Episode 92: Sherlocked

Erick and Rich discuss Microsoft’s newfound interest in SMBs and their MSP partners as a source of cloud growth, plus three tips for avoiding client onboarding chaos. Then Rich is joined by Michael George and Dee Zepf of Syncro for a conversation about Microsoft’s large and expanding role in the world of SMB technology and what it means both for managed service providers and vendors like Syncro. And finally, one last thing: proof from a BBC nature documentary that dolphins like getting stoned as much as humans do.

Discussed in this episode:

Microsoft blog post: Addressing multi-tenant management challenges for MSPs with Microsoft Intune and partner innovations

Dolphins ‘deliberately get high’ on puffer fish nerve toxins by carefully chewing and passing them around

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] And 3, 2, 1. Blastoff, ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the MSP Chat podcast. Your weekly visit with two talking heads, talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big in managed services. My name is Rich Freeman. I’m the chief analyst at channel Mastered of the organization responsible for this show.

I’m joined side by side in person for a lovely change by your other co-host, our CEO and chief strategist at Channel mastered. His name is Erick Simpson. Erick, how you doing?

Erick: Doing pretty good, rich all things considered. Here we are on the road at yet another event where we get to do the MSP Chat podcast from the event together, which I always look forward to.

Rich: So stick with me on this [00:01:00] ’cause this is gonna get a little bit confusing, folks. So we are at the TD Synex since Fire 2025 event in Greenville, South Carolina. Actually in real time, we just wrapped up two separate interviews with TD Sinek executives. We recorded them and we’re recording this on the day when these shows normally go out.

So what, we’re not gonna have time to get those into this episode of the show. The next episode of the show is gonna feature those TD cynics interviews. Meanwhile, an interview that I did last week with Michael George, the CEO of Synchro is gonna be on this show coming up in the middle part of this episode.

And we are gonna be talking, I’ll be talking with Michael George. About synchros thinking around Microsoft and Microsoft’s role in managed services and how Synchro is building around that. So it all comes together one episode or another. And this is why it pays to be a regular listener.

Erick: Absolutely. Sometimes it confuses even I, what interviews and what episodes and what segments we’re doing. But I’m glad you cleared that up for me, [00:02:00] rich, because, I was texting with you last night trying to figure it out. And thanks for getting it, getting my mind

Rich: wrapped straight around it. It only took us 12 hours and we’ve got it nailed down folks.

In the last episode of the show we spoke about Synchro strategy and how it is built entirely around Microsoft. And at one point during that conversation, I briefly mentioned that there was this bombshell announcement from Microsoft last week. About how enforcer and nerdio were going to be their go-to partners for multi-tenant use of the Intune management system.

Since then, in the days since then, we’ve had an opportunity to interview executives at both Enforcer and at nerdio and get a little deeper, understand better what that is about. And as I’ve come to understand it Erick, I actually think it’s an interesting development for anyone in our audience here right now.

Any MSP who is selling to SMBs who is interested in the degree of Microsoft’s [00:03:00] seriousness about the SMB market and the managed service channel because that enforcer NIO announcement is a direct reflection of increasing interest in both SMB and MSP within Microsoft’s the what I have learned is that this initiative came out of the Intune group.

So the folks within Intune looking for the next big growth opportunity. And it’s not even just Intune, it’s really the Microsoft Cloud organization. They’re well aware of the fact that there are a lot of Microsoft 365 subscribers out there who have features, programs, functions that they’re paying for, but not using.

It’s part of the subscription, but they’re not taking advantage of it. And, from a stickiness perspective, that’s never a good thing. You want people to get as much value as they possibly can from the subscription. Meanwhile, it’s precisely because there are all these other things that you can do with Microsoft 365 that the end users out there don’t necessarily know about.

There is an opportunity to sell more Microsoft 365 into [00:04:00] the market to maybe upgrade people to the business premium level, or from business premium to E three to E five. So they’re seeing a big growth opportunity around Microsoft 365, specifically within SMB. They know that they can’t scale inside Microsoft to drive it.

They need MSPs to help them pursue that opportunity. And they also know MSPs will not do that unless they have a multi-tenant management experience with Intune. And so then Microsoft went out and they looked at the various vendors out there who could help them with that. At least as an initial wave, they selected enforcer and and Nerdio and so that the initiative came out of the Intune group.

I am told though, that there are names were not specified, but there are executives at a very senior level inside of Microsoft who are directly aware of this initiative. Directly interested in it. You’re gonna see Microsoft increasingly in the weeks and months [00:05:00] ahead. Pushing MSPs.

It’ll be interesting to see how many folks in our audience are on the receiving end of this. But Microsoft is gonna be really heavily promoting the idea of, using the Infor search products or nios products to go multi-tenant with Intune and to drive more Microsoft Cloud business in these areas.

So it, and I should also say that both Enforcer and Nerdio are plugged into the product groups at Microsoft and, they were both close before, but they’re plugged in a different way. They’re getting their MSP partners plugged in. I was told independently by both vendors that Microsoft is really looking for input from MSPs building the Intune product and other pieces of Microsoft 365 around that.

So if you’ve ever felt as an MSP that they’re happy, it’s take your money or take your, but they don’t really care about us. They don’t really pay attention to us. This is an initial indication that might be changing, [00:06:00] and it might be changing for reasons that initiate that begin with their opportunity to make more money.

