities. I come to Nerdio Con, I’m surrounded by people who fully appreciate the value and usefulness of AVD and Windows 365.
In the wider MSP community, not quite the same case. So talk a little bit about the AVD, Windows 365 opportunity for MSPs right now, where that is, and maybe specific use cases, verticals where you’re really seeing people get some traction.
Joseph: Yeah. It’s tremendous. Of course, Rich, we were one of Microsoft’s launch partners for what, [00:22:00] of course, as was called WVD when it first launched.
For your listeners, if you’re ever trying to impress someone at a cocktail party, as I always say, you could ask the trivia question, “What was WVD called before WVD?” And most people don’t know that. It was called RDMI, right? Good, good to impress your friends. And then if you really wanna impress your friends, what was the code name of the project at Microsoft before it was called RDMI?
It was called Cowbell. So there you go, right? So now all your listeners have learned something to impress all your friends. So we were a launch partner for WVD, which became AVD, and as when we started Nerdio and we released, Nerdi- what became Nerdio Manager for MSP, really the only way to access a virtual desktop was through RDS.
And when Microsoft released WVD we very quickly moved to a situation where no MSP wanted to use RDS anymore because it was much more difficult to use, to license, it was more expensive, and everyone moved to WVD. So that really, I think, took hold quite [00:23:00] quickly. Then, of course, Microsoft released Windows 365 in the end of 2021.
I would argue that it was, in the MSP industry, a little bit of a slower uptake. People were kinda used to AVD and the flexibility around AVD. We always say that an MSP, they love taking advantage of the fact that some things are complicated because then they can add value add on top of that.
When you have something like Windows 365, which is slightly easier to use it’s a little bit harder to build value. But what I will say is that in our discussions with Microsoft they’re building really a lot more value into Windows 365. And I think you’re gonna see Windows 365 take a much greater hold in the MSP ecosystem in the coming months and years.
And there’s things that they’re working on that I’m sure we’ll do a future podcast about that I think MSPs will be very excited about. So the great thing I think about Windows Cloud is that yes, there are definitely verticals, there are definitely segments [00:24:00] of the community that seem to, it might take hold a little bit faster, but because it’s a platform product, it’s really quite applicable to almost anyone. You could take almost any vertical and say, “Yeah, I think, running a virtual desktop really makes a lot of sense.” And in particular, in this time I’m not as much of an expert, but I read your newsletter, so I know what’s going on in the industry with the cost of laptops really increasing, the cost of memory increasing.
It’s not so simple to say, “Oh, these five users they need new laptops. We’re just gonna order a new laptop from Lenovo or Dell, and it’s just gonna show up.” It’s actually a more expensive proposition. It might take longer for it to come. But you know what you could do? You could use the existing hardware and spin up a Windows 365 virtual, PC, and the user is off and running.
Another great scenario, right? Microsoft at Ignite this past year, they announced Windows 365 Reserve. So this scenario where someone spills coffee on their laptop, maybe they’re a remote worker, they would have to send that laptop in and get it fixed. With Windows [00:25:00] 365 Reserve, they have built-in BCDR.
They could essentially virtually take a Windows 365 machine off the shelf, whatever that means, and use it for 10 days till the new laptop is shipped back. So more and more, I would say, to your question, Rich, I think the scenarios and the opportunities for virtual desktops and desktop virtualization in general are only increasing.
Even as even for folks that may not wanna fully move to the cloud and they still need to run some workloads on-prem, now Microsoft has AVD Hybrid for those users as well, where they could run AVD on existing hardware. So I only see the TAM, or the total addressable market, continuing to increase for desktop virtualization.
Erick: So- First off, more cowbell, right?
Joseph: More cowbell.
Erick: Yeah that’s gotta be the name of this episode. By the way,
Joseph: If you walk around the building at Microsoft, I think it’s Building 83 now where they moved to, and you meet some of these original developers of WVD- … they actually have cowbells in their offices-
that they [00:26:00] were given for that project,
Erick: that’s hilarious.
Joseph: Yeah.
Erick: So I, as a former MSP and working with a lot of MSPs in, in, in my experience, the challenge that MSPs typically have when they’re introducing something new and different and unique- … is that, how do I have that conversation with my client?
And I can think of so many other use cases for, Windows 365, and what you just described is even when there’s a… So I’m thinking, Joseph, of the situation where a, a, somebody’s in the office and their machine crashes, and the focus of incident management is to restore business continuity as quickly as possible.
What you just said, grabbing s- another laptop or some other desktop or somebody that’s, on leave, and sitting that person down and then recreating their work environment so they can continue to get to work quickly while- Yes … while the other, Yeah … while they deal with the other situation.
