Exploring ASIO's Journey, RMM Confidence, AI's Impact, and MSP Evolution with Jeff Bishop

[00:00:01] Dave Sobel here with another bonus episode of the Business of Tech here at ConnectWise's IT Nation Connect. I'm joined by Jeff Bishop today. Jeff, thanks for joining me.

[00:00:12] I appreciate the invite so much.

[00:00:13] Now you oversee the ASIO product line as an app. Tell me a little bit about just switching to the products in your portfolio and what you're up to.

[00:00:20] So I oversee the ASIO platform and then I also oversee UMM which is RMM, LabTech, Automate, Screen Connect, Helpdesk, NOC, all those kind of services, RPA, and a little bit of the Sidekick AR.

[00:00:36] Okay. You're exactly the right person to talk about particularly ASIO platform has been such the theme of this, right? This is the big sort of coming up party for ASIO.

[00:00:44] But I want to get a little bit of a perspective here because this is not the first time we've talked about ASIO.

[00:00:49] It is not.

[00:00:49] It's kind of the point where we're all right, we're ready now is the message.

[00:00:53] I want to get a little bit of your sense of the journey to this point because I think it's not necessarily been the perfect straight line that we might have all heard.

[00:01:03] Give me a little bit of the stuff you've learned through that experience.

[00:01:07] Gosh, I can write a book and I may write a book. So you want to help me write it?

[00:01:12] Good. We'll do some co-authoring and some ghost fighting.

[00:01:15] Look, in 2020 we started trying to kick off ASIO. I don't recommend creating an entire platform of a product in the middle of a pandemic. That was a bad decision.

[00:01:27] So around late 2020 was when we were the first line of code.

[00:01:34] Okay.

[00:01:34] 2021, 2022, 2023 and now here we are in 2024.

[00:01:38] But during all that we basically rebuilt an entire RMM, BDR and about 150 different core services, a design framework.

[00:01:51] Look, a complete rewrite.

[00:01:53] We basically built an entire platform, product solutions from the ground off.

[00:02:00] We had a lot of jumping off points with ConnectWise, with all the stuff we had there and Continuum, which was the first big acquisition we did.

[00:02:08] Brought all that in together.

[00:02:09] But man, at the end of the day, we mostly wrote all this from the ground off starting in late 2020 and early 2021.

[00:02:18] And yeah, I would have long to have been sitting here right now today saying the PSA is already there.

[00:02:24] The CBQ is already there. Everything else.

[00:02:28] But 2020 threw us off. And so now we've pushed everything forward about a year or so.

[00:02:35] Okay.

[00:02:35] And that's where we're at today.

[00:02:36] But you guys are projecting a good level of confidence here, which is, which is, yeah.

[00:02:40] And so what I, what I actually want to say to get a sense of, and I think you've framed it up really nicely that look, you're talking about PSA as a new addition.

[00:02:47] I think we're still in an area of exploration with PSA, but I think on the RMM side, you're, you're projecting a lot of confidence at this point is the message that should be received is, hey, we're going to be a lot of confidence.

[00:02:56] We feel we're at parity, a functional parity at a point that is comfortable with our entire suite of UMM. Is that a fair assessment?

[00:03:06] It is a fair assessment. So the question was around like, hey, is RMM out the door? Is it ready?

[00:03:11] And the answer is, man, if you'd asked me this in January, February, I would have said no.

[00:03:16] Okay. Right. I was not confident. I wasn't happy.

[00:03:19] Yeah. My background was, uh, was spring connect and the entire mantra that applied was, it's just gotta work.

[00:03:25] Right.

[00:03:25] Okay. And we came in and got engaged. I had people like a Meta, Jason Short and Santos and Raghu.

[00:03:34] And, and we all sat down and we were like, this product is not where we want it. This is not where we want to put our names and our titles and our confidence around.

[00:03:43] Yeah. And in January, February, March, we're like, we figured out the problems. Q2, we started fixing it. Q3, we really fixed it.

[00:03:50] And, but now, yes. Okay. I am extremely happy to say like, I love where the RMM is. I love where the UMM product lines are.

