MSP profitability: Market splits as some MSPs stagnate — Jessica Davis, Omdia

[00:00:14] 44% of channel partners told Omnia last month they expect their revenue to fall this quarter. 41% said it would grow. That isn't a market in recession. Managed services are still growing, 6-10% this year. It's a market splitting in two, and which half you land in depends on decisions most MSPs haven't made yet.

[00:00:36] I've lived through one of these. Between 2008 and 2012, the industry moved from break-fix to recurring revenue, and I sold my MSP at the end of it. My guest thinks we may be at the start of the next one. Welcome to the Business of Tech Lounge. This is where we break down what's changing in the IT services market, what it means for providers and vendors, and what to actually do about it. If you're running or supporting an MSP, this is about making sense of the environment you're operating in, not just the headlines.

[00:01:04] Now to make this conversation possible, a message from our sponsor. Here's a question MSPs don't ask often enough. How secure is the tool that has the keys to every one of your client endpoints? Your RMM is the most powerful and most targeted software you run. LogMeIn Resolve was built with a zero-trust architecture specifically to close gaps that other RMMs leave open.

[00:01:32] If the security of your remote management platform is on your mind, and after the last few years it should be, LogMeIn is worth evaluating on exactly that. Visit logmein.com slash MSP growth. Jessica Davis is principal analyst for managed services at Omnia, where she tracks MSP M&A investment and how providers adopt AI and security.

[00:01:58] Before that, she spent nearly 30 years as a technology journalist, including leading the MSP 501, which is where we first met and started working together. Jessica, welcome back to the show. Yeah, thank you so much, Dave, for having me on again. And I would point out that back in my early days when I was working at Channel Insider, you were a columnist and an MSP. We were one of our only MSP columnists at the time. So that was fun.

[00:02:27] Well, and amusingly, we're going to get to some of those columns because you unearthed them as in preparation for this. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. But right now I want to start with some of the quarterly sentiment polls that Omnia ran across the channel partners. In September, that 44% number are expecting third quarter revenue to decline year over year and 41% expected growth. On profit, it's 48 down, 35 up, and more than a third expected drops bigger than 10%.

[00:02:55] Meanwhile, the market overall is still growing just slower with rates are still high, traditional services under pressure, client headcounts stopping expanding, and new competitors moving in. So the question isn't necessarily whether or not the industry is healthy. It's who's sitting where. And I want to get your take on that 44 down, 41 up. When you cut that by partner type and size, is the split the same?

[00:03:23] Or does one type of partner sit in a particular decline column? Like when we dig into the numbers, what's it look like? Yeah. So it does include all types of channel partners. I'm sorry about that. But when I broke down the numbers, and I don't have them in front of me. Sorry about that. When I broke down the numbers, the MSP numbers looked about what the general numbers look like. Okay. So pretty close to what the overall channel partners were saying.

[00:03:51] And the interesting part to me exactly was the split between the people who were expecting declines versus the people who were expecting growth. Well, that's what's interesting to me too. Now let's compare the markets a little bit. Are the MSPs different from resellers, distributors, like the other categories? You said they were kind of overall with the norm. Are there other variances that are factor here? Not that I saw. Not that I saw. Okay.

[00:04:19] And I would love to have it broken down by size of MSP, too, because that would be really interesting. But this is a quick sentiment poll that we put out in the market on a quarterly basis, kind of to just assess how partners are feeling about the current economic conditions and how they expect their businesses to perform. Okay. So as we think about that then, do we have a sense of the split?

[00:04:46] Is it about strategy or is it about clients? Like, do you have a sense of what's happening into these two buckets right now? So our sense of what's happening in these two buckets is we've seen these splits happen when the economy is under stress and when there's uncertainty in the markets. And we've seen, you know, interest rates go up again.

[00:05:12] We've seen stress about geopolitical circumstances, tariff pressure on the economy, any number of factors. Plus, there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty about AI. Now everybody's going, everybody's playing with AI right now. The technology is exciting.

[00:05:40] But there's a lot of economic uncertainty around just what it's going to mean to everyone. Gotcha. So it's that factor of we're probably in a period of uncertainty, pressure, you're splitting into the sort of haves and have-nots is a little bit of what we're looking at, right? Yeah, yeah. And it reminded me of a column I wrote way back when in Channel Insider.