But it will be interesting to see how far this goes and what kind of potentially positive effect it has on MSPs.

Erick: Rich, it feels like a different Microsoft to me. Th that collaboration, that partnership with these vendors for good, for the MSPs in a way that I don’t recall seeing in the past.

Not that I track every bit of news like you do Rich, but it feels like a completely different sentiment within Microsoft. A different position, different vision. Collaborating here, and I’m, obviously MSPs need the multi-tenancy, so Microsoft either had to build it, buy it, or partner to deliver.

It sounds like they’ve done the very latter.

Rich: Yep. Absolutely. And I there’s [00:07:00] a one final sort of moral of the story. So obviously most of the folks in our audience are MSPs. Most of our clients, all of our clients at Channel mastered are vendors. And there, there’s a lesson to be learned because as I say, Microsoft is gonna be going out and essentially or at least to some degree, selling on behalf of, in Enforcer and Nerdia.

There are a lot of vendors who would like to have that kind of most favored nation sort of status. And I think it’s important to point out this isn’t something that happened overnight. And I remember this from when I worked at Microsoft a long time ago. You have to invest. And make sure that Microsoft knows and can see and can feel that you’re invested.

And if that happens over time, and if you’re really adding value for them, they start coming back to you more and more. And then when an opportunity like this comes along you are the name that that comes up basically. And so if you are somebody out there who is interested in doing more business with Microsoft, I think a big lesson here is just [00:08:00] be a giver instead of a taker.

And do that for as, as long as you can. And quite often that really will pay off for people in the long run.

Erick: The good news is it’s a win-win, win all around. It’s a win for Microsoft. It’s a win for their partners, a win for the vendors that are participating in the program.

And it’s a win for. The end customers that the MSPs are serving.

Rich: Totally agreed. So I’m entering channel mastered and working with vendors, we happen to be working with a vendor right now, in fact on many things, including their onboarding process. And I’m guessing that’s why you’re tip of the week.

Erick takes us to onboarding.

Erick: Rip from the headlines, right? As many of these tips of the week tips of the weeks, tip of the weeks go sometimes. Yeah. So Rich, obviously many MSPs are experiencing platform sprawl, vendor sprawl, tool sprawl, whatever you wanna call it. Inconsistent procedures, miscommunications internally and [00:09:00] with their clients, but in no area is this most risky then during onboarding new clients.

So if we get that wrong during that initial. Onboarding phase, then that customer satisfaction drops dramatically. There. There can be some buyer’s remorse or regret on the part of the customer. Of course, the MSP is scrambling to try to regain the trust that they built all the way through the marketing and sales phase of the relationship.

If we do a great job in getting a client to say, yes, rich to our services, they’re, they’re on a high, we’ve set an expectation that now the service team must not only meet, but exceed and, just delight the client so that allows for more additional services and post group sales opportunities down the road.

But when the client is at this [00:10:00] high and they’ve agreed and they’re excited, and then the service team faces challenges during onboarding, not a good day for anybody. So three quick tips. What to think about to try to get your onboarding house in order. Tip number one, playbooks an onboarding playbook.

It should be required at every MSP what and standardized. We wanna standardize on what we’re delivering. We wanna standardize to the playbook so that if a client has something weird or outside of that playbook when during Discovery Rich, we can call that out and identify that as either an exception or something that we need to think about maybe addressing separately for them, or ripping and replacing whatever that thing is and dropping in our standard solution.

We want a, I used to call it a a minimum standard of what the infrastructure needs to look like from a hardware perspective. Your hardware of choice from [00:11:00] a licensing or version perspective for operating systems and any other. Applications that we’re managing. And then simply from a, what’s the minimum requirement of the services that we are delivering to that client in order for them to be our client.

As rich, I like the good, better, best approach to sales. And the good approach, I always say, needs to be the good bundle of services has to be the minimum that every new client has to subscribe to, including your managed services along with cybersecurity in order to be your client and remain your client.

So that playbook has to be built from that perspective, and we need to execute against what the playbook says. Number two, centralize all communications and documentation in your PSA and documentation platform. We should have everything. Documented correctly and a process for how we document these things.

And a a naming convention for things [00:12:00] like our organization needs to follow a naming convention for everything that we’re doing. So every technician and engineer and the sales team knows exactly what that is. And the V CIOs and CTOs and CSOs so that we have a common communication and a language that we understand and we can communicate consistently with our clients and allows us to track performance accurately.

So all of that centralized in the documentation platform and our p and or our PSA and then holding regular internal huddles with our team after action reviews on how onboarding went communi and having those meetings with our clients gauging their satisfaction if something happens during onboarding, that is an exception.

We need to implement change management promptly and quickly. In fact, rich. A, an onboarding, onboarding, a new client is a project. So we have to have a kickoff, a meeting with that client to explain to them what happens. And typically it’s three phases, right? It’s, it’s discovery, it’s [00:13:00] provisioning, it’s training, and then it’s go live.

So we’re gonna walk the client through each of those phases, say, here’s what happens during each of these phases. Here’s what we expect when we find something that forces us to do something different or outside the scope of that, here’s how we’re gonna manage change. And we’re gonna communicate that with the client and get the client to understand that they are a necessary participant in onboarding.

This is one thing, rich that I’ve found, many MSPs. Aren’t really reflecting to their clients. Rich, you’re my new client. You have a very important and deliberate role, you and your team during onboarding. We’re doing this as a team together, so this way it’s not a lot of finger pointing.