Let’s talk about how to have a [00:27:00] conversation with a client when the MSP is managing the, the assets, and we’re looking at these older laptops and this old equipment. Like, how do we present the case to that business owner that says, “Hey, we’re gonna do things a little bit differently.
We’re gonna give you a lot more flexibility, probably better security, by introducing this concept”? Can you give us maybe one or two examples of how an MSP should introduce that into the conversation? Because I think it’s super valuable, but, MSPs, if you give them a checklist and a process, they’ll follow it.
But sometimes, they’re so busy firefighting and things like that, they really haven’t had the time to sit down and perfect it. So how would you guide them through it? Yeah.
Joseph: So honestly, I think you just did a great job explaining it yourself. We should take this video and send it to all of our MSPs.
So good job.
Erick: Thank you.
Joseph: Yeah, I’ll say something that whenever I’m asked that question, I say something that when I say it, it feels slightly controversial, or maybe cheeky, as they say in- … in the UK, but I truly believe it. And just the other day we had a great MSP walk into, the conference room here that we’re [00:28:00] sitting in, and w- we were talking about a very similar scenario, and what they were saying was they were saying, I really wanna introduce cloud to more of my customers, but, they’re a little bit reluctant.”
I said tell me, what’s their reluctance?” They really like to walk into the office and see the server there.” The blinking lights. The blinking lights syndrome, right? You said the blinking lights syndrome, and I sort of- Go back to the MSP, which again, maybe it’s not the right thing precisely to say.
Maybe there’s a softer way to say it. I’m like you know what? You’re the expert. They’re the catering company. They’re the accounting company.” They’re, like, experts in what they do, right? I think, I was asking this individual, “This customer you’re talking about, what do they do?”
“Oh, they’re a bicycle shop.” That’s great. They probably know a lot about selling bicycles or repairing bicycles, but they d- they don’t know a lot about IT, and that’s why they have you. So you have to actually go to them with as you said, two or three things that, that resonate, for sure, but then you have to also say “Hey, I’ve been an MSP for 20 years doing this.
[00:29:00] I’m up to date on the latest technology, and I’m here to tell you where we need to move as a business, or you are at risk of a breach. You are at risk of your server getting flooded in the middle of the night when it rains, and you’re actually not gonna be able to conduct any business because your data is not in the cloud.”
Or, “Hey, you’re asking me about all this new AI stuff. You’re not really ready for AI if you have all your data in a server under the receptionist’s feet at the front desk,” right? So- … I think you’re right. You should… You have to give them two or three things. Security is a great one, for sure.
The ability to take more out of your data and really drive your business forward is another one. And simply is, I think you said, business continuity, right? And go to them and say, “You know what? This is why you have me.” And I don’t know that everyone always likes that answer that I give-
but I, I firmly believe it’s true.
Erick: It moves the conversation more into the business outcome direction- … that, that business owners kinda respond to more than, “Pay us more for this new technology” kind of a thing. That’s right. Having that- That’s right … having that boardroom-type [00:30:00] conversation rather than the server room conversation.
And
Joseph: even that one, I’d say, Erick, there, there used to be, when we started Nerdio, Vadim and I got together in 2018, we were trying to overcome the biggest pushback was, “This is gonna cost me much more money to move to the cloud than staying on-prem.” And we had to show them.
It’s why we created the Nerdio calculator and put it for free on our website-
…
Joseph: Where we would show you, and we still show you, precisely what it’s gonna cost to move to the cloud, to take your existing on-prem environment and move it to the cloud per user, per month. And when you do it in an optimized way using Nerdio, it’s actually gonna cost less than staying on-prem, not to mention all the labor efficiency, and threat protection, and peace of mind that you don’t have to call someone at 3:00 in the morning when something goes down.
Erick: Right.
Joseph: So I think that it’s… yes, there are people still there who have this blinking light syndrome, for sure. If you’re out there, I… yes, come talk to us. But I think it’s the responsibility of the MSP to put together that story and say, “We’re… [00:31:00] Hey, this is why you have me,” right?
“This is why I’m running your managed services.”
Rich: So final couple of minutes- Yeah … before we get you off to the next thing you need to do- The next thing, yeah … at this conference. Let’s just talk quickly about AI because I met with Will Uminsky, Yep … from your team earlier. He said something that resonates with what I’m hearing elsewhere too, which is that there aren’t a ton of MSPs out there who think this AI thing is a fad.
They get that it’s important. Yeah. There aren’t a ton of MSPs out there right now building agents yet for their c- Yeah. Most MSPs are somewhere in the middle, and they’re looking for a repeatable, scalable strategy- … for AI. Give us just some thoughts on where they should get started.