[00:06:07] When, when, and I can't remember the exact date, but it was after the Great Recession, right? Right. It was a time when people were seeing, you know, people were giving sessions on how to improve your sales because it's, you need to improve your sales in a tough economy. And resellers were wondering, what are we going to do next? You know, nobody's buying our stuff anymore.

[00:06:36] And they were being encouraged to move into managed services and this new concept of recurring revenue instead of strict resale. And sort of, it feels like that now. I just go back to that column from time to time and think about and compare it to where we are at the moment.

[00:07:03] And, and today feels more like that moment than, than plenty of other times since then. Well, you, you sent me down memory lane too, because you went back and read all those columns that I wrote for Channel Insider. I did. Right. And, and there was some interesting comparisons there because, you know, between that two, let's put it in context for everyone. So that was sort of between 2008 and 2012, right? And so again, timeframe is really interesting because we're coming into a period of economic pressure right around 2008.

[00:07:31] And a lot of the conversation was the conversion from break, fix shops, becoming managed services providers. We can have arguments about how early that all started, but I think it's fair to say that the big conversations were right there around that pressure of, of the conversion. Now I want to tie that with something that's going on right now. Last week in Barcelona, Omnia's own Robin Odie said that AI related managed services are growing around 60% against about 10% for managed services overall.

[00:08:00] So the things related to AI growing 60%, basic managed services growing at 10%, but most of that comes from a small group of advanced partners. Well, the parallels are there, right? A minority moved first last time. What I was thinking about a lot was the fact that the meter changes a little bit, a bit for if I, you, you made me read my old stuff, right? And in 2011, I was complaining about Microsoft's cloud licensing, having kind of one model.

[00:08:28] And the question now is whether the AI services even arrive with a model the MSP can price, or if that comes even through the vendor. So I kind of want to get, let's start with the basic pieces. 60% growth driven by a minority. How big is the minority? What do they have in common that everybody else doesn't? And I'm sure Robin's got some insight that you guys have discussed there at Omnia. I, well, the 60% too, that's the 60% growth off AI services.

[00:08:57] And that's a small minority of organizations that are doing that. So, you know, just, just a level setting on that too. Right. But in terms of, of what services organizations are working on, those are, those are continue to be experimental at, at this point in terms of selling to end customers.

[00:09:26] Um, the track that, that most MSPers are pursuing right now is the internal efficiencies. Um, uh, uh, uh, resolving more tickets per technician. Um, all those KPIs, um, uh, using AI, uh, to resolve level one tickets, uh, freeing up technicians time, um, to do whatever the, the exciting new work that will come with it.

[00:09:57] So let's reference that a little bit, right? Because, so I, cause I'm, I'm intrigued by this kind of experimental nature. Some of it's happening internally. That isn't necessarily new services. Now, if I'm trying to draw parallels to the, to the 2010s here, right? If, if you kind of compare it with the managed services tools, let's use RMM. There is a great example, not something internal only like a PSA, but something facing the customers.

[00:10:21] If you're all using RMM to cut down your own costs, well, that wouldn't be a conversion to managed services. That'd just be an internal efficiency play. The ones that changed their contracts did, did something around that. Are we early? Are people, are those MSPs that you're looking at advanced, are they actively looking at changing their contract engagements right now? Or is this even more internal experimentation earlier?

[00:10:47] This is, uh, from, from, um, my conversations in the market. Um, this is a time of experimentation. And if I looked at 2008 to 2012, I would say we're in the 2008 part of it. Um, not the 2012 part of it where, uh, people have it figured out where enables Mike Cullen came out with the playbooks, uh, for MSPs to follow.

[00:11:14] And you just plug your business into this template and take off with it because it's going to be that easy for you. We're in the figuring it out phase of, of how to make AI work. And I mean, anybody who watches your show and, and as has been looking at the incredibly great discussions you've had about pricing and all the changes in pricing and, um, how it fluctuates.

[00:11:42] Um, it making a decision about what to do now would be perhaps foolhardy. It's, it's, it's now's the time to figure out, to establish those relationships with customers that you are the advisor on this, um, and, and guide them through it. But it's not the time to, we're not at 2012 yet.

