Episode 79: Pax8, Nerdio & Making AI Real for MSPs

Fresh from the floor at Pax8 Beyond 25, Erick and Rich break down one of the event’s biggest announcements: the launch of PAX8’s new Integrations Hub and what it reveals about the evolving role of distribution, marketplaces, and the push for vendor interoperability in the cloud-first era; and how MSPs are using AI to write RFPs, win funding, and transform their client relationships.

Then Erick is joined by Nerdio CRO Joseph Landes on the floor at Pax8 Beyond 25 for a wide-ranging discussion on best practices for building a profitable Microsoft Cloud practice, what’s next for Nerdio partners, and why automation is key to solving the MSP talent gap.

Discussed in this episode:
Pax8’s Integrations Hub: Marketplace Stickiness via Automation
Nerdio’s AI-Powered Cloud Management Platform

 

Transcript:

Rich: [00:00:00] And 3, 2, 1. Blastoff. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome for 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 am Chief Analyst at Channel Mastered, the organization responsible for the show.

I am joined as I am every week by your other co-host. Our chief strategist at Channel mastered Erick Simpson. Erick, how you doing?

Erick: I’m doing pretty good. Rich, considering the whirlwind of travel, you and I are both in the midst of. In

Rich: the midst of his right. And so last week folks will recall we were at the ConnectWise IT Nation Secure Event.

At, by the time this podcast comes out, we will actually have returned [00:01:00] home from an Ingram Micro event. But most of what we’re gonna do on this show is in regards to the PAX eight. Beyond conference in Denver this week. So yeah we’ve been making our way around these great United States the last couple of weeks.

And I don’t know about you, but I, as much as I love travel and events, I am looking forward to a little bit of time after this week off the road.

Erick: Yeah. A little bit of, a little bit of downtime slash. Frantically catching up time, I think is the way I’m looking at it.

Rich: Before we go right back out there again.

I will say this quickly. So our interview guest on this episode of the show is Joseph Landis, the CRO from Nerdio. That interview was recorded live in person, face to face with Joseph at PAX eight Beyond. Erick and I are in fact doing a whole series of different interviews.

With PAX eight executives, including Livy McElhaney, their chief product officer and Ryan Walsh, their chief strategy officer, a bunch of sponsors who are exhibiting their so much stuff, basically that we can’t [00:02:00] really put it into a regular episode of the show. I. So keep your eyes at what we’re gonna do.

These are shorter interviews than the ones we normally do, and we’re just gonna bundle a bunch of those together into a bonus episode. It’s gonna have some really interesting stuff in it from a number of interesting companies that we’re gonna be meeting with Dan Wensley from GTIA, a couple of different people from Black Point Cyber.

Good stuff. That’ll be coming your way. If you are a subscriber to the show, as I hope you are, you’ll just get this along with the regular episodes. But for now. Let’s dive into our story of the week. It comes to us from PAX eight beyond lots of news from PAX eight at the show, including a number of different enhancements to the PAX eight marketplace, the core online foundation for everything they do for their MSP and vendor partners.

Now, before I tell you what it is exactly, let me just rewind the clock a little bit to March when I was in Nashville attending an HP event. And while I was there I sat down and I did an interview with Sanje Sahu Senior Executive Ingram [00:03:00] Micro. He’s been on with us on the show. In fact. He and I spoke at this HP conference about a new addition to Ingram’s X Vantage platform, big core online digital twin offering from Ingram.

This new feature was called the integrations hub, capital I, capital H, and it basically was this really heavily automated tool that allows vendors on the one hand and resellers or MSPs on the other hand. To either create or take advantage of integrations very easily. So here we are at PAX eight, beyond just a few months later, Erick.

And what is one of the big announcement PAX eight makes? It’s an addition to their marketplace called Wait for it. The integrations hub, capital I, capital H very similar to it and I’m not, by no means it took PAX eight, I don’t know how long, but a long time to build the integration sub. I’m not saying they came up with this.