Joseph: It’s… I would say it’s great to go to any kinda show, including here at NerdioCon, and you sorta go around to the different vendors, and everyone’s talking about AI, right? Everyone’s building capabilities into their products, right? So I think what we’re focused on is, at Nerdio, has always been being an outside in company, and going to our MSP [00:32:00] partners and understanding what challenges of theirs we can solve, and then building that functionality in.
So whether it’s, things like Copilot readiness and making sure that a customer’s data is ready for Copilot, or even using Azure AI technology in the background to do things like machine learning and computer vision so that when you’re building a desktop image, the computer vision can sorta look at it and make sure it’s, the image is correct.
I think that it’s a little bit similar to the message when we started Nerdio and we were talking about, hey, as an MSP, you need to get educated, right? You need to take the classes. You have to learn. AI is such a big topic. What does it mean? What do tokens mean? What are the different models?
What is an MCP server? I don’t think you could sorta jump ahead to building agents on day one. You have to learn it and play with it and understand what are the capabilities. That’s a lot of what we’re doing at Nerdio today. Of course, we have developers who are using AI to enhance our development capabilities, but actually, all, [00:33:00] 400-plus of us at Nerdio have licenses to use various, AI tools, and we’re learning the art of the possible and figuring out what we could do, how we could save time, how we could be more efficient, how we could derive more information out of our data.
So I think, it’s a little bit less about which AI tool I should go out and buy. There’s plenty of fantastic ones out there, including, Microsoft Copilot and others. I think it’s a little bit more about training the team and getting the team comfortable with being comfortable with AI.
Whatever model it is you’re using, just like I wake up in the morning and I do these things, that people are gonna say that’s gonna be expensive, and, we have to now pay to to run these different AI…” Yes, it’s gonna be a little bit expensive. It might be more expensive to not do it down the road, right?
So I always think education has to be the first thing- And once you educate yourself, then you’ll know for your MSP what is the thing that I need, what’s the tool that I need, what’s the capability I need, and it may very well differ by MSP.
Rich: So Joseph again, thank you very much for taking some [00:34:00] time to speak with us here in the middle of NerdioCon.
Thanks for having us here at NerdioCon. Of course. For folks who would like to get in touch with you- Yes … follow up on something you said, learn more about Nerdio- Yep … where should they go?
Joseph: Yep. So I always give you my email address, [email protected], J-L-A-N-D-E-S. Shoot me a note. Happy to answer any question or put you in touch with someone much smarter than me who can.
You could always go to our website, getnerdio.com, and hopefully we’ll see you around at the different events. And thank you both for being at NerdioCon. We really appreciate it.
Rich: All right, folks. Erick and I are going to take a quick break and then rejoin you here from sunny Palm Springs, California to share some parting thoughts about this conversation, have a little fun, wrap up the show.
Stick around. We will be right back.
And welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat Podcast, and thank you again to Joseph Landers the tireless Joseph Landers. This is my third [00:35:00] day here at the show, and he is everywhere at once it seems right now. We are grateful for him for taking a little time out and sharing his insider’s perspective on the Microsoft Cloud and Microsoft in AI with us.
Two quick thoughts for me. First of all I thought it was a great shout-out the virtual desktop tie-in to hardware, and the cost of hardware, and the memory shortages out there and the ability to help your customers navigate that by bringing this technology to them. And even if they’re not necessarily aware about issues like memory shortages and so on that’s coming their way sooner or later.
If you can just talk to them about extending the lifespan of the hardware that they got out there right now at a time when people are concerned about inflation and the economy. So that’s gonna be a great thing. So that I thought was a nice little reminder. There are a number of different reasons to be looking into AVD and Windows 365.
That’s a particularly timely one. And then, [00:36:00] we were talking before the interview a little bit about this concept of culture debt that Rob Ray brought up here during the show, and that’s where Joseph brought things at the end of the the conversation there in terms of the things that an MSP can be doing now as they move their way towards a scalable strategy.
And one of those is just really getting everybody on the team reoriented around AI as a- core part of how you deliver value, a core part of what you do for your customers. A bench- Es- essentially pay off that culture debt. That’s a useful thing to be thinking about now.
Erick: Yeah. It’s very interesting to think about that shift in culture and mindset, and get everybody kind of rallying around this, AI-driven, AI-led focus on how we look at business in general, delivering our services as [00:37:00] MSPs, and the types of clients that now, our ideal customer profile might even shift, right?
Because the MSPs that are looking to become, the leaders, right? These frontier AI firms in their markets, we’re probably not gonna be very interested in serving clients that just aren’t ready for AI. Because that value proposition doesn’t hit as the same way as it does with organizations that are really trying to do it themselves in spite of what their MSPs are saying about, securing and governing this journey into AI, and piloting it along the way to make it much more valuable.