[00:12:05] Well, I almost want to like put a big highlighter on what you just said, because what you're essentially reinforcing is it's okay to not have the answers right now. I mean, I I'll give my, you know, my own fascination right now. I'm having a lot of fun having these conversations because there isn't one answer. Yeah. Like, you know, I, I can talk to you about a managed services pricing model till I'm blue in the face because it's a very well-documented, well-trodden space.

[00:12:31] This is fascinating because the answers are completely all over the place and no one has an idea. And so I think that's for, for those listening on the MSP side, no, the fact that you don't have it figured out, that's okay. Let's talk a little bit about the, the, the side of that, because you brought up like the fact that the vendors brought in the playbooks last time they were, they're educating. We're not really seeing that yet, right?

[00:12:58] In that last transition, the vendors build all the tools that made all the recurring revenue possible. Then the MSPs go out and said the price. Do you have a sense of who's building that equivalent now and where the prices are being set?

[00:13:11] So interesting because I, I don't know that it's with the vendors right now, but I do see the big, uh, MSP rollups really doing some breaking edge experimentation, um, that maybe they're not talking about publicly. Maybe they're, you know, hinting at it.

[00:13:31] Um, but they're doing some cool things internally, um, working with customers, changing how they work with customers, um, on some of these, these projects. And really it's, it sort of cements the idea that the customer relationship is so important in, in moving the business model forward to wherever we are, when we're in the equivalent of 2012 again. Gotcha. Well, again, that's kind of reassuring for smaller players.

[00:14:01] That said, if this plays out, let's talk a little bit of, say, I like your four year arc there. If we think we're in the equivalent of 2008 and we're talking about like a four year arc, do you have a sense of like, you know, the, the, how that'll play out differently though? Because, because again, if we're thinking the historical parallels, kind of the vendors had figured out they'll go to market on that one. Now the experimentation seems to be happening in larger MSPs.

[00:14:28] Do you have a sense of how this might play out knowing that both of our crystal balls are totally broken? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it's exciting to see that kind of experimentation happening in the larger MSPs. I think the smaller MSPs have, have advantages as well. They can be more nimble.

[00:14:48] They can have, you know, the owner can have that kind of customer relationship and really dive into the business problems of customers and dive into how do we solve them using AI? I think, I think, I think the middle MSPs are in, in a tougher spot because they're not as nimble as the tiny ones. They can't change platforms as easily.

[00:15:14] They, they, they, they have, and I, I think that, that vendors are working on, on these problems as well, but they can't move as fast as, as the smaller nimble companies. Companies, not all the small companies, but the forward looking nimble companies and, and the big roll ups. So let's borrow something else from history a little bit, because, so you, you spent the time to go back through some of these old columns.

[00:15:43] What did operators like me get wrong in 2011 that you would sort of want the audience to remember, like, these are things that we don't want to repeat in terms of mistakes? Well, I think, I think I, I loved, um, I, when I went back and looked through your columns, the one that I got stuck on was the one about the, um, the cloud uncertainty.

[00:16:06] Um, when you had a customer come to you and say, Hey, this on premise stuff, it has, is so yesterday, you know, and expensive. What if we put everything in the cloud instead? What if we went with stats and you were like, Hmm, that doesn't sound great to me. Um, let me wrap my head around it. That's not what you said to them, but, but that's what we're thinking. Um, and that's what you said in the column.

[00:16:31] Um, and so your uncertainty at that point, um, uh, was sort of refreshing to me because I find so many, um, MSPs in that same situation. And like you said, it's okay not to know, uh, what you're doing with, with AI and managed services right now, because everybody's figuring it out.

[00:16:55] Um, on the other hand, I think it's a mistake to not do anything at all. Um, and, um, uh, one of the things that I wrote in my column from yesteryear was, uh, uh, I think we get attached to the business model that we've been running for a long time that we've been comfortable with.

[00:17:23] Um, so that we don't pay enough attention to what's emerging. Um, but it's important to start that thing that's emerging. Um, so that when things switch over, you have that boat to jump into. Um, and I based that column around that moment in, uh, the book, only the paranoid survive, uh, the Andy Grove book.