[00:03:58] Uh, as we take them into the market in, uh, in this quarter and at this event and going into 2025.

[00:04:05] Now what we're working on is bringing the PSA, you know, the CPQ, the bright gauge, the IT boost, the security products for the most part.

[00:04:13] And then built, uh, kind of like RMM on top of ASIO. And now the next big thing is to bring that SIM, uh, over into, uh, ASIO, uh, early in Q1, Q2.

[00:04:23] So what's success look like? We have, you've, you've got to have a measurement, a goal, a target. What does success look like?

[00:04:31] Success to me looks like, um, I'm sitting in the MSP geek community, the Reddit communities and I go, yeah, ASIO is real. ASIO is successful.

[00:04:43] I can go on there and I just increased my profitability as an MSP by two, three, four, five, 600 basis points.

[00:04:50] Plan to me. That's real. That's when, uh, I'm excited about what we've accomplished. It's not Jeff's opinion. It's not, uh, Manny, Jason McGee, or either they are, you know, the engineers.

[00:05:04] It's when the customers go, uh, yeah, we believe you and we like what you've done. And, and yes, what you've done is successful and we love.

[00:05:13] So I want to, I want to explore that a little bit because I love the enthusiasm. I like the direction, but that's actually really hard to measure, right?

[00:05:20] The idea of I can step into the MSP geek community and it is positive. That's quite, it's, it's, it's hard to measure, right? It's not, it's not a target. And so in a way I want to get a sense of a little bit of like, okay, are we leaning into, is it an NPS success? Is it a revenue success? Is it a partner conversion success? Give me a little bit of sense of the way that you're looking at that.

[00:05:40] It starts to become qualitative. That's a great call out. Um, so when we go for right now, about 3,500 MSPs that are using RMM today, that was the number that was on screen.

[00:05:51] Yeah. Around that ballpark. I think it might actually be almost 3,700. Okay.

[00:05:55] But, but you take that number and you make it 4,500, 55 million, 75 million, 95 million. Okay. That's where I start seeing success, right? That's when I started going, all right, we've done something meaningful.

[00:06:07] Yeah. Uh, but, uh, it even be above and beyond that. It's when I see the, uh, qualitative analysis of like how many patches ran today, how many scripts ran today, how many tickets were generated to the PSA today, and how many of them ran and did all that with zero problems and completely successful.

[00:06:27] Uh, we were probably in the 97, 98, 99% uh, efficiency rates back in, uh, January, February, March. Okay. Now we're at a 0.001% where I'm seeing problems. That quantitative analysis is extremely important. And that's what our teams measure themselves.

[00:06:46] So I'm really curious then if you think about it through that lens, I'd like to get a sense of the way that you think about this, because I can almost say like there's, let's oversimplify and say two paths that could, this could go.

[00:06:55] The first version would be slow and steady growth on those numbers over time that allow you very, you know, a very managed course. Right. And you might be able to say time isn't a factor for me. I'm much more inclined to worry about satisfaction. That's one dimension you could go, or you could also go a version, which is accelerated growth, rapid adoption, but I might sacrifice an NPS satisfaction in order to get to widespread adoption with an end goal of better feedback.

[00:07:23] Talk to me about the way you would frame and make a decision like that.

[00:07:28] Well, um, connect to us as a sort of a mature company, right? We're, we're not, um, we're not a startup. We're not into this fashion. We got to go attain customers and try to get to that point.

[00:07:40] Our goal is to build out or extend our reputation. Um, uh, a reputation that quite honestly has taken a lot of hits the last few years.

[00:07:51] So, you know, uh, you go back, uh, four, five, six years ago and connect wise was the, the 600 pound gorilla or whatever analogy you want to use in the room.

[00:08:00] And, uh, and these days we got to earn that respect. And I don't know that we've done that over the last few years.

[00:08:07] And, uh, so I'm going to lean a little bit further towards, I want us to earn the respect to bring those customers in, not a, uh, a growth.

[00:08:19] So I don't, I don't want to see a number be, uh, 6,000, 12,000, 18,000.