Since March because they saw Ingram do something. The contrary, I think what’s interesting about the PAX eight integrations hub [00:04:00] is that it speaks to you about where we are right now in the channel, in marketplaces, in distribution. Now, quickly, what all of the, both the Ingram hub and the PAX eight hub, what they basically do is create this kind of library of integrations that you as an MSP can just tap into.

Instead of of having to hope that you can get integrations from the different partners you work with and stitch their stuff together. Pax Eight’s gonna make that easier for you. They are doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. And if you are a PAX eight marketplace partner. It’s gonna be a very simple process to, to integrate the particular set of Pax eight offerings you use together with one another.

At launch, I’m not mistaken, there are 14 integrations in this library. There are a bunch more coming. Last time I looked, Ingram had, I think, 24, but they’ve got a little bit of a head start there. Very similar idea. There is a real value proposition for the vendors as well from this PAX eight integration hub as well, or the Ingram one for that matter.

Because [00:05:00] instead of having to rely on a whole series of one-off conversations with other vendors, Hey, let’s integrate our products. You can integrate. To the PAX eight marketplace. And then through that allow your partners to integrate with the rest of their stack much more easily.

Now what does this speak to in, in larger terms? We know that more and more most of what businesses do they do in the cloud. We know that the software they use to do that stuff in the cloud, they increasingly buy through marketplaces. We know that in order for all that stuff, they’re getting through marketplaces to be useful to them.

They’ve got to integrate it. Therefore you can take the next step and understand if you are a marketplace operator, if you are Pax eight if you are Ingram Micro. If you are TD Synex, for example, which has this whole other thing called Digital Bridge, I won’t get into. You are aware of you are fighting for market share right now.

You are aware of the fact that integrations are an important part of what make your marketplace [00:06:00] valuable, and so you want to make integrations as easy for your partners as possible because. The more you do that, and the more your partners take advantage of that, the stickier your marketplace becomes. If I weave together all of my partners, all the vendors I do business with as an MSP and stitch workflows together, and using your integration hub.

It’s not gonna be easy for me to walk away from that, and it’s gonna be a real solid value proposition for why I want to be a loyal PAX eight in this case partner. So it, it tells you a little bit about how the, the role of distribution has changed and the value.

Distributors can add to their vendor partners and their MSP partners, how that has changed and how integrations clearly just based on what we’ve seen in the last three months, has become a core strategic element for how all these marketplace place operators are thinking and looking to build relationships with their partners.

Erick: Wow. Rich, it’s, it certainly [00:07:00] feels like everything that we used to know and think about distribution and different routes to market and all that. Is completely changing in order to serve this kind of next version of go to market with partners and vendors completely and taking advantage of kind of that next generation of cloud, right?

We’re moving everything to the cloud. There are some, there’s still some on-prem stuff, but, we’ve been reporting on this. On the show for a long time now, is this migration to the cloud. After COVID and the fear of security fears being addressed by cloud providers, by platform providers and things like that, we are now fully in this migratory mode, which means that MSPs are having to manage.

Many more SaaS applications and, I don’t know, rich I’ll, I’m gonna tag [00:08:00] you in after I finish my comment and ask you, are the SaaS applications growing much greater than the on-prem applications? Because I know that a lot of the on-prem applications are becoming SaaS applications and integrating into the cloud.

So here’s my question to you, rich. So a ask, answer that one, but then is there an additional fee or some kind of requirements? For partners to participate in the PAX eight integration hub, or is this just, does that just come with the partnership itself?

Rich: As we are recording this right now, I’m still looking forward to the interviews with Pax eight folks that will help us understand that a little bit better.

But my guess is PAX eight will be handling it the same way Ingram does, which is basically to say you no, that this is not, they want you to take advantage of this hub. And so they’re not going to. Turn this into a revenue source. That’s not why it’s there. It’s there basically to get you engaged and keep you engaged and make [00:09:00] transacting through the marketplace as attractive and useful for people as possible.

Erick: And I would imagine that it’s also gonna reduce their costs, right? Because if you don’t have humans having to be involved in all of this, and you build the platform and let everyone participate in it and just provide support. And troubleshooting when there’s some issues. I think that, that adds a lot more efficiency and probably scalability to the whole strategy.