[00:17:50] Um, when he said, you know, Intel was known for making memory back then. Um, and, uh, wasn't known for processors at all, had a small processor business. Um, and there was a recession going on and Andy Grove said to Gordon Moore, you know, what if, what if the board came in and, and fired us and brought in new leaders, what would they do?

[00:18:16] And the answer was, well, they would, they would go into the processor business. They would put the investment there. And so I think that's an important lesson. You have to have established that other business. You have to be working on it. You have to have some small foot in it to have that lifeboat to get onto. And so I think that's, that's what MSPs need to do now with it.

[00:18:45] And it was funny. I would, the thing that struck me particularly, and I cited it here is my, when I read my own words back, you know, back, you know, here are 15 years later looking at it. My fear of Microsoft dictating the pricing model was the thing that came out to me when I reread those. And I sort of smiling and go, well, that didn't work quite out. It worked in that Microsoft did dictate the way that the pricing was the, that was going to be converted.

[00:19:11] But as a partner, it ended up becoming irrelevant the way that they did it. And it comes kind of full circle. Like part of the reason now that we have, you know, you can buy Microsoft licensing in a subscription model through your partner was that the market also decided that that wasn't the way that it was going to make the most sense. So I think that the piece that struck me was sort of how like, how naive I was about thinking that the vendors really would dictate all of that.

[00:19:38] And I'm drawing on that again to sort of say like, well, all of these guys think it's going to be priced this way. Maybe they're all wrong. Yeah. Yeah. It totally could be the case. So we're going to talk a little bit about money. We're going to talk a little bit about who's buying and what they're paid for, but I'm going to take a quick moment, pay our own bills and get a couple of messages from our sponsors. The MSPs getting ahead in security aren't adding more tools.

[00:20:07] They're getting the work off their plate. Guards consolidates the stack, endpoint, email identity, and then puts an autonomous analyst on top of it, triaging the alerts, correlating the signals, drafting the client reporting automatically. It's purpose built for MSPs protecting S&B clients month to month. Real SecOps without hiring a SecOps team. Start at guards.com.

[00:20:36] That's G-U-A-R-D-Z dot com. Cloud minted winners, security minted winners, AIs next. But not for the MSP with the most tools, but the ones who turn intelligence into a business. PAX 8 calls it managed intelligence, a new kind of provider built on the PAX 8 marketplace for the shift almost nobody's built for yet.

[00:21:04] 47,000 partners are already there. Join them. PAX8.com. That's P-A-X, the number eight, dot com. So you've been digging into the capital side of things. And I find this pretty fascinating. We've talked about private equity, then there's venture money. And you've been digging into E4N, which is a New York holding company that formed its first platform back in May, backed by 38 investors and a $12.5 million raise.

[00:21:31] You described them as family offices, not a fund. And their pitch is all about patience, right? Catalyst's CEO told Channel ED there's no timer on any of that. And then the CEOs of Evergreen, New Charter Shield and Titan all say the same thing. People and client, those relationships are outweighing the AI. In my mind, that's really good news for the small operator independently if it's true. The advantage isn't scale, it's knowing the client, right?

[00:21:59] Let's talk a little bit about what you've been looking at at this E4N. 38 investors you describe as family offices, no fund. It's patient money that would sound really great. What does that look like? Pricing terms? Exit? Like how does a fund like that look? There are, you know, a number of funds out there like that. A number of MSP roll ups out there like that. And Evergreen is one of them. Shield says they're one of them. Also Harbor IT.

[00:22:30] Also family office backed. Sports team, family offices. Family offices are organizations that families that have a lot of money. They want to invest in not the stock market. They want to invest in private businesses. So that's where this came from. And I haven't spoken with the principles of this yet.

[00:23:00] So I just want to qualify what I say about the company with that. But it's was as I was working on the M&A report that hopefully we'll see the light of day soon around MSPs. I this one jumped out to me because it was not PE backed. It was not VC backed.

[00:23:22] It was actually started by a former executive at Xerox and Novantic. And it looks like he decided I want to start up a company that's going to invest in MSPs and acquire MSPs. And so I need to raise money around doing that.

[00:23:47] And so he went to private investors, 38 different ones, not one big fund and put together the resources to do that. So I thought that was different. And I hadn't seen that before in my work with M&A in the MSP market. They made their first acquisition of Catalyst.

