Hey channel insiders, AI in the channel is a rapidly evolving practice and conversation. Are you struggling to figure out how you should apply it to your business or your customers businesses in a way that adds value and brings in ROI? Find out how your channel peers are doing it right now and get inspired when you sign up for the weekly channel insider email newsletter. You'll get the latest news, expert insights, editorial interviews, and yes, the latest episode of Channel Insider Partner POV.
Just head to channelinsider.com and sign up right on our homepage. Enjoy today's episode. Hey channel insiders, welcome back to Channel Insider Partner POV. I'm your host Katie Bevoso and my guest today is the CEO of Logically, Joshua Skeens. Logically is a cybersecurity-first national platform MSP that serves customers from 30 employees up to 3,000. Today we dig into how and why cyber risk is a board-level concern, the impact that's had on company's cybersecurity postures, and why consolidating against tools sprawl does not exclude using best-of-breed technologies.
Plus, why even after the amazing solutions created with AI, Joshua still thinks that 2026 will be the year of AI disappointment. Welcome, Joshua. Great to have you. Katie, thanks so much for having me. Uh thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to dive in today, but first I'd like to give a little background on Logically. You've been CEO of Logically first of all for 3 years and for viewers who may not be familiar with Logically yet, how do you describe the company today?
What is your core mission and what kinds of clients, businesses, and verticals of course do you serve? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're a cybersecurity-first MSP. You know, we're one of the largest platforms in North America today. Our ICP is anywhere from 30 to 3,000 users and employees. Um so we really service, you know, a a large swath of different types of customers in many different verticals. Specifically around highly regulated industries is where we really target the most.
Trying to lean into businesses that want to leverage and need brand protection and need cybersecurity and not just a check box. That's a big difference for us. I love that you brought up brand protection cuz we're going to talk a lot about that in the in the future here, but first, there are thousands of MSPs and security providers competing for the same customers. The highly regulated ones obviously you've got your competition probably a little less than ones that are just kind of operating at a more general level, but what do you believe Logically does differently that actually moves the needle for your clients?
Yeah, so although we're a national player, we still have a very local regional feel that has been lost with a lot of platforms and it's it's an issue that platforms are facing today where we built these large, you know, hundred plus million dollar businesses that traditionally had been three to five million dollar businesses and that's what customers enjoyed doing business with. They loved doing business with the local people that they knew and then once these businesses quote unquote grew up, we decided for whatever reason that we needed to change the way that we did business, but the customers never asked us to do business differently and that caused a large disconnect.
And Logically, although we're a large player, we provide that same type of local support and feel back to those customers so they don't feel like they've been abandoned, but we also then do that an enterprise level with cybersecurity that a lot of times is what they believe is out of reach or too expensive for them, but we were able to drive that back down into those businesses. I love that and I think that it's important talking about that expanded touch where yes, you're a national platform, but you're able to have that that local touch, that local feel that people are used to.
They want to call and know that they're going to speak to Joshua or speak to somebody that they know and form that relationship with and I think that speaks a lot to the culture of a company. You actually mentioned in our prep call prior to today that Logically's average employee tenure is around 7 years, which is unusually high in this industry. We talk a lot about like two to three years is a max for people who to spend at a company before they move on whether it be a channel business or IT in general.
So how does that culture translate into better outcomes for your customers at Logically? Yeah, so if your employees are happy, then your customers will be happy and I I really believe that that you have to take care of your people first and then they'll take care of your customers where a lot of businesses still today really look at it like, "Hey, I need to take care of my customers, protect my revenue and then everything else will kind of fall into place." And we really believe at Logically from a cultural standpoint that we need need to take care of our employees and then they'll do great work for us and that great work will turn into customers that stick around for a really long time.
And just yesterday evening we had our monthly town hall with all of our employees that we do once a month and I was actually looking at tenure and we have over a hundred employees that have been with us for six plus years. Wow. So it's it's fantastic and we at the end of every town hall we celebrate people who have been with us for five plus years and one of the gentlemen has been with us for 17 years starting in this month. So we were celebrating him being here with us for 17 years.
I should also point out that you yourself are kind of a part of that trend because yes, you've been CEO for 3 years at Logically. Prior to that for just under a year you were COO and then prior to that you were actually a part of a company that Logically inherited through an acquisition. So I would venture to say that you've experienced that culture first hand and that's the reason that you've stayed and grown with the company. Yeah, and it's cliche a lot of times when people ask CEOs like what they like most about their business and they always say the people, but like that's what I truly believe is the people.
That's That's the reason why I've been here for 22 plus years is that I love the people that I I work with. You know, in our industry about one and a half, two years is the average tenure for people in this this vertical before they move on to another role. So for me to be here that long, that obviously speaks volumes to what we do here and like what we believe in and the people that we have and then for others to be here that long too, I think it says a lot about like what we've built here.
I agree. I agree. So I'd love to also dig now into some cybersecurity topics that we've seen definitely be popular conversations and also challenges across the board within our industry. So let's dig into those. I want to talk about cyber risk becoming a board-level responsibility. So this isn't new. The SEC created strict regulations around this starting back in 2023 and we do see some reiterations of it every year, but considering the evolution of the threat landscape, we've got AI, we've got deep fakes, we've got just increased attacks overall, what changes when cybersecurity moves from the IT department to the boardroom?