Rich: Yeah, and absolutely, and that’s something we really glossed over, but there’s a lot of automation in these integrations, hub hubs basically. I don’t know off the top of my head what the timelines look like at PAX eight, but I remember Ingram saying, if it’s a real sort of vanilla cut and dried integration something that might have taken, whatever weeks of coding you can do in a matter of minutes or hours they really have automated that process.

Yeah, they, that you’re absolutely right. This is a heavily automated, streamlined process that reduces costs for everyone involved.

Erick: Yeah. [00:10:00] Folks, the era of SaaS and cloud and platforms and integrations is upon us.

Rich: Now, needless to say the only way you simplify something as complex as integrations and automate it and streamline it is these days at least, is with a whole lot of ai and ai Erick factors into your tip of the week.

Erick: Yeah, you set it up perfectly rich. So let’s talk a little bit about how, continuing the conversation I should say, is a better way to position this that we’ve been having about. MSPs and taking advantage of the opportunity that AI can present while minding, risk and governance and things like that.

We’ve talked Rich on the program before about, MSPs still trying to figure out how to monetize ai and I think in the last, month or two, we’ve started talking to MSPs that are really kinda leading the charge. In, in creating these revenue generating [00:11:00] opportunities with AI for their client’s benefits.

So three quick ideas on exploring how to add more strategic value to your client relationships focusing around AI because like us Rich MSPs and everybody else business owners are. Are always looking for ways to increase their efficiency and, reduce noise, eliminate repetitive tasks and get help.

And AI has certainly been, the organizations that are leveraging AI are certainly promoting, the value of it and not for nothing. But some of these AI organizations are, some of the highest valued organizations in history, so let’s talk about this for a second.

Number one, partner with other AI experts, gurus. If you’re working with vendors that have a specific [00:12:00] expertise in ai, or you’re delivering products from vendors that include an AI component to the benefit of your clients, reach out and try to host some workshops. Or some webinars with these third party experts.

If you’re not yet an AI expert yourself, offer these AI opportunity workshops or webinars and invite clients to these. So what is it that you’re going to ask them as you’re call to action? At the end of the workshop or the webinar, you’re going to promote a pilot AI project. So help clients. Put together a scope of work that helps clients safely test AI tools and their positive benefit in their marketing operations or financial business units, right?

So get a pilot program going, show them how valuable it is, and they’re gonna pay for that pilot, [00:13:00] right? We learned this from enterprise sales. We’re gonna have a paid pilot and if we can deliver the results that we forecast. Then the client agrees then to roll more of those AI services through their entire organization.

Add your AI roadmap planning to your typical client solution roadmap or your VCIO or VCTO services. When you’re looking at their roadmap for technology you’re evolving already with cybersecurity. Now you’re adding this AI roadmap and component. So guiding clients on how to integrate AI into their overall IT strategy quarter over quarter, so that you can justify some budget phasing it in as you deliver that value.

They see the results. They’re gonna love it. They’re already using the majority of our clients are already using Microsoft products, so think about how easy it would be. To start doing [00:14:00] some programs around copilot and helping your clients use copilot. Now, if you’re using other ai offerings like, chat g PT or copy.ai, or Google or Amazon’s offerings, you can also weave those in.

But to me the copilot opportunity is probably the. A low hanging fruit opportunity that you can begin with because clients are already familiar with that platform and how can you get more out of something you’re already paying for is a very compelling way to position it.

Rich: Yeah. I wanna underscore the first of those three, the things you spoke about there.

The opportunity workshop, because, we did a panel session. We had a panel session at the CA Connect event very end of April, about a month ago. A little more than that as we’re recording this right now, and it, it was with four partners who are leading edge on bringing AI to their clients.

And one of the things they all agreed about is. You don’t just go to a customer and say, I’m let’s do AI together, right? It’s you, there has to be something specific that you are offering to apply AI [00:15:00] to, and you get to that point after a sort of opportunity assessment process where you talk about pain points in the business.