[00:24:13] I believe they're in North Carolina and they made and South Carolina. And they made another acquisition, a tuck in of layer 27. So, you know, I don't know if that's another. I'm always interested in alternative funding for these roll ups. And so I thought this was an interesting possibility. I don't know if we'll see others like it, but I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah.

[00:24:43] And I'm right there with you in my fascination of other funding models. I would be remiss if I didn't point out, I've literally talked to MS to old school MSPs. They're like, well, I went to the bank and did my expansion plan. It's the same way I did my expansion was, is that we went to the bank with a business plan. What's really interesting to me is the buyers seem to also agree with you that the relationships are the multiplier. You mentioned Evergreen. They measure it with revenue retention and NPS. The relationship does have to show up in a measurable way.

[00:25:12] And I want to make this kind of relevant for smaller providers. And I want to think about it like that most 10 person MSPs don't track NPS. They're not necessarily there may be struggling to do revenue retention. And I want to challenge you with this idea. Like, isn't the smallest independence biggest asset the one it's then least able to prove? Oh, that's so interesting. Right? Yeah, I would think so.

[00:25:40] Um, I, I agree with that. Yeah. And, and how do they that? How, how would they prove that? Um, maybe in, in their recurring revenue with their, the best way they could prove it. I'm just thinking off the top of my head, their recurring revenue with their existing customers and maybe expansion within their existing customers. But, but I'm curious what, what your thought is on that Dave, because, because you're deeply embedded in the community too.

[00:26:10] Yeah. I mean, I think about my advice is always to start simple, right? Everything that you can do that starts simple. And I think one of the things that, that small MSPs don't do enough about is thinking about the trends in their, their individual client revenues. So for example, you could pretty easily now pull your revenue retention numbers pretty easily. Like you could actually look at the, and you can look at proper lifetime value of a customer.

[00:26:37] Uh, you know, how valuable has this customer been to me over, over time? What is each individual customers growth rates? Like, I think, I mean, uh, for, you know, I'll make it a little simple for, for the very small players is like that. It's like, those are the kinds of questions that you could ask Chad, GPT and Claude by connecting them to QuickBooks. Like, you know, it, it, it would have been a difficult process if before, where you would, would have to build the excels and pull all the numbers and do the modeling.

[00:27:04] And now, well, you can actually run those numbers pretty easily and start doing that modeling. And, and so I think that's the piece that I would start with. Um, I think I wouldn't necessarily focus on NPS specifically. I, you know, like that's a particular methodology that's more difficult to do. But the fact that if you ask client satisfaction numbers, like you can just get a sense of like, you know, do we properly solve tickets?

[00:27:33] Like I think if you're following on with those kinds of surveys, well, over time, you can actually track that data and you'll be surprised at how quickly you amass it just by getting into the habit. Um, so for example, if you know, you could do it on an individual ticket level, like you could do that and then take all your historical data. You could also start doing it by logging and tracking your QBRs or however often you do those.

[00:27:59] I think that those are the areas where if you start tracking that over the next three years, particularly if you're a smaller provider that's looking to grow, you'll end up in one of two places. Either the first is you'll just have a better sense of your own numbers. The second is, is you're in a position to have some numbers to give to a, uh, an acquirer if you are shopping around. So that would just, that would be my sort of take on, on where that would start. No, that's really interesting.

[00:28:29] And, and, um, if you're applying, uh, Claude or ChatGPT to that, you could potentially go back historically and not have to wait for three years to, uh, put that together. You could, you could get sort of a read on that right now and get started with it. That's been, and I, you know, to get my own personal biases on this, it's been like an incredibly useful thing for us at MSP radio, right?

[00:28:53] Is, is that we, like I, I run those historical data numbers now across a large set of volume because it was hard before. And now it isn't that it's just, it was a matter of plugging in, you know, listeners. I know that the metrics are slightly different, but we can do listener engagement, audience grow size comparisons, and we can pull all the way back to when we launched the podcast. So I can say like, well, are we growing as fast or have we slowed that? Or is our audience expanding or contracting?