We’re working together for the positive outcome of onboarding that client, getting them prepared to receive managed services for all the benefits and security that they expect. So we’re doing that together. So we’re gonna have that huddle and then we’re gonna have phase reviews like a project with the client while we’re doing internal huddles with the team.[00:14:00]

And then we’re establishing when go live date hits only after provisioning and training their team, the client’s team, your team, and our internal team on the SLAs, on what’s the priority one, priority two, priority three issue, how we escalate and all that. Can we then say, our goal live date is October 1st, let’s say.

During that time, rich we’re delivering service on a best effort basis because they’re not completely onboarded yet, but they need service. So a couple of quick tips there. Hopefully that helps some of our audience members really re-look at how they’re onboarding their clients to make sure that we don’t churn ’em out early.

Rich: A lot of wisdom there. A few things that kind of came immediately to mind for me and one you were talking about playbooks and I remember, yeah. Our mutual friend Carl Power, Chuck and his brother Manny. They’re very much in agreement with you about the importance of that. And they love the idea of checklists.

Yep. Where you’re [00:15:00] making sure that you’re doing that the same things and everything gets done in the same order for each client consistently.

Erick: Yeah. They have a consistent experience throughout that process. Yep.

Rich: And the other thing that you’re talking about, keeping communications centralized.

And I was just thinking to myself as you were talking about that. So you are onboarding a client. The client is new to you. You are new to them. And anytime anyone is new to anything they’re a little bit uncomfortable. They’re easily confused. And something as simple as some inconsistency in terminology as you were saying, can accentuate that confusion.

Confusion is not a good feeling. You don’t want people coming out of the onboarding process, even a little bit uneasy. And so something just as simple as let’s keep all the communications in one place. Let’s make sure we know what’s been told and let’s make sure everything we told them in the same way.

It sounds like a nitpicky thing, but it can be a really big issue in terms of customer experience.

Erick: And, I’ll share one thing, rich. [00:16:00] Our one of the ways, when we had our MSP practice. That we, one business against an incumbent is we actually promoted our onboarding process. During the sales phase of the conversation we had 115 point checklist.

It’s probably one of my, most downloaded assets. On the MSP Mastered platform, it’s 115 point checklist on onboarding a client. Nowadays we don’t use paper checklists and spreadsheets. We have documentation platforms and PSAs and things like that, but we would show the client exactly how we phase it out, why it’s important, and they were like, wow, my existing IT provider had nothing like this.

Or, what would happen if a client is interviewing a few MSPs competitors of ours? Guess what? The first question they would ask the next person to come in to pitch them on their services was, tell me about your onboarding [00:17:00] process. We need Sure. To really hammer home how important and critical that is, that was and why we did it, and why we’re and how good we are at it.

And that closed more business than anything else. In some cases that, that we would do not, not of course the value that we bring, but that onboarding is a definite lever. Think about that. MSPs, it’s use that as one of your unique differentiators. Get going after new business.

Rich: Interesting. Folks, it is time to do a little time travel here. We’re gonna take a quick break when we come back in the other side. We’re actually gonna go back in time to an interview I did with Michael George from Synchro at the MSP summit. And then at after that interview segment will come back in time to the present day where Erick and I are at the TD Synex Conference.

But first very interesting, timely conversation with Michael George from Synchro coming up in a moment, stick around. We’ll be right back

[00:18:00] and welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast, our spotlight interview segment where we are very pleased to be joined in person here at the MSP Summit by both Michael George and Dza. They’re the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Synchro. Thank you so much for joining us here on the show,

Michael: rich.

Thanks for having us.

Rich: You’ve been on the show before, Michael. This is the first time for you. Dee I’m guessing a lot of folks in our audience are familiar with Synchro, but for those who aren’t and who aren’t familiar with you Michael, I’ll start with you. Tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Sure.

Michael: In 2011, I was the founder of Continuum and had a fantastic eight year journey there. And part of that journey started with Dee actually joining us. So she was our chief product Officer. I’ll let her introduce herself to you in a moment, but so you can imagine when I joined Synchro Dee was the first person to join me on this journey, and that started about 18 months ago.

Dee: Great. Yeah. Hi my name’s D Zeff. I’m Chief Product Officer [00:19:00] at Synchro. And I think you also wanted us to tell a little bit about Synchro as a company for folks that aren’t familiar. And so Synchro is an all-in-one platform. We have a PSA, an RMM, and also Microsoft 365 management, all built into one simple platform for MSPs.

And here at the show we also announced that we are now offering a Microsoft backup product for Microsoft 365.

Rich: Yeah we are recording this on September 16th. This is officially launched day for that product. I definitely wanna speak about that with you folks, but as context and background for that you have a sense of vision, Michael, for where managed services is going and the increasingly dominant, it’s already the dominant name in in the SMB channel, certainly Microsoft, but you have a feeling that Microsoft is really going to be a dominant presence in a lot of different fields within managed services.

So talk a little bit about what coming and the thinking and logic behind

Michael: that. Yeah. And [00:20:00] you used the term vision, and if you don’t mind me just pulling on that thread for a moment, in 2017 when he and I were at. Continuum together. We had a vision for the industry around cybersecurity, and we were out touting that at a time when people said, that’s not a small business market problem.