It, it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out, and how big the gap becomes between the MSPs that just aren’t retooling internally. Or maybe, their teams are maybe just a little bit [00:38:00] too risk-averse to really s- put more than a toe in the water, versus those that are going, full bore.
And then the story of the week, Anthropic and these guys are going after these, small and medium, maybe mid and enterprise clients directly, and the additional pressure that puts on an MSP. So I think, we’ve gotta maybe take a a company retreat, MSP leadership, and rethink where we are, where the shifting sands are moving, and h- how do we adjust to h- take advantage of that?
And becoming more of this cloud first, AI first, security first led organization to meet those- Growing clients’ needs.
Rich: Yeah. The, so the good news per the top of the show is there really aren’t that many MSPs who are not retooling. The question is just how quickly are they retooling? And we should acknowledge before moving on quickly that both Erick and I understand [00:39:00] that is not an easy question to answer.
Are you moving too fast? Are you not moving fast enough? Everybody is telling you gotta move on this, and that is 100% true. Getting the pace just right is not not a simple thing. But that’s what you need to be working on right now is making the move and doing it at the at the safest speed and safest and fastest speed that you can manage right now.
Erick: It reminds me, Rich, of, the, people always say what do the flight attendants on the airline say? Put your mask on first. In the unlikely event we lose cabin pressure, you put your mask on first before you help others. Work on your AI roadmap and cloud roadmap and security roadmap first before you feel confident in building these out for your clients, I think is a, probably a good piece of advice.
Rich: And it leaves us with time for just one last thing. And speaking of airlines Erick, you will recall that just a few episodes ago we were talking about how as frequent flyers both of us, we’ve run into a number of interesting [00:40:00] reasons for a flight to be delayed. The last time we talked about this, it was in the context of what I believe was a Southwest Airline flight being delayed by about an hour or so due to a beehive in one of the engines.
Here’s another inter- interesting airline delay story involving Southwest. This one comes to us from Oakland the Oakland-San Francisco Airport. Southwest was gonna fly from there to San Diego. A gentleman named Eli Ben Abraham of Elite Event Robotics boarded the flight with Bebop, a four-foot tall, 70 pound robot that needed a seat of its own.
And Mr. Ben Abraham had purchased a seat for the robot. Originally the robot was going to get an aisle seat, There was some sort of ruckus involving the fact that there’s a rule, I don’t know if it’s a rule across airlines or just at Southwest, that you can’t put a carry-on item in an aisle seat apparently.
And fine. What if we seat Bebop at a window seat? That’ll work. And then all of a sudden somebody realized, wait a [00:41:00] minute, there are rules about batteries and the biggest possible battery you’re allowed to bring into the cabin. And it, all of this got worked out, and Bebop’s owner made it to where they were going by the way, but not until after the flight was delayed by I believe over an hour or so.
And I’m sure everybody was loving that on the flight, listening to this bizarre thing happen. I would simply point out of course for folks out there, th- this is one of those things, Southwest, you wanna think about just in terms of our inevitable future and what the robot overlords we will all be reporting to at some point are going to think of us.
Do you really wanna be going out there on the record calling someone like Bebop, say, a carry-on? They’re gonna remember. They’re absolutely gonna remember this happened. And we don’t like the size of your battery Bebop. Long memories, these robots. We’ll see if that turns out to have been a mistake.
Erick: Yeah, Rich. It’s it’s a whole new world as Aldous Huxley would have us think. [00:42:00] And- You know, we better be nice to these AIs and where we place these AIs and these robots and how autonomous they can be, so we’ve all seen those sci-fi movies that go horribly wrong.
Rich: Danger will runs.
Folks, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the MSP Chat Podcast. That’s all the time we’ve got for you this week. We’re going to be back in a week’s time with another episode for you. Until then, I will simply remind you, as I always do, this is both a video and an audio podcast, which means if you’re listening to us right now, but 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 are into audio podcasts, go to Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever it is you get your audio podcasts. You’re going to find us there too. And wherever it is you find us, please subscribe, rate, review. It’s going to help other people find and enjoy the show just like you do.
This show is produced by the great Riley Simpson, part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered, where we help vendors build thriving MSP channels. You can learn about [00:43:00] all the many ways we do that at www.channelmastered.com. Channel Mastered has a sister organization called MSP Mastered. That’s Erick working with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business.
You can learn more about that at www.mspmastered.com. So we thank you very much for joining us here in Paradise. We’ll see you in a week. Until then, please remember, as we always urge you to, you can’t spell channel without [00:44:00] MSP.
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