And and opportunities or areas that are right for streamlining. You look at the state of their data, you look at the state of their security, there’s a lot of upfront work that really needs to happen before the high impact AI solutions can begin rolling into a customer environment and you can, should absolutely must charge for that work.

That’s something. So like the opportunity workshop is maybe something that will wet appetites and get people interested. To engage in that, some of that preliminary work to identify some specific low hanging fruit system or solution or feature or something that you can then turn into one of those proof of concept kinds of projects.

And then what all four people on the panel said basically is all you really need to, all you need to do, but if you can. Achieve success with that [00:16:00] first small specific thing. They’ll just want more and more. The flywheel start turning at that point. But that the path you’re outlining, E Erick is what gets you to that point.

Wet their appetite, do that upfront assessment, get something in place there, show them results, and then have those planning conversations to keep building on that foundation.

Erick: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for tagging on the assessment piece because that’s really what you want them to say. Yes, to come in, assess, prioritize, where’s the most pain, where’s the most opportunity?

Like what, where is the opportunity for you to just knock it outta the park for them? What is the one thing that you can focus on and say, Hey, if we can, solve this and make this easier for you, or give you insights into this, these vast amounts of data points that you have that are unstructured.

Let’s structure some of that and then start leveraging AI to give you some more business insights. Again, rich, what I love about this approach is you’re really focusing on the, the strategic [00:17:00] business value that you provide to that client. Not a technical value, not a cybersecurity.

Oh, this is something that’s gonna help that client grow their business in ways they never imagined. A technology service provider, an MSP. To, to add value in those areas.

Rich: And just to give folks a concrete sense for what we’re talking about, that first, AI solution that gets people excited for more and bigger things.

Two of the four panelists in the session we did both randomly, it turned out did the same thing for their clients, which was an RFP and AI based. RFP solution. They had clients who had lots of RFPs that they were issuing all the time. It was a lot of repetitive work and manual work. And so they created local small language models, if you will, privately hosted with lots of data from these individual clients.

And then you do a little prompting and instead of having to spend several hours creating an RFP in a minute or two your AI kind of spits that out. You do that for a customer and they [00:18:00] see it work and they realize that their sales team is saving however many hours a week it is, then they start looking around to, finance and HR and all the different functions.

What could we do there? And what can we do that’s customer facing and so on. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re talking about here.

Erick: Yeah. Yeah. So many different ideas and opportunities. I remember another one that, that was brought up was, req what was it? The the nonprofits requesting funds going after fund building out budget requests or funding requests and things like that, where 90% of the document is the same and only 10% is unique and different.

And that’s what the AI is really helpful for is just standardizing all that. Yeah. Yeah. Writing, writing funding requests and things like that.

Rich: Wealth Books. As promised, we are about to be joined by Joseph Landis of Nerdio for a conversation recorded live from Podcasters Row at the PAX eight.

Beyond Event. Nerdio is all in on the Microsoft cloud that, [00:19:00] managing and administering the Microsoft Cloud stack. And especially the Azure Virtual Desktop piece of that and and related items is that’s all they do. And as a result. They probably know more about best practices for launching and growing a Microsoft Cloud practice than any other vendor I’m familiar with.

And so we’re gonna spend some time with Joseph talking a little bit about what does he see? What are some of those best practices he encounters in the Nerdio partner base. We’ll get into some other things with him all coming your way in just a few moments after this break. Stick around. We will be right back.

Erick: Joseph Landis, CRO, and Co-founder of Nerdio. Thank you for joining me today. Yeah, here at PAX eight beyond 2025 on the MSB Chat podcast.

Joseph: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Erick: How’s the show been so for you so far? It’s

Joseph: been great. What a show. Wow. This is the first time I’ve been to beyond my team. Went the past [00:20:00] couple years, but incredibly impressive.

Great to great to see the momentum and the channel. Always great to see such a diverse set of partners who are here from around the world, vendors like us. So it’s been great. I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

Erick: Yeah, it is. It’s a very unique event and they did, it was interesting. How they’re leading completely, in the direction of ai.