And lo and behold, today it is a security led industry. And a vision is something that you have great conviction in and you know it’s going to happen, but you see it before it becomes obvious to the rest of the market. And that is the same place we’re at today. In the Microsoft world, Microsoft has 98% of the operating system in the SMB.

So they are already a very present part of the world that [00:21:00] MSPs live in every day. But they’ve stood on the sidelines for all these years. The industry evolve, and it has evolved to a place where today there is between 14 and $16 billion of third party vendors that are working in and around that Microsoft environment to solve issues.

RMM, PSA, cybersecurity and everything else. At the root of Microsoft because they come from the large enterprise space. They have all of those tools. They are in many ways, the ITSM, they have Defender and Sentinel. Those are the largest cybersecurity company on the planet. They built out Intune and even Lighthouse and have slowly been closing in on this business, and they’ve gotten to a place now where it’s important to really.

Become that ITSM platform for the managed [00:22:00] services space, and it’s important for a number of reasons. Again, it’s become a big enough category now for them to care about it, number one. Number two is without it, they’re missing. In the s and b, they’re missing. In the North American economy, $33 trillion economy it, 44.3% of that economy is in the SMB 98% of the $17 trillion.

Pan European market is in the SMB. So Microsoft wants to deliver now a genix solutions. They’ve been declarative, they’re betting the company on ai and they need. The managed service provider to be that delivery partner. They are a channel company and the MSP is gonna be the channel of these solutions for Microsoft to this market.

So that’s why they’re closing in now and are gonna be providing the ITSM in it.

Rich: So from, talk a little bit about what a typical MSP out there [00:23:00] right now who is supporting a lot of Windows devices and a lot of Microsoft 365 customers. What is it that they’re not doing, not taking advantage of that they should be?

Sure. Actually,

Dee: sure. Absolutely. So one of the things we’ve seen is, Microsoft over the past few years has really done a lot of work around making licensing really accessible to the Ms. P and to the small business, right? Business premium. Now the security add-on, and what we are seeing is a lot of MSPs are still going out and getting point solutions for things that Microsoft has included in these licenses they’re already paying for in many cases, and they’re just not utilizing.

And part of the reason is because Microsoft doesn’t always make it. Easy to manage these things, multi-tenant, across all your clients. And so we’re trying to really help MSPs take advantage of those licenses and that, that they’re already paying for, in many cases to really just fortify and secure their environment and use, best in class [00:24:00] from Microsoft.

Rich: And so from the MSP’s perspective, if they are, if they begin taking advantage of these things that they’ve been paying for anyway, so the implications for them are greater profitability, et cetera. The what’s the business impact basically?

Michael: Yeah, first of all, it gives them an opportunity to simplify their stack.

And if you look at a one or $2 million MSP, they have 10 or 12, sometimes 14 different tools they’re using from all these third party pro providers. And to DE’s point. Most of which aren’t needed. If you do, you work inside of the core Microsoft application set that they make available to the market.

Again, it’s just they’re not built for the SMB, they’re built for the enterprise. So that’s why they’ve been so inaccessible. So we are basically refactoring things and making it, easier to acquire, to activate, and to [00:25:00] engage. And this stack simplification is a huge factor in profitability.

And it’s, without profitability, you’re not gonna have growth.

Rich: Four-ish months ago if I’m correct, you introduced Synchro XMM which you’ve built around this idea this vision of where managed services is going and Microsoft’s role in that. So for folks who are not familiar with it, tell them a little bit about what Synchro XMM is and how it plays into this idea that you can simplify your stack and you can build around these Microsoft technologies.

Dee: Yeah, absolutely. So we launched Synchro XMM and it’s really taking all of the capability that you would typically find in your PSA, in your RMM and layering in Microsoft 365 management all under one umbrella. And what we’ve seen working with our partners is that they are able to now piece together things that used to be managed [00:26:00] separately.

They’ve been able to remove a lot of the point solutions from their stack. And so they’re, and then they’re freeing up their time and starting to look at more proactive security offerings in and around the Microsoft stack. So for example, offering security assessments on the Microsoft tenants looking at secure score and offering services around those.

And so part of consolidating the stack and freeing up technician time and freeing up just brain space for the business is allowing them to now lean in and offer higher value services as well.

Rich: Now we’re talking about greater profitability by taking advantage of licenses that you’re already paying in for and so on.

But historically speaking, a lot of MSPs, they think the deeper I go with Microsoft, the less margin. That the Microsoft software itself is not where the margin is. So what is your sort of recommendation to the MSP around how to simplify the stack, manage it around synchro XMM [00:27:00] and actually add, add value do the things that are going to be high margin, high profit, high growth, presumably around ai.

Dee: Yeah, so I think what we’ve seen and is our MSPs doing a few things, right? So one is adding these security services, in and around the Microsoft stack, so they’re able to not only assess the environment, have project work that comes out of that assessment to make sure they’re getting their clients to where they need to be, but also running a lot of AI readiness projects, right?

A lot of these end clients aren’t even quite ready to fully deploy AI solutions. They have a lot of work to do upfront to make sure they have data readiness and that they’re, they have their environment set up to do that. Using XMM to manage the whole environment is giving them the time to now offer these additional services and make more, differentiate themselves, offer more business value and make more money.

Rich: Like I said before, we’re recording this on the official debut [00:28:00] day of the new cloud backup solution. So maybe start with the need, the use case that you folks identified and then the solution you built to address it.