[00:29:20] We've been able to do it on, you know, disclosure, we own small biz thoughts community, right? So we're able to look at the historical data on that. So, so that's kind of the piece that I've thought about. And I want to ask you a little bit, you've been poking at some of these large rollouts. I know that the 20 has a lot of its members operating data even before it makes an offer, right? Because they're members of the group before they, they roll in that. Other vendors are even starting to do that.

[00:29:48] Atera now asks for six months of tickets before you sign up, right? In order to train their AI, the buyer and the vendor can see the data almost before the owner can in some of that case. Like, is that, would you put that in the pile of things of these smaller independent operators need to really start thinking about the value of their internal data? Like, are you highlighting that as a thought? I, you know, I am now. I gotta say that that's, that seems like a great idea to me.

[00:30:18] And, and for anyone who hasn't, I, who hasn't dipped their feet into Claude or ChatGPT or whatever yet, whatever your AI preference yet. It really seems like a way to start thinking in that way.

[00:30:39] And once you start thinking in that way, there are plenty of other opportunities to mine your own data for your business's growth and health in the long term. I'm going to do a callback to an episode that I did a couple of weeks ago talking about this data value. You've got a big pile of historical data right now in all of your ticket load.

[00:31:02] What I'm concerned about going forward is that if we automate away a lot of that work and it never actually becomes tickets at all, we actually start breaking the historical trends and we, our data sets become less valuable and they move to the vendors as MSPs as we, as we move forward in this cycle.

[00:31:24] So for example, if you have a place where, where project out predictive IT is a full thing, the software itself takes care of problems before they even happen. Well, that means you don't have the data on those problems anymore at the provider level. You have it at the software vendor level. I'm curious, you're, you're having, you've been having these conversations with some of these large rollups, some of the vendors on. Are they looking at the data this kind of way as well?

[00:31:53] In terms of, in terms of, in terms of, uh, their ticket data going away. Um, I don't think. I was intentionally broad to see if they're even thinking about it in any way. Um, I haven't had those particular discussions with them. Um, that's, but that's an interesting concept.

[00:32:12] I, I, is the, is this, um, uh, and it, it's an interesting conversation to have, I think with vendors too, um, whether that data is still available to MSP customers. And how much leverage do MSP customers, not end customers, MSPs have in, in, uh, making sure that they still have retention of their data.

[00:32:42] I think that's a huge issue, um, is who owns the data. Um, and it's not a question that gets asked often enough. I mean, I think there, I mean, and I have been poking at this and I don't, I think their answer would be the vendor will be, of course you own your own data. The question is whether or not you can actually get it out in a format that is usable and you're getting enough of it. And again, projecting out three and four years from now, is that going to be in a place where it's valuable?

[00:33:12] Or are you in a place where you can't extract it in a way that actually gets the historical richness that you have? And for, for listeners, I would see the sort of parallel of think about the difference of the internet between pre 2023 and post 2023, i.e. chat GPT. There's a period, there's data that is uncorrupted by AI before. And now we have to look skeptically at the web now and say like, is this AI generated? That's a line in the sand of different kind of data.

[00:33:42] We may just, in a, in a wet world beyond that, it may have changed. I wonder what the value of that's going to be. And by the way, I could be entirely wrong on this. I could be overvaluing what the data is at all. So I'm, I would, you know, again, I wanted to sort of throw this out there and say, how much of the data conversation is part of what you're digging into and asking these organizations? No, it should be. It should be a part of, of the discussion.

[00:34:06] And I think as, as there are plenty of managed service providers who are using MCP servers as sort of a, an integration skin or some of these, these platform tools and, and ways to consume data. Um, uh, I haven't heard of vendors cutting off access to that data though.

[00:34:35] I, I, I would be surprised if they did. I'm just, I'm just wondering what it will be like, how useful it will be four years out. Right. That's the, it wouldn't be a matter of necessarily say you don't get your data. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's not as rich of data because it's not created by humans. It's all machine data. It's all log data. Yeah. Or, or maybe, right. It's just, we just don't know what that looks like. Right.

[00:35:03] So in particular, if you're the MSP and you're collecting that information yourself, you are in charge of it. The moment it goes over to the automated system, I'm just not in charge of it anymore. So I wonder what, will I get back anything useful at all that tells me enough? The, the other, the other side of that though, is, is, uh, how many, how many different technicians, um, work at an MSP?