And I know that, is something that MSPs are trying to figure out, how do they make the most out of ai? How do they integrate it into their businesses? How do they promote it to their clients? And things like that. For for the audience out there that, for some reason, has never heard of Nerdio.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Nerdio, a little bit of the history of Nerdio on how it’s evolved so quickly. Yeah. And then what you’re focused on in your role.

Joseph: Yeah, we started Nerdio in about 2018. I was working at Microsoft for about 23 years and I met my co-founder, Vadim Vladimir Ski, and I left Microsoft.

We teamed up and we had this idea [00:21:00] that MSPs wanted to adopt Microsoft Azure, but were struggling to do that. So we thought, what can we do to abstract the complexity of Azure? What can we do to give the MSPs a set of tools to make it easier to build a cloud practice in Azure? And that’s what we did.

And in, in 2018, we released our first product, which eventually became known as Nerdio Manager for Ms. P. Our sort of unique take on it was the virtual desktop angle or desktop virtualization, and, yeah. Microsoft had released or was about to release a new technology called Azure Virtual Desktop.

So we had partnered with Microsoft and we had Azure Virtual Desktop built into our Nerdio manager product as well. So that’s really how we got it go. How we got going. And then, after operating in this world of Azure for a number of years, MSPs would come up to us and they would say, we love what you’re doing with Azure, but there’s this other piece of software that we buy from Microsoft that we could also use some help with.

Which is Microsoft 365 and really [00:22:00] every MSP on the planet’s using Microsoft 365. And as it turns out when you speak to an MSP and you ask them, Hey, you’re buying Microsoft 365 Business Premium, what pieces of it are you using? They typically will say, teams, SharePoint, email. But there are some really meaningful technologies that most MSPs don’t adopt right away.

Things like Microsoft Intune for device management, things like Microsoft Defender for security. So the next kind of phase for us in the MSP side, the next phase of growth was to also get after those technologies and to go after the broader Microsoft 365 suite abstract, the complexity of some of those technologies.

And now, we like to say that we help IT professionals really get the most out of their Microsoft cloud investments.

Erick: I see. And so how has the growth of. All the Microsoft suites of applications and services fueled nios growth.

Joseph: We’re tied at the hip with Microsoft, [00:23:00] right? I think their success is our success.

We’re not a multi-cloud company. We’re a single cloud company. And I think if there’s one company you’re gonna bet on their cloud. It’s Microsoft. So we’ve been. Fairly inextricably linked with them, and it’s been a great partnership and we have this unique partnership where it’s not just an ISV building on top of a finished product, but we also have, pretty deep engineering relationships with them as well.

So we understand what they’re building, they understand what we’re building and we’re always building technology on top of their native technology in a way to enhance and extend what they’re doing. Gotcha. Yeah.

Erick: So looking forward into 2025, yeah. 2026. What’s on Nerdio roadmap?

Joseph: Gosh, we like to say that we’re a very outside in company, and what I mean by that is when we think about what to build, what to do, what shows to go to, what training events to put on ourselves, we always.

Speak to our partners, speak to our customers, and we ask them where they think we should go. For example, our Nerdio manager [00:24:00] product that we spoke about we have a new release of it every six weeks with 10 to 15 new features that are largely recommended by. Partners by MSPs that we speak about.

I think you’ll continue to see a deeper build out of the Microsoft 365 Suite to make sure that we’re really covering not just the breadth, but the depth of what MSPs are looking for. And we have a few tricks up our sleeve as well when it comes to desktop virtualization that you’ll see.

Erick: Oh, looking forward to that. So what kind of challenges are Nerdio partners having in their MSP practices these days? What do you see? I.

Joseph: I think it goes back to some of the reasons we started the company. I think that MSPs all know they need to be in the cloud, and we established a relationship with PAX eight where we are today, of course.