Dee: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve been as you’ve seen, leaning in to Microsoft and really helping our partners to manage the environment and what we heard loud and clear were two things.

One, in, in thinking about. Microsoft 365 and specifically Entra id, that protection of the identity layer, both configuration management, which we already have and monitoring, but also being able to back it up was critically important to them. And so to have that built into the same platform where they’re already doing this other work allows them to essentially set it, forget it, it’s automatically a new user gets added, they get backed up, you can bill for them automatically.

And so it’s no overhead to their business, but it provides that critical line of defense for security. And so that’s what we heard loud and clear. And so we went and we built a fully integrated [00:29:00] backup.

Rich: What from your standpoint, from a synchro standpoint, is differentiating about it from other cloud backup solutions out there?

Dee: Yeah, I think there are three things that I think about when I think about why the cloud backup solution is differentiated and why it’s really valuable. So one is, it’s really comprehensive, right? So we have a full entra Id backup all of the objects in Entra full Microsoft 365 data, including things like planner and other things that other products don’t cover.

So it’s very comprehensive, it’s integrated, so it’s really easy to set up, to bill to do all of those things. So there’s no overhead. It’s really simple onboarding and it just works. And then third is we are offering a really predictable monthly user price that is unlimited storage. So it’s predictable pricing, so you know, you can make money off of it.

Rich: And it’s unlimited based on a fair

Dee: use policy. Yes. Yeah.

Rich: Without necessarily naming [00:30:00] names, I am curious if there ought to be for a wise M-S-P-O-S need for point solutions going forward, what does the future, what we’re feet away from an expo hall full of point solution makers?

What does the future look like for some of those companies?

Michael: Not so bright candidly, and but, just look at most any other industry and how it evolves. And there’s just so many examples, but I’ll just you look at things like, salesforce, salesforce.com was built for the large enterprise, right?

They were and that was a very inaccessible, system, A CRM for the small to medium business market. But slowly and surely they got, they refactored it and everything else. They made some acquisitions and they brought that product. Now down to even the smallest of businesses, but of equal importance is, there was an ecosystem around them of third party tools.

And they, I’ll pick any of them. E-commerce for instance, you had [00:31:00] all kinds of companies, BigCommerce and Demandware and all these other companies making, filling a room up like that on the salesforce.com dance floor. And they turned around and went and bought Demandware and got in the e-commerce business and emptied the room.

And I think that people are going to get aligned around a certain set of, features and functions in and around the Microsoft world, and they will Sherlock. Third parties out. And if, for those who are not familiar with it look up that term. These are companies that do this very predictably.

They basically start making features and functions available that third parties are providing so that it now becomes a very difficult place for third party products to exist in. So that’s why we’ve made a very conscious decision to be part of really the contraction and the [00:32:00] consolidation that is going to occur in this market.

Rich: So I’m new to the Sherlocking term, but I’m gonna I’ll look this up after the conversation, but are you seeing any sherlocking happen now per, perhaps around the defender family, for example?

Michael: I don’t know about specifically in the defender world per se, but just in general, look at what they’ve done with Intune, lighthouse, these all are starting to look and feel a whole lot like the ITSM for the managed service provider.

And in fact and look, it’s doesn’t mean they’re gonna empty. The entire room out. There’s a lot of room for a lot of companies to do things in this space. I, they are not going to be great at things like enablement and training and teaching people how to sell and market and do all those things in this business.

So I think there’s a huge community opportunity in and around the space, but there’s just a lot of tools and technology that, if you just think logically [00:33:00] around the roadmap that these products are on today, I, I think it would be difficult to be on that road when they start coming down it.

Rich: Without connecting this question to anything that you’ve just said there, I do wanna ask you about the Alliance with threat down that sure. Folks just announced a few days back. So tell folks a little bit about what that is to start.

Dee: Yeah, sure. And so I think there’ll always be, we’re talking about leaning in and working with the Microsoft stack and as Michael said, we do see that there’s gonna be a bunch of consolidation.

With that being said, there’s always room for an innovative point solution, right? They’re always gonna push the market forward and be at that cutting edge. And so looking at a company like Threat Down that has really strong, security offerings. And so for us, bringing them into the synchro marketplace, making it so it’s really easy to provision them and also to bill your clients for them, we wanna offer our partners choice.

We’re not gonna force anyone to go down any path. And so we’re pretty [00:34:00] excited about the partnership with them. We think they have a really nice product, and so we’re excited to see where it goes.

Rich: Now I know, at least I think, I know they’re not the only vendor only security vendor in the marketplace.

That’s right. How selective, expansive are you being? There, there seems to be a whole spectrum there where maybe on the ConnectWise side of things, they have hundreds I think of integration partners enable, from what I can pick out as being a little choosier in terms of who they go deep with.

How do you guys think about the volume of partners and how deep will you integrate with them?

Dee: Yeah, some of it is, there’s a little bit of bandwidth and those things as well as being selective around who we get close to and who we work with. We have an open API, so we welcome, integrations of all shapes and sizes in our ecosystem.

But in terms of folks that we do a deeper integration with or that we offer as part of our marketplace, we will walk before we run. We’re not looking to get every vendor in this space, but we’re [00:35:00] also, so we’re being selective. We’re working with companies that we see have good opportunities that we’re hearing, most importantly things that we’re hearing from our partners.