[00:35:28] How many different ways do, do those technicians log, um, would log that same ticket, that same problem that's coming in? Um, how many different, I, are they all tagging the tickets in the same way? Um, there's no uniform collection of data by humans at this point. And that problem could be solved by automating those lower level tickets. So it could become more valuable.

[00:35:55] Now, I think that, that, that current, um, uh, non-uniformness of, of data collection and tickets today is, is perhaps an issue that, that, uh, vendors and MSPs need, are working on resolving, um, by making it better. Uh, data needs to be structured in order to be valuable and in order to train the systems.

[00:36:24] Um, uh, and thinking about those six months worth of tickets, I wonder if there are, um, requirements around how those tickets are created, uh, in order to, uh, qualify as six months of tickets. Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's a, I think it's just an open question. And I think, you know, back, back to the, the, the theme of all my AI conversations continues

[00:36:50] to be, and a lot of us don't have any of the answers, but the questions are more fascinating than ever. Um, and I want to, you know, I think it's the, the look at your own business. My advice to any MSP at this point is, is start thinking about these open-ended questions and make sure that you're not making decisions that close doors that you weren't prepared for. I think it would be my thinking on it is it's a, I could see a completely reasonable take of we're not going to value this data.

[00:37:19] We think that we're going to get the efficiencies and make more money out of it or whatever, like the, the growth of the business will be better if we make this bet. That's an informed decision versus just not making the choice. And I think that's where my head keeps coming out from the, I'm not necessarily saying these are stoppers. I am sort of saying that I just want to make sure people have thought about, do I care about that risk or not? Is that a kind of fair way of thinking about it right now? I totally, totally.

[00:37:46] I mean, a different topic, but I have one of these, um, these rings that, that is, uh, you know, that, uh, or a ring or in that game. Yeah. And, and, and a month, a couple of weeks ago, they, they ended web access to the data. Um, so you used to be able to just go to the website and download your data, different, different granularity of your data.

[00:38:11] Now you can request your data and they can take, they'll send it to you in a CSV that can take up to 10 days to get to you. And you can't look for particular relationships. You just have to download it and then work on it on your own. Um, that would be my fear, uh, that, that something like that would happen. Um, and I, you know, I hope that's not a risk that we have to worry about, but, but, um, you've raised it in my head now.

[00:38:41] Well, if, if anything, it's opening spaces for these interesting risks. I know you and I can do this for hours. I want to be respectful of everybody's time here. Jessica, you're working on some MNA stuff. If people are interested in finding out when the report comes out, keeping in touch and, and the next steps in the conversation, where can they find your work? Gosh, I hope it comes out soon. Um, and, uh, expecting it in the next few weeks, uh, find me on LinkedIn.

[00:39:05] I am the, uh, number one, Jessica Davis on not the Jessica Davis, but Jessica Davis on LinkedIn. Um, uh, search Jessica Davis and channel on LinkedIn and you'll get me. And you'll find her right there. Jessica, always, always fun. I look forward to having you back in when you make sure when that report comes out, send me a copy because I know I'm going to want to talk about it. Will do. Thanks, Dave. Awesome. And before we go, thanks to our vendor sponsors who make the show possible.

[00:39:35] Transit AI, an all-in-one workspace for network engineers with an AI that investigates your gear, but can't change anything without your click. They're at transitai.app. And ABC Solutions, accounting, bookkeeping, and fractional CFO services built specifically for MSPs by former MSP operators. They're at abcsolvesit.com. And Rhythms, the carrier agnostic 5G networking for MSPs used in offices, events, and emergencies.

[00:40:05] They're at rhythms, R-Y-T-H-M-Z.com. And Firetail, an AI security platform that helps organizations discover, assess, and govern how AI is used. They're at firetail.ai. Now, this show, the questions, the discussion, this is the closest thing on the podcast feed to what the Small Biz Thoughts community does every single day. With member meetings, answers, questions, and discussions from operators running businesses

[00:40:32] just like yours, plus resource library access and courses through IT service provider university, all now MCP-enabled to fit right into your workflow. Join us at smallbizthoughts.org. The Business of Tech is produced under ethics guidelines, posted at businessof.tech. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.

[00:41:14] Produced by Picture This Video. Part of the MSP Radio Network.