Really when we started the company, and I always say that PAX eight and Nerdio have a lot of common DNA, they’re a cloud marketplace company. We’re a cloud company. But I think MSPs still struggle a [00:25:00] little bit to fully adopt the cloud. You still have a lot of MSPs who you speak with who are still going out and buying servers, and you ask them why are you doing that?

Exactly. You can have all your infrastructure in the cloud, you can have all your applications in the cloud. There’s plenty of great SaaS applications. That that are out there running. I think it’s a little bit about how to build a cloud practice and how to do it in a profitable way.

And I think that’s what we think about every day is helping MSPs not just with the technology, but really understanding the business so they can they can be profitable and they can create offerings for their customers that are more competitive than maybe the MSP down the street. Who hasn’t been taking steps like that.

Erick: Yeah, you make a great point, right? We’re talking about, here are the big buzzes AI and everything that’s moving forward, and we’ve got MSPs that are still trying to figure out how to get clients to the cloud and how to migrate them and things like that.

So what do you. Say to MSPs that are looking to, include some ai, maybe some copilot and things like that. What do you do to help them?

Joseph: So [00:26:00] co-pilot’s obviously a great technology for Microsoft. We have a lot of AI built into our products. Copilot is more of a. Package SaaS offering that Microsoft has.

But I think it’s exactly what you said. If you are an MSP that wants to incorporate AI into your practice, probably the first step is to get all your customers into the cloud. Sure. And have all their data in the cloud. If their data’s not in the cloud, you’re really not gonna get the full impact of ai.

To go out and buy a bunch of copilot licenses when most of your customers are in the on-prem world is, conflicts a little bit, right? Yeah. So I’d say, Hey, let’s have a plan to get all your customers infrastructure into the cloud and then think about how AI’s gonna be able to help you.

Erick: You touched on how Nerdio is leveraging AI internally. Yeah. Can you share? I.

Joseph: Yeah, I mean we, we use a lot of Azure AI in our products, for example things like AI vision, machine learning, things that will help MSPs and customers really understand what their spend is and be able to proactively.[00:27:00]

Or in a dynamic way, adjust their spend in the cloud. I’d say a lot of behind the scenes AI is what we’re doing right now, and then of course as a company, I think like any other company here, we at Nerdio think about how to incorporate AI into our own practices, right? Whether you’re a marketer, an engineer, a seller, there’s just so much opportunity today to leverage ai.

If you’re not doing that, I think you’re also behind a little bit.

Erick: So in working with your partners, Joseph when they’re talking about expanding, leveraging Nerdio into their client environments, what are some of the gotchas that you tell ’em to look out for?

Joseph: Wow. What are some of the gotchas?

I, I think when we started the company, one of the principles, one of the core values that Vadi and I had was educate first and sell second. And I think probably one of the biggest gotchas is, get all the information, learn ready yourself, train yourself before you take the next step.

And I think the great thing is, whether it’s [00:28:00] us at Nerdio or Microsoft, there’s. Ample more than ample opportunity out there. For example, we put on this these things called nerdio training camps. I spoke about it today in my breakout session. What’s a NERDIO training camp? It’s a very simple concept.

MSPs come for two days. Laptops open and they learn how to bring a customer into the cloud. We go step by steps through our product and they learn the the principles, the techniques of how to do it. I think that’s more important than leaping forward into something first.

Get the background, get the knowledge, make sure everybody’s trained because I think it’s not just about bringing one customer into the cloud, it’s about transforming your whole practice into the cloud and bringing. All your managed service customers into the cloud. So that’s I think that’s probably a gotcha that I see is people, they’re, everyone’s obviously very well intentioned but people sometimes rush a little bit and say, let’s get the foundation down first and then go, and you’ll be more successful down the road.

Erick: Yeah I agree with that approach. It builds confidence. It builds a little, confidence and competence in the [00:29:00] team, right? And so when you get that first deployment done, then it’s okay, it went just like we. We had planned and now we can go more broadly and bring all of our clients on board.

That’s

Joseph: right. I think there’s two, two mountains you have to climb. There’s getting your first client, and then I always say there’s getting your third client. Once you get your first client you realize it can work. Most MSPs then they watch it to make sure it’s actually working the way they said it was gonna work.