We wanna bring them what they ask for. And so if we are hearing a lot of asks for a certain vendor, then we’ll spin up conversations with them and look to bring them in.

Rich: From a security standpoint, generally it, is that potentially a build, buyer or partner kind of scenario for you guys? Or do you see yourself doing more partnering?

Dee: Right now we have several in terms of E-D-R-M-D-R, we have several partnerships. We also have an integration with Microsoft Defender. And so we have a bunch of choice for folks in our system today.

Rich: Michael, the last time you are on the show I think was about six months ago, maybe just to touch more than that, which is half a year in people years and two years in AI years.

And AI is what we talked about in that last interview. So I’m just curious as somebody both of you both pay very close attention to ai. [00:36:00] Have you seen things in the last six months that feel significant new, that are exciting or on your mind about where AI has progressed?

Michael: Yeah. No, it is. It’s interesting. As you mentioned how fast it’s moving. I’ve recently used a AI tool to look up what Moore’s law is in AI terms. Moore’s law was Jeffrey Moore, the founder, one of the founders of Intel, who said every two years things will double at chip speed.

Chip speed at chip speed, that would be chip speed. And in the AI world, they say it’s about seven months. Everything will double. And we’re certainly seeing that in many dimensions. The areas that we are focused on in particular is really two categories. First is there’s a. There’s a whole science around what’s called autonomic computing and also we’re the topic to, [00:37:00] study and look up.

We’ve been working in that field, for, since we got here, essentially in automating a lot of the absolutely, rote traditional pattern matched efforts that technicians do in their daily life. And, it, computers are far more capable of remediating computers than humans are in certain areas, and this is in and around the OS patch management, et cetera.

Do we really need a human being to determine that a disc is getting, full and slow and we need to run a disc defrag? Or can a system do that? Can we tell whether or not somebody is trying to, they miss their password and if they’re doing it at human speed and not looking like a, an external threat of any sort, and that it’s some automated bot doing it, using MFA. Can’t we just automatically encourage a [00:38:00] password reset? These are all things that you really don’t need a human being to do. Or a printer offline. These are all like pretty rote mundane things that happen in everybody’s everyday life that we think is going to get automated through AI technologies.

And we’re working on those very things. That’s at the autonomic computing level. And then the other side of it is the area that, Dee touched on, around agent solutions and how MSPs are going to have an opportunity to have a new level of engagement with their. Customer first is just getting them AI readiness, which very few small businesses are.

So there’s a lot of work around that aspect of it. But then, particularly for those that get focused in specific vertical markets, there’s going to be a new category of agentic solutions for things like healthcare, financial [00:39:00] services, the legal profession and so forth. And we see the MSP having that trusted business advisor relationship with their end customer.

Just like in a large company, if you look at a. 2000 person law firm today. It’s their internal, their CTO, and that’s who they’re looking for to come up with solutions and how to use AI in their practice. In a 20 person law firm, they’re gonna be looking to their MSP for that expertise. And so I think this is a, we call it the golden ticket.

This is the new opportunity for an MSP to have a completely different relationship, a truly trusted business partner relationship with the ms, with their end customer. That’s not just around technology, it’s actually around their business. This is about how can I help you as a 20 person law firm? In your field leverage AI [00:40:00] technologies to improve your own productivity and efficiency and performance and all of that.

So these are the two categories. It’s really at the autonomic computing level, and then it’s at the agentic, solution level, and we’re staying out of the middle ground, if you will. We’re really, those are the two categories that we are. Maniacally focused

Rich: on the autonomic side. I How fully autonomous do you expect RMM functions, managed services management to get, and how comfortable would you advise an MSP eventually go?

I still talk to a lot of MSPs who will go only so far in letting the agents where the software just do the job. Sure. How far do you see that going? And what would you advise MSPs? They should be,

Michael: preparing. Sure. I, I can tell you some of our targets because I think you’re quite right.

I think the concept of a fully autonomous MSP is a little bit like a fully autonomous [00:41:00] car. I happen to have a Tesla and I use it on certain cases where I take my hands off the wheel, traveling slowly in traffic and so forth. Would I go 75 miles an hour and, start reading the newspaper?

The answer’s no. And in, I think same is true in this, in this world, particularly where you have things like security, like the stakes are high in getting these things wrong. If you’re reducing sort of the performance of people’s systems, if you’re making them vulnerable from a security perspective, that’s not a.

A good place to be and are put in the hands of this new generation of autonomic capability. I will give you again some of the goals that we’re driving for, which is by the end of 2026, leveraging our platform, we will have 30% of what today a level one or a level two technician performs in their daily [00:42:00] task for their end customer on the system side by t by the end of 27.

Our goal is to have it at 50%. And the, those are reasonable levels of achievement for, again, the autonomic computing that we’re talking about. But think about taking 30% of the labor out of that end of the equation and being able to apply it in areas that where your engagement now is with your customer and you’re working on their business problems and all of that as opposed to, getting, getting printers back online or disc defragging and all the other things.

So those are the benchmarks that we’re driving for, and I think that those are reasonable expectations for this market.

Rich: To go back to the other part of the AI equation that you were talking about before, where MSPs will be truly delivering business value by creating healthcare industry specific ag agent [00:43:00] solutions and so on, for the MSP in the audience who’s thinking, I don’t.