[00:08:25] Right. I would love that said, I'd rather see that we have 6,000, 4,000, 3,000 that love the product.

[00:08:33] Okay.

[00:08:33] So I want the qualitative a little bit more than the quantitative aspect of this. That's what I want to say.

[00:08:38] I'd be remiss if I did not bring up AI in some of this conversation and I don't want to get into like the whole sort of marketing or what's this feature.

[00:08:45] Like, I don't think that's the interesting conversation. What I actually think is really interesting is you've been spending a lot of time thinking about the way AI will impact partners.

[00:08:54] There's a component of that, that is partner readiness, that they have to be ready to take advantage of that.

[00:09:00] Tell me what you're thinking about in terms of the readiness need that the partner base is going to have to do.

[00:09:05] Oh my God. Hey, so yes, this is amazing. This is one of my favorite parts of where we're all going.

[00:09:10] Traditionally, MSPs have been about firewalls and networking, scripting and patching, right?

[00:09:16] And it is all the technical aspects of what has made this industry a major.

[00:09:22] Now, there is 40% of the global economy that is small business.

[00:09:28] Salute.

[00:09:29] How many small businesses can adapt to AI and understand what products they should have, how they should segregate their data, and how they should take advantage of cybersecurity?

[00:09:40] That's where MSPs are going.

[00:09:42] Now, why is AI so important and all that?

[00:09:45] Because it changes the nature of the lines of business and the solutions that an MSP takes to market.

[00:09:54] What kind of?

[00:09:56] They're no longer, like in 2025, 2026, we're going to see MSPs go, I built a frontier model that is great for manufacturing or retail or hospitality or education.

[00:10:09] And they will maintain that for their customers.

[00:10:12] And they'll extend upon that.

[00:10:14] And they'll add on it.

[00:10:15] And they're going to give it to them.

[00:10:16] And they're going to get feedback.

[00:10:18] And they're going to become the sherpas of all things business and how an SMB differentiates their business.

[00:10:28] Not just the technologists.

[00:10:30] Not just the people who tell them, like, make sure you do this from a security perspective or from a firewall perspective.

[00:10:37] They're going to be the ones that go, if you add this capability to your business, you're going to add 10%, 15%, 20%.

[00:10:44] It's so amazing where MSPs are going to go.

[00:10:49] Because they're going to extend to be that business evangelist.

[00:10:53] That they're not today or somewhat.

[00:10:55] But the bulk are not.

[00:10:57] They're technologists evangelists.

[00:10:58] And they're going to become the business evangelists.

[00:11:01] Because AI and automation, hyper-automation are such a core part of all SMBs in the future.

[00:11:08] So thematically, I think I agree.

[00:11:10] But I want to actually, you said something in there that I want to make sure that I understand.

[00:11:13] Because you throw up this idea that you think MSPs, IT services companies, are going to be also developing models for particular industries.

[00:11:22] That's a really bold statement embedded in what you just said.

[00:11:25] Tell me a little bit more about your thinking there.

[00:11:27] Yeah.

[00:11:27] So this could be one of those statements that in three years I would look back and go, yep, I was really wrong.

[00:11:33] But I do think it is the case.

[00:11:36] I think what you're going to see is there's 60,000.

[00:11:40] I said it on the keynote.

[00:11:41] Yeah.

[00:11:42] There's 60,000 AI companies in the world.

[00:11:45] Do I think SMBs are going to go adopt an AI product for their CRM?

[00:11:50] And AI products for their support.

[00:11:52] And AI products for their, you know, they're going to market.

[00:11:55] And this, they will initiate.

[00:11:57] But what they're going to find is that it's going to become exhaustive and difficult and very expensive.

[00:12:05] And what I do think is that the MSP channel is going to say, you know what I'm really good at?

[00:12:10] I own all dentists or architects or manufacturer, and they will start developing their own models based off of the information and the knowledge they have.

[00:12:22] And they'll start extending that to their customers.

[00:12:24] So instead of buying some off-the-shelf B2C product, the MSP will start to provide those products and those models to those customers.