But once you get your. Third client, then it becomes a process, and then you understand how to run the process and then you quickly build a cloud practice.

Erick: So how about the tech shortage and MSPs having challenges, bringing in new staff. How do you help with that?

Joseph: So I think, the primary thing that helps with that is automation, right?

And I think since we started the company, we’ve always said that our product is so simple to use that you can take a level three tech, put them onto something that’s much higher value for your company and use a level one tech to run nerdio and really to run your cloud practice using [00:30:00] Nerdio.

So I think. The more you can incorporate automation into your practice and get rid of these repetitive tasks that people are doing, the less you’re gonna need text to do everything. But really it, I think it’s not about necessarily even eliminating people. If you need to do that, you need to do that, but it’s about taking your best people and putting them onto the highest value tasks that you have in your company.

Erick: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And for the MSPs that are looking to grow their businesses and move into the cloud. Yeah. What do you see in terms of the pull through from additional services that are able to deliver to their clients when they’re adopting solutions like Nerdio?

Joseph: Yeah. I can’t remember the statistic that Jay McBain always quotes.

It’s, it’s something like for every dollar there’s $6 or $7. I think Microsoft has a stat like that as well. Yeah. I mean I think it’s there’s tons of data on that. It just shows that like when you’re in the cloud, there’s just so much more that you’re able to do as a, as an MSP, there’s so much more you’re able to offer your customers.

I’ve never seen those [00:31:00] statistics quoted in the on-prem world. It’s always like you have to be in the cloud in order to do that

Erick: yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of MSPs also have a lot of clients that wanna keep. Some on-prem stuff, they wanna see the server or they have a need for that.

So how do, how does an MSP balance kind of the hybrid environment?

Joseph: Yeah, I would first start by asking yourself if you’re an MSP, why I, I definitely hear from MSP sometimes we we like to be able to go in. And see the lights flashing, or the customer really likes it.

It’s really the customer more than even the MSP. I think the MSP would prefer to not see the lights flashing. Because they’re the ones that get woken up in the middle of the night to have to fix something, right? Yeah. Which is reason enough, by the way, to move to the cloud. There are great solutions, that Microsoft has, there’s a solution for example, called Azure Local, where you could run Azure Virtual Desktop in a sort of hybrid.

Scenario both on-prem and in the cloud. So yeah, I think there are customers that, for whatever reason, need to [00:32:00] run certain applications on-prem and that technology exists, but I believe that still the overwhelming majority of things that a customer needs to do can still be addressed in a safe and a secure way in the cloud.

Erick: Yeah. And so for the MSPs that. Maybe are challenged in having that conversation with customers Yeah. That, they want to en encourage them to move to the cloud. Yeah. What kind of guidance would you give them?

Joseph: It’s very interesting, right? Whenever an MSP brings that up, the example that I first give is I ask them, I say what is your customer doing for office?

They say, oh we’re running Microsoft 365. I said that’s a cloud service that you’re running, right? So maybe go to the customer and let them know that all of the applications they’re running to really run their business on a day-to-day basis, all their email, all their spreadsheets, all their documents, all their PowerPoints are all in the cloud today.

So what’s preventing you, or what is the issue? Customer from [00:33:00] having your storage in the cloud. Why do you need a device sitting here that does your storage? Really what’s the difference, right? And oftentimes I think a light bulb goes off a little bit and they’re a, they’re able to have that conversation.

I think also, I’ve always said to MSPs that you’re the one that gives the guidance to the end customer. Mostly the end customer doesn’t know. And I don’t mean to take away from what a customer knows or doesn’t know, but most SMBs are focused on running their business, right?

So if you’re a doctor’s office, an accounting firm, a catering office, like that’s your expertise running, it isn’t necessarily your expertise. That’s why you have an MSB. So go with confidence to those customers and say, you know what it’s time for us to get rid of this server. It’s just time. Like we don’t need to have.

