I’m back from Salt Lake City, and I’ve got a lot to share with our friends and partners. Pax8Beyond 2026 was an energising industry event – and not just because of the keynotes or the packed exhibition floor. It was the feeling in the room. Every conversation circled back to the same theme: the managed service industry is at an inflection point, and the partners who move decisively in the next 12–24 months will define the decade.
Here’s what stood out for me.
It Didn't Even Wait Until We Boarded the Plane
Before we’d left Sydney, the trip had already made its first point. Bill Greville from Suite418 got a call in the Qantas Lounge after a client was breached mid-travel. Using Octiga, Bill remotely locked down the compromised tenant and contained the incident… before boarding the plane. It was a live, real-world demonstration of what we deliver: the ability to respond to a client security incident from anywhere, instantly. A fitting way to kick off a trip about the future of managed intelligence.
The Numbers
Scott Chasin, CEO of Pax8, opened with a stat that gave everyone pause: GitHub code commits grew from 300 million in 2023 to 1.4 billion in early 2025. Same engineers, 3 x the output. AI didn’t replace the developers – it multiplied them.
Then the context: 400 million SMBs worldwide. 90,000 MSPs. We are a small group of providers serving an enormous market, and AI-native competitors are emerging who don’t carry the same legacy operational drag as traditional MSPs.
Scott framed this as a fork in the road between Customer Zero, automating existing workflows and squeezing efficiency and Customer One, redesigning business models for the agentic era. The message was clear: incremental improvement won’t be enough.
“The category is new, but the urgency is not. In a world that no longer waits, the advantage belongs to those who don't either. Those who turn agents into outcomes and intelligence into industry. ”
The Agentic Architecture Is Already Here
One of the frameworks that resonated most strongly was the shift to what Scott described as the new business architecture: Humans + Always-On Agents + Task Agents. Personal agents act as cognitive exoskeletons, filtering knowledge pollution and routing the right work to the right place, freeing humans for judgment, creativity and client relationships.
Pax8’s own employees are already seeing 82% more email volume, 61% more calendar events and 51% more Teams messages as a direct result of AI usage. The volume of information is exploding and the MSPs who will win are those who build the infrastructure to manage that intelligence, not just consume it.
This is the concept of Managed Intelligence: agent onboarding, security and governance, token optimisation and lifecycle management. It’s a new service category, and it belongs to MSPs.
Security in the Agentic Era — The Check Point Briefing
One of the sessions I was most looking forward to was David Meister from Check Point presenting their new Agent Security Platform, covering next-generation agent-based security capabilities and how they integrate into the broader MSP security stack.
As agentic architectures become the norm with AI agents accessing systems, calling APIs and making decisions, the security surface expands dramatically. Every agent needs a model. Every workflow needs tools and services. Every intelligent system calls an API. And none of it works without trust. Check Point’s approach to agent security is directly addressing this, and the announcements Dave made could change how MSPs think about security in the AI era.
Microsoft: Multi-Tenant Agent Support Is Coming Fast
The Microsoft breakout was another highlight. The stack – M365 Business Premium, Copilot, Purview and Agent 365 – is maturing quickly.
Agent 365 for partners already supports multi-tenant deployments with a unified registry and cross-tenant deployment capability coming in the July 2026 preview.
For MSPs managing multiple SMB tenants, this is significant. The ability to govern and deploy AI agents across a client base at scale is becoming a near-term reality, not a distant roadmap item.
The SMB Business Process Session and the $20K Question
One of the breakout sessions was on SMB Business Process Management. The presenters put up a simple example: a team member spending four hours every afternoon manually syncing two systems. With automation: four hours per day becomes four minutes per day. That’s over $20,000 per year, per person.
The framework introduced for identifying where to start was practical and immediately applicable:
- Type A work: deterministic, automate first
- Type B work: pattern-based, AI-ready, and
- Type C work: contextual, requires human judgment.
The solution spectrum runs from basic configuration through to process redesign, automation, integrated AI and finally agentic systems. While SMBs in the US tend to be larger than those in ANZ, it presents a good starting point for categorisation and prioritisation.
NinjaOne, Guardz and MSP Conversations
We had a packed schedule of vendor meetings alongside the main conference program including Guardz, Breach Secure Now!, Egnyte and NinjaOne with valuable partner conversations as well as some excellent restaurants!
Meeting with NinjaOne reinforced something we think about a lot: top-quartile MSPs manage 250–400 devices per tech, compared to 100–225 for the middle 50%. The differentiator isn’t working harder, it’s automation and tooling. NinjaOne’s ALIGN-SENSE-ACT-EVOLVE cycle is a practical model for systematically improving efficiency across every client workflow.
The conversations with the Guardz and Breach Secure Now! teams were also timely. Cybersecurity awareness and compliance continue to be critical for SMB clients, and both partners are evolving their platforms in ways that align with how Manage Protect approaches client security strategy.
What I'm Bringing Back
A few things I’m taking directly from Pax8Beyond into our practice:
- Managed Intelligence is the new category. The MSPs who define themselves as managers of AI agent fleets – governing, securing and optimising them – will lead the next decade.
- Process redesign before automation. The ABC framework is a useful tool for surfacing where ROI is hiding in a client’s business. We’ll be using it internally and sharing our experience.
- Security and agentic AI are inseparable. The Check Point briefing reinforced that as agentic systems proliferate, security governance of those agents becomes a core MSP responsibility. More to come on new capabilities from Check Point in this space!
- The opportunity is enormous and the window matters. 400 million SMBs. 90,000 MSPs. The partners who move into managed intelligence now will have a structural advantage that compounds over time.
It was a huge and exhausting week but always inspiring to listen and learn from the people and organisations with an overview of how technology, commercial factors, innovation and security will impact MSPs in the next 12 months.
Manage Protect represents the MSPs serving SMBs at these events, bringing back ideas, new products and industry insights to drive us all into a stronger future. If you’re an MSP thinking about how to position your business for the agentic era, I’d love to have that conversation. Get in touch
