Shield Technology Partners, an MSP investment and operating platform, is launching Forge, an AI operating system built to automate core IT service delivery tasks and give MSP technicians more time to focus on higher-value customer work.
Announced Sept. 24, Forge spans helpdesk operations, account strategy and project execution while allowing Shield’s partner companies to build their own automations, agents and runbooks. Shield also announced Miami-based Nerds Support as its 20th partner.
For Shield CEO Jim Siders and Head of Technology Mayank Jain, however, the goal extends beyond simply using AI to close more tickets.
“Every business as it scales, every IT business, hits some kind of a local maximum,” Siders told Channel Insider. “There’s something in their setup that they need help with.”
Forge is designed to attack those constraints by automating work that does not require human judgment while creating capacity for technicians to address more complex customer needs.
Forge targets helpdesk, projects, and account strategy
Forge currently includes three pre-built agentic AI experiences:
- AI Engineer can handle eligible helpdesk tickets from intake through resolution
- AI Account Manager is designed to identify customer needs using service histories and account data
- AI Project Engineer is designed to support project work from scoping through completion
Human approvals remain part of project workflows, while MSP teams can also build custom Forge automations.
Shield says Forge resolves half of actionable helpdesk tickets, with 92% of those resolutions requiring neither human approval nor logged technician time. For comparable ticket types, the company says Forge closes tickets 25 times faster than technicians, with a median resolution time of 16 minutes.
But Jain said one of the more significant opportunities comes after that capacity is created.
“Instead of kind of reacting toward a phishing attack happening, you can kind of now see that, ‘Oh, you had a phishing attack two months ago. You’re overdue on your phishing training. Let’s actually reach out to you and help you do the phishing training earlier,’” Jain explained.
At one Shield provider, the company estimates Forge created 25% more client capacity with the existing team. At another, technicians are spending roughly 70% less time resolving tickets and redirecting those hours toward proactive account strategy.
READ MORE: Shield took on a $100M investment from Thrive Holdings in February.
AI capacity shifts MSP technicians toward higher-value work
That shift also raises an increasingly important question for MSPs adopting AI: what should technicians do with the time automation frees up?
Siders cautioned against assuming automated ticket resolution alone produces business value.
“There’s this very simplistic, like, ‘Oh, well, auto-solve all the tickets. And then profit,’” Siders said. “But there’s so much more to it than that.”
The opportunity, he argued, is to move experienced technical employees toward work that is more valuable to customers and potentially more lucrative for the service provider.
“If there’s a world where something can be auto-solved in a high-quality way, then those technicians, those engineers get to do something that’s fundamentally more satisfying for them,” Siders said.
“It’s more interesting. It’s more advantageous for their career arc. It’s probably more lucrative for the business. It’s almost certainly gonna be more effective for the customer.”
Nerds Support becomes Shield’s 20th partner
Nerds Support will now join that development loop. The MSP, founded in 2004, serves SMB customers with managed IT, cybersecurity, cloud and communications services, particularly across accounting, legal and wealth management firms. Founder Scott Richman will continue leading the business.
For Jain, Forge is ultimately part of a broader evolution from reactive IT support toward proactive services and, eventually, helping MSPs bring AI capabilities directly to their customers.
“I could not be more pumped for what the future of this industry holds,” Jain said.
Siders said he sees Forge as another component of Shield’s broader strategy, in which the company aims to provide MSP owners with a way to expand into new opportunities without exiting through a traditional acquisition or sacrificing the customer relationships that have gotten them this far.
“There is actually a path, right? There’s a path to enriching that business that you’ve spent your career growing. There’s a partnership model out there for that. And there’s, like, a set of folks looking to build technology for businesses like yours.”