AI is changing both what customers expect from managed service providers and the security risks those providers must help them address.
Executives from Insight, NinjaOne, and Xage Security told Channel Insider that MSPs are being pushed beyond traditional IT management as customers seek guidance on AI adoption, cybersecurity, governance, and measurable business outcomes.
That shift is raising the stakes for providers. MSPs that remain focused primarily on maintaining systems and reselling technology risk becoming commoditized, while those that build deeper advisory and security capabilities have an opportunity to become more strategic partners to their customers.
Customers expect MSPs to become business advisors
Many leaders across the channel have landed on a central theme in 2026: customers are no longer looking solely for providers that keep systems running. Instead, they increasingly expect MSPs to explain how emerging technologies will impact various aspects of their business operations.
“When I was an MSP, my customers wanted me to make computers work fast, keep their data safe, and not tell them how I did it,” Paul Redding, head of MSP partnerships at NinjaOne, said. “Now… they need you to tell them how to make this technology improve their day-to-day business function.”
That shift represents what Redding describes as the next evolution of the MSP business model.
Rather than serving primarily as technology procurement arms, providers must become educators and business partners capable of identifying workflow inefficiencies, recommending AI-powered automation, and understanding customers’ industries well enough to propose improvements before clients ask.
To some, this might be a new business model entirely, but for many, it’s an expansion of the services-led model first brought to the channel a decade ago as break-fix and resale businesses gave way to managed services and recurring revenue.
“Our job is to go out and really stay on top of these various different market changes and trends… We’ve always had some level of responsibility for staying on top of these types of trends,” said Jeremy Nelson, CISO for North America at Insight, in an interview with Channel Insider about the various changes AI has brought to how Insight supports its customers.
AI accelerates the cybersecurity arms race
While customer expectations are changing, AI is simultaneously creating an entirely new cybersecurity challenge.
Nelson said cybersecurity has always been one of IT’s fastest-moving disciplines, but AI has dramatically accelerated both innovation and attacker capabilities. He believes organizations no longer have the luxury of debating whether AI belongs in cybersecurity.
“If we were to make the assumption that we can advance cybersecurity solutions and provide the best protection possible without AI, we’ve already lost,” Nelson said.
“We have to have AI in order to battle modern threats,” he added. “It is a machine-versus-machine arms race.”
Partners must scrutinize AI software supply chains
Rather than viewing AI as optional, Nelson said MSPs should carefully evaluate vendors’ software supply chains, development practices, guardrails, and security controls before recommending AI-powered security products.
“It really comes back to understanding the overall nature of the organization that’s producing the product, knowing what their software supply chain looks like, knowing what their development cycle looks like… it really just comes back to the same thing that we’ve always talked about when it comes to cybersecurity: trust,” Nelson said.
Autonomous AI environments create new security risks
Duncan Greatwood, CEO of Xage, believes AI is creating two simultaneous security challenges: protecting AI systems themselves while defending against AI-powered attacks.
Organizations are moving from protecting a relatively small number of enterprise applications to securing increasingly autonomous environments containing countless AI agents communicating with one another.
“AI is bringing a huge amount of chaos into what was previously a relatively well-behaved IT world,” Greatwood said.
As enterprises begin connecting AI directly to mission-critical systems, he argues that traditional prompt-based guardrails alone won’t provide sufficient protection. Instead, organizations need controls that validate the actual actions AI systems attempt to perform within environments.
Finding the balance between AI governance and capability
At the same time, Greatwood acknowledged that security leaders cannot simply block AI adoption.
“If the security folks in an organization try to say no, they’re usually losing right now,” he said, noting that business demand for AI continues to outweigh resistance despite growing security concerns.
Nelson told us he believes security leaders also need to think carefully about balancing guardrails and capabilities.
“With such strict guardrails, we’ve taken a very effective tool out of the hands of the good guys, and we’ve conceded the edge to the bad guys, because they don’t care about guardrails,” he said.
AI redefines the MSP value proposition
The rapid pace of AI innovation isn’t slowing, and neither are customer expectations. For MSPs and other partners, the opportunity extends beyond deploying new technology to helping organizations adopt it securely, responsibly, and with measurable business impact.
As AI adoption accelerates, Redding believes the channel’s next competitive advantage won’t come from managing technology alone, but from helping customers apply it to achieve better business outcomes.
That requires providers to rethink both the services they offer and the role they play inside customer organizations.
“I’m either going to stick my head in the sand… or I am going to move toward more education, enablement and partnership with my customers. I’m going to be the MSP… that is a business partner for these guys,” he said.