A QuickBooks server gathering dust under the feet of the receptionist at the front desk. Let’s just throw that up into the cloud, right? And most people, I think, will probably agree with that. If you come in as the expert,

Erick: right? So you’re having these conversations with your client, you’re understanding what [00:34:00] their business needs are, right?

Then you’re helping them make those logical decisions that maybe. Budgeting at some point in the future rather than waiting for that server to fail and go, oh no, let’s just try to put it up in the cloud. Now. That’s not a good approach, is it? Yeah.

Joseph: I think that a server refresh is always a great moment to be able to sell something, right?

It’s a logical point in time where you have to have the conversation with the customer. Hey, you know what your server is, it’s on its last legs. It’s time for us to do something different. We recommend that we don’t install another server in the closet of your office. It’s time for us to move things to the cloud.

So I do think it’s a good opportunity, but I do think it’s also good to have that conversation ahead of some catastrophic event where then people don’t have the time to really. Take a quick decision. Always.

Erick: And so did you see a big move to the cloud during the pandemic when everybody had to move in remote?

’cause I know a lot of MSPs like took advantage of that opportunity.

Joseph: Yeah, unbelievable. I would say that the [00:35:00] pandemic was an incredible accelerant to our business. In particular because we had really adopted desktop virtualization as a core focus of our company. And, organizations who who did not have that in place had to really.

Scramble, whether it was Azure Virtual Desktop or now Windows 365 or things like that. And I think MSPs really got a taste of what it’s like to not be able to go to a customer’s office. You think about MSPs even today who are in, hurricane areas, right? Or areas where there could be natural disasters.

Do you really wanna have to wake up and go to. Bail water outta somebody’s office to get to the server, which is gonna be a ruin. Let Microsoft worry about the infrastructure. They’ve got pretty good experience building data centers and running that stuff. Is that, I always wonder is that your expertise?

MSP running a data center? Yeah. I know. Sometimes it’s one server or two, two servers or something like that. Let Microsoft do that and you focus on some of the other value you could bring to your end [00:36:00] customer.

Erick: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Joseph Landis. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, one of our listeners wants to learn more about Nerdio where would you send them?

Joseph: So if they wanna learn more about Nerdio I think we’ve got a great website. Get nerdio.com. So we’d love to have you there if you want to get in touch with me. I always give out my email address, Jay [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you. We’d love to see you at one of our training camps.

We’d love to see you at our annual event, Nerdio Con which I know your colleague, rich Freeman has been to. Maybe you’ll come next year. Yep. And we’ve got a whole team of folks who I would like to say have walked in the shoes of MSPs. We tend to mostly hire people who have been in an MSP, who’ve worked in an MSP, who’ve owned an MSP, so we could feel your pain every day, which I think is the best way to.

To build a sustainable vendor who’s calling on MSPs.

Erick: Awesome. Thanks for joining us. I look forward to being at Nerd Con next. We would

Joseph: love to have you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Joseph. Thank [00:37:00] you.

Rich: Folks, that is all the time we’ve got for you on this episode of the show. We thank you so much for joining us. As always. We will remind you this is both a video and an audio podcast, which means that if you are watching us on YouTube, but you’re into audio podcasts, go to Google, apple, Spotify, wherever it is, you get your audio podcast, you’re gonna find us there too.

If you’re listening to the audio version of the show, you wanna check us out on video, go to YouTube, you’ll find us there as well. Wherever it is you find us. Please subscribe. Review, it’s gonna help other people find and enjoy the show just like you do. This show is produced by the great Russ Johns.

It is edited by the great Riley Simpson. They are part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered. They’re already willing and able to help you create a podcast of your own Podcasts, as it happens, are just a tiny. Piece of what we do for our clients at Channel Mastered. If you wanna learn more about the big picture, go to www.channel Mastered.com.

Channel Mastered has a sister organization called MSP [00:38:00] Mastered. That is Erick working one-to-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn more about that venture at www dot MSP mastered. So once again, we thank you for joining us. We’re gonna be back in a week with more for you.

Until then, we will both just remind you that you can’t spell channel. Without MSP.