Applications. I don’t know how to build agents and so on. I hear companies like PAX eight kind of talking about creating a marketplace of agents and it’s a question of weaving things together. What is your sense for the opportunity for the MSP to create those?

Michael: That’s quite right.

If you ask a, a typical MSP, they aren’t necessarily software developers and they don’t necessarily think in those terms. However, the language being used for development is the English language. These are tools. Now if you look at like copilot and something, these are tools that you can use, essentially common language and use, prompt engineering and everything.

Things that, so that’s number one. This is not a scary development place where you’re down into, really deep code level, development number one. But I will tell [00:44:00] you that the MSP is really good at solving problems. They like to find out that a customer has an issue, today in the world of a cybersecurity breach or whatever, these are the things that they love to solve those problems for. And the way to approach this market is we are gonna seed, our customer base with opportunities to have kernels in these. There’s five vertical markets that really matter most. We mentioned a couple of them. Healthcare, financial services, legal.

Construction and nonprofit. And by seeding the market and giving one of our MSPs an opportunity to go sit with small RIA registered investment advisor and say, let me show you a few examples of how to use copilot for a financial, for your business. [00:45:00] They get to sit there and do that with the customer and the customer will sit there and say, that’s great.

Can I use that or have that? But they’ll also sit there and they say, boy, if you can make it do that, can you make it do this? And that’s where I think MSPs are going to excel because they are problem solvers. And it’s just a new dimension to the problem using technology to solve business solutions as opposed to using technology to solve technology, issues.

Rich: So when you talk about creating these seeds essentially, so these are like templated solutions in the markets. You identified that you can build a conversation, right? If the customer wants to use it as is. Great. And even if they don’t, if that gets them thinking about other things, that’s the idea.

Michael: That’s

Rich: exactly the idea.

Michael: And I think they’re, I think that is gonna work really well. I think people need to embrace that model. But but I think that the MSP market is actually very [00:46:00] well suited when they get their mindset around, I’m here as a problem solver.

I don’t need to know the financial services industry as well as my customer. But they know it and they know what they want, and they know what they need. They need to be inspired to see a solution that solves a problem in their category, and they’re gonna see it and they’re gonna get very excited. And they’re gonna, they’re gonna say, again, just as I gave you that example, they’re gonna say, that’s terrific.

Can you make it do this? Or Can you make it do that? And the answer’s gonna be yes.

Rich: Are these seed solutions products or are they resources you’re making available to your partners?

Michael: Yeah, they’re they’re not finished products. They’re really kernels and they’ll serve as usable examples, I think is probably the best way to categorize it.

Rich: Will you be selling those to the MSPs or through the MSPs, or is this sort of a partner resource?

Michael: Some of the business [00:47:00] model things are yet to be determined candidly. We’re trying to figure that out. And we’re figuring it out with our customers, our MSP partners and we’re gonna experiment.

We’re willing to put some of that stuff out there, listen and learn, and see how they do and maybe ride alongside of them and get them up on their feet and we’re gonna see what works and then we’ll double down on it then.

Rich: You expect to have something for MSPs to bring to their customers next year?

What’s the timeline look like?

Michael: Yeah, I think 20 20 26 is it’s gonna be a year where, and I don’t think we’re gonna be alone. You mentioned PAX eight. I was thinking about this and and doing this and but I think 2026 is gonna be a year where these ENT solutions are gonna start making their way into this market.

They certainly will be from us.

Rich: Big day for Synchro XMM.

What is on the roadmap? What can you speak to publicly that comes next?

Michael: We’re not gonna we, we [00:48:00] like to underpromise and overdeliver, so I think we will just say that it is, most likely going to be in more in the security space.

And I think if you look at the amount of, we, Dee and I were joking earlier about, M-D-R-X-D-R, all the Rs that are out there in the world. The. Cybersecurity is a big problem, but so many of these solutions get you 70 or 80% of the way there, and that way you end up having to go license something else and to fill in that gap.

And now you have some overlapping capabilities and all of that. I think you’re gonna see a level of consolidation, some of it through acquisition certainly. But I think that is a category today that the stack needs to be simplified and reduced. And so just like everything else, we are in the same way that Microsoft is betting their company on ai now, that is, [00:49:00] they’ve made that very clear.

We’re really betting our com, our company on Microsoft. We, so anything we do will a, be in and around security in the Microsoft world is what you’ll see from us next.

Rich: Big hints. This will keep people busy thinking about what could that be? ’cause yeah, it points in certain directions. That’s great. Michael d thank you so much for joining us, taking time out here at the show.

For folks in the audience who wanna get in touch with you or wanna learn more about Synchro XM or the cloud backup solution, where should they go? Yeah,

Michael: Please, come to our website, it’s synchro msp.com. And also, we have so much confidence in the usability of our product. I think to this day, we’re still the only company where you can actually, sign up and get a download and get a free trial of our product without having to talk to a salesperson.

That is a critical factor because as we [00:50:00] know, because of the overfunding in this industry, there’s lots of really pretty hyped up salespeople that are out there, ambitiously selling their product. We let our product speak for itself, so come to our website, download a free trial, we’ll be there and available to help people.

So we don’t, we’re not abandoning them, but we think that people in the, they’re in the technology field and they’re pretty smart, and if they have an opportunity to try, our product, they’ll license it and make a business out of it.

Rich: Fantastic. Michael George Gisette from Synchro.

Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Yeah, rich. Thank you folks. We’re gonna take a break here. When we come back on the other side, I will be rejoined by Erick and he and I will share some some final 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 [00:51:00] MSP Chat. Po MSP Chat podcast and welcome back to the present day here at the TD Synex Inspire 2025 conference. One last thank you to Michael George and d Zep, the Chief Product Officer at Synchro for a very interesting conversation. That they are betting that business around the proposition that, EE even to the degree you think about the degree to which Microsoft is a huge presence in the world of SMB technology and managed services.

Today. They’re betting everything on Microsoft becoming even bigger. And and this, becoming an issue, not just for MSPs who are gonna also have to orient a lot of what they do around the Microsoft Cloud, but also for a lot of other vendors. Like synchro, Michael invoked this term during the interview that I had not heard before, but have since looked up which is sherlocking which it turns out is this phenomenon in the Apple world, but it’s not confined to the Apple world where they’ll see a a vendor partner do something interesting.

They’ll [00:52:00] build it into one of their operating systems, and you’re just, you don’t have a market anymore. And Synchro is betting basically that there’s gonna be a lot of that, particularly in cybersecurity out there as Microsoft gets even bigger than they are today and security, and they are huge in security.

So it, they have a very pointed particular point of view over there about how what the future holds for Microsoft and managed services, what do you think having heard it directly from Michael and D now, what do you think?

Erick: There’s one thing that I’ve. Definitely we’ll bet on is that Microsoft will be getting bigger.

So you, you led with that and I’m like, yes, they are gonna get big. And you know what? Take advantage of the opportunity now and look to the future and identify the opportunities to grow with Microsoft. You’re a Microsoft partner. They are definitely doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on adding more and more value to the [00:53:00] services that they’re offering in their existing license SKUs in Azure and M 365 with security.

I gotta tell you, rich, I, a few years ago, Microsoft, there were other vendors that were delivering these services and then Microsoft began adding those services into these existing SKUs and I’ve spent probably the last couple of years helping partners. Re-look at their solution portfolio, their bundles and things like that.

And, identifying opportunities where Microsoft licensing could cover some gaps in their client’s security posture at a very cost effective rate. Maybe just a, an upgrade of a license or two and some of these security services now, do a really good job. And, going up to E five on the M 365, that is that is all the kit and caboodle kit of security from the Microsoft [00:54:00] perspective.

Partners that are betting on Microsoft and looking to Microsoft to lead in, in that area. Probably a good bet.

Rich: All right. That thought leaves us with time for just one last thing, folks and, uh, dolphins, Erick Dolphins, they are intelligent creatures. They’re so like us in so many different ways.

And it turns out one of those ways is that like many members of the human species, they like to get high. It turns out, and this was discovered by makers of a documentary for the BBC that in the wild they observe this behavior. Dolphins will sometimes seek out puffer fish. They’ll grab a hold of them.

There’s a very particular way that they know to manipulate the puffer fish so that the puffer fish will puff out. Puff up, yeah. Yeah. And, but, and emit this toxin. Toxin, yeah. That makes the dolphins. Hi. Hi. Are you kidding? And they’ll do this. For fun. And then and apparently I haven’t seen the documentary, but you can tell once they’ve done [00:55:00] this that they’re a little stoned, they’re having a good time.

And so one more example of the many parallels between humans and dolphins

Erick: party on Garth. In my younger days I used to scuba dive in the Caribbean with my uncles and things like that. And we would go down and, there were puffer fish all around and they’re spiny fish, right?

But when they’re deflated so that the, when they puff up, what they do is they just suck a bunch of water into themselves. Some, I don’t know where it goes. And then these spikes protrude and they have the toxins. So basically it’s trying to, it’s their defense mechanism against predation. But I remember seeing big puffer fish, mama puffer fish, and a bunch of little baby puffer fish, and they’re just swimming.

And my uncle would flick the little babies and they go, P and they pup. And it was fun to see. We didn’t get do it to get high rich, as far as I know. Maybe my uncles knew something I didn’t know. But, anyway,

Rich: it is interesting how a defense mechanism can backfire you on you a little bit because this particular defense mechanism has attracted the interest of [00:56:00] dolphins.

They wanna get closer to you based on this defense mechanism. Folks, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the show. That’s all the time we have for you. We will be back again in another week’s time with another episode for you. Until then, we will just remind you as we always do, this is both a video and an audio podcast.

So if you’re listening to us but you’d like to check us out on video, go to YouTube, look us up. You’re gonna find us there. If you’re watching us on YouTube, but you’re into audio podcasts, go to Google, apple, Spotify, wherever it is to get your audio podcast. ’cause you’re probably gonna find MSP chat there as well.

And wherever it is you find us, please subscribe, rate review, it’s gonna help other people. Enjoy the show just like you. This show is produced by the Great Restaurants. It is edited by the great Riley Simpson. They’re part of the team with us at Channel Mastered. Channel Mastered is an organization that works with vendors to help them build, grow, optimize, improve their MSP channel.

You can learn all about MSP or excuse me, channel Mastered, and all the services we provide on our website, which is [00:57:00] www.channel Mastered.com channel. Mastered has a sister organization called MSP Mastered, that’s Erick working one-to-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize your, their business. You can learn more about that venture at www.mspMastered.com.

So again, you thank you for joining us. We’ll see you in a week. Until then, folks, please remember, as we so often urge you to, that you can’t spell channel without MSP.