[00:12:32] And they will maintain them and look for hallucinations and look for ways to extend those and take those to their market.

[00:12:39] Yeah.

[00:12:40] I could be wrong, but I do think that's where it's going to go.

[00:12:42] So I'm intrigued by this.

[00:12:44] And I will say that I'm not sure I agree, but I want to explore the idea to understand it a little bit more.

[00:12:49] Because again, what's implied in what you just said, and I think that you actually would have some experience because you've been doing some of this in ConnectWise, right?

[00:12:57] And so that's why I want to understand.

[00:12:58] What do you think the skills require?

[00:13:00] Because they aren't the raw technical networking type skills.

[00:13:04] They aren't necessarily, it's not like we're looking for business analysts necessarily.

[00:13:08] We're almost looking for data science people.

[00:13:10] Tell me a little bit more about what you think that skill set looks like that's capable of building models for particular industries, customer bases.

[00:13:21] Well, look, in all roles, like everybody's going to say, go get a college degree from Harvard on this or MIT on that.

[00:13:29] I don't think that's the case here.

[00:13:30] I think prompt engineering, which is starting to become a very common term in this world.

[00:13:40] So writing prompts, understanding data, which, you know, our automation engineers and our script teams have been doing for years.

[00:13:50] So it's about understanding data, understanding the organization of data, and it's writing prompts into that data.

[00:13:57] Prompts are queries, right?

[00:13:59] That's not new for this world.

[00:14:01] So you write prompts, you bring that information up into, in front of an end user, and then that way you control and contrast that so that as they continue asking new questions, you change the prompts and you evolve it.

[00:14:17] So, yeah, I think there is some education around prompts.

[00:14:20] I think there's some education around how AI engine and models are working, building hallucinations.

[00:14:25] But at the end of the day, I don't think it's that big of a differentiation between like script and scripting and that automation engineers have been doing sort of RMM and PSAs for decades now.

[00:14:39] Fair.

[00:14:39] You brought up the scripting engines, the automation engineers.

[00:14:42] I'm actually really curious to get your thoughts on the way you approach the balance of what is something that is empowered by the engine?

[00:14:49] Like what is a bot that you create versus a bot that customers create?

[00:14:54] And it's based off of the evolution of scripting, right?

[00:14:57] So some stuff you'd build in as a feature into the platform.

[00:15:01] Others would be, well, that's a capability built by parks.

[00:15:04] How do you think about the decision of what fits on what side of the line?

[00:15:08] Look, everybody knows that I'm a huge platform person.

[00:15:12] That's what I do, ASIO.

[00:15:13] So I think at the end of the day, you're going to see both MSPs, ConnectWise, every solution partner out there, every vendor are going to start pushing this stuff up into almost like a repository.

[00:15:29] Think of it like a big SharePoint site or a OneDrive site where everybody starts to look up and go, oh, that's amazing.

[00:15:35] I see these things.

[00:15:36] Let me bring that down into my repository and use it and play with it.

[00:15:40] And then they create new things and they share those with others.

[00:15:44] Okay.

[00:15:44] I want to see that network effect happen across the IT Nation community where there's 4,000 MSPs here today, I think.

[00:15:54] Something.

[00:15:55] Imagine if every one of them built a workflow.

[00:15:57] Okay.

[00:15:58] Imagine if every one of them started to extend data into those models and then they started building upon that.

[00:16:06] Man, I mean, what we can accomplish in terms of expanding the capabilities of MSPs and SMBs and have a vertical is crazy when you start thinking about the network effect.

[00:16:18] Isolation, you know, an MSP trying to deal with their 50 customers and doing all themselves, that's hard.

[00:16:24] When an MSP can build upon what somebody else has done and then that person builds upon that, the network effect of what this community can do is amazing.

[00:16:34] Yeah.

[00:16:35] That's a great place to end it with a positive note like that.

[00:16:38] This has been great.

[00:16:39] I really appreciate you joining me today.

[00:16:40] Appreciate it.

[00:16:40] Thank you very much.

[00:16:41] I appreciate it so much.

[00:16:42] Thanks, sir.

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