Um I think more people start to care about it. It's like with anything from a change perspective, a lot of times it has that change has to come from the top down, right? And if the very top of your organization is a board or your CEO or chairman and they're the ones that are pressing on cybersecurity needs and looking at risks, like that then further trickles down into the organization. And now that you're seeing, we talked about brand protection, people not wanting their names in the news cuz seems like every day you're seeing somebody else in the news or some large breach that's happened and there's another 25 million social security numbers that are out there now, right?
So having the board really lean into and be responsible for pushing the organization to be secure is only going to make these businesses lean into and spend more money on cybersecurity. That's a really good point and while I understand it, a lot of MSPs and security leaders struggle to explain cyber risk in terms that executives actually understand. The folks at the board level are not always ones that are backed by 20 years of cybersecurity experience.
So what's the best way for technology leaders to translate cybersecurity into something boards and investors can actually act on? Yeah, great question. To me that's an individual thing, right? You have to look at each board member and know what their background is. You know, funnily enough I was having a conversation yesterday with a gentleman who does leadership training for us and and I told him one of the things that I took away from leadership training many years ago was that every single person needs to be managed differently and they have they have a different way of learning and understanding and a different background.
And I think the same thing goes to managing up to your board. Like for me I have a board that I have to educate, I have to report to on a monthly, quarterly basis and it's important for me to understand who those people are, what their background is, so therefore I can break down my communication that best fits them. So I have some extremely technical people that are on my board, so I can get into the technical weeds and really what I call flipping the switches and turning the knobs of telling them what we're trying to do from a cybersecurity perspective or from a technology perspective.
Others don't have that background, they're just business people. So you really have to understand what their level of understanding is and then break it down into something that they can understand. That's the reason why I talk a lot about brand protection. It's not just so much attack surfaces and threat vectors and things like that that which many people would not understand, but a lot of people understand your logo, right? They understand what your logo means and you need to protect that because you don't want it in the news.
There's a statistic out there that 60% of businesses that are SMB that get a ransomware attack will be closed in 6 months. Well, that's anywhere from 95 to 98% of businesses in the United States, so you really don't want to be one of those businesses. You don't want your name out there in the news because you fell down from a cybersecurity perspective. So it's it's important when you're educating your your chairman, your board that you're really talking at their level cuz otherwise it really won't, you know, land for them.
Let's talk more about that brand protection that you mentioned because security is increasingly, as you say, tied to brand protection and reputation. Do you think boards finally understand that cybersecurity isn't just the cost center, but it's actually key [snorts] to business survival? I think way more so today than what they have ever understood, right? You hit on it previously, probably for the last 5-10 years, the majority people thought that it was just a cost center for the business and they didn't really understand it.
But, you know, one of these businesses gets attacked and the next thing you know, their intellectual property or their customers names and addresses and social security numbers are out there, it does tremendous damage to your brand where people just won't shop with you, they won't buy from you anymore. Almost any vertical that you're in today, they can walk down the street and go some place else that does the exact same thing and you you run yourself a very large risk if you're not protecting that data.
That's what's going to happen if something happens to you. For MSPs and MSSPs who are watching this and they might want to elevate their value to their clients to the level that you do, is there anything that you do that you would tell them to put into practice, so to speak, for them to elevate themselves when it comes to becoming strategic advisors to the board rather than just technology vendors? Uh it sounds like you yourself have that experience internally talking to your own board and needing to convince your own board of what you need and need to do.
But how do you apply that externally and is there a method that other MSPs can use? Yeah, you're hearing more of it lately, but we've always really talked about driving business outcomes for our customers and like understanding where they're trying to go rather than our industry for many years was we're trusted partner, we're going to come in and do these things when really we were just still slinging technology to try to solve problems for people and we were doing a really good job, but I mean that's more what we were being than true trusted partners.
Now we're trying to solve business outcomes for our customers and what that means is we're sitting down with them and asking them what is your 12, 24, 36 road map? Like where is your business headed? Are you trying to acquire other businesses? How are you trying to grow? What percentage of growth are you trying to get there to? What's your risks that you're looking for in your business? Maybe they don't know, so we can help them with some risk analysis as well.
And then we take all that information and we try to create them a road map of where logically can help them execute on what their mission is rather than us just going and saying, "Hey, you don't have this service, we sell this service, this is the why you should buy this service from us." It's completely different. It's difficult for a lot of MSPs to get there because number one, they don't think that way. Number two, they might not have the people on staff to even be able to have those type of conversations, but I would urge MSPs to really start to lean into that motion because otherwise, there will be players out there that will be showing up and knocking on your customer's door that's actually going to offer that to them and they're going to lean more heavily into, "Hey, who's somebody that's going to come in and listen to me about what I'm trying to accomplish with my business and how they can help me succeed rather than what they can sell me." I have this question a little deeper into the interview, but I think now is a really good time to ask it considering those board level conversations for board level risk as well as the brand protection.
Is there a success story with a customer that you may or may not be able to name where you say this really exemplifies Logically's place as the trusted advisor to our clients and the trusted MSSP? Is there one that comes to mind that you can tell me? Yeah, absolutely. There was recently this past summer, we'd been a long time MSP MSSP for a really large insurance company and they did a merger with another insurance company that was two times their size and you know, that's always a risky proposition for us like are we going to be on the outside looking in?
Come to find out they had their own the other entity that did the merger had their own MSP as well. And we just put our best foot forward like we started talking to the new leadership team and the current leadership team and thing with like, "What's your business outcome? What are you trying to get out of this merger? What is this going to look like?" We kept having those conversations with them and we created, they never asked us to, we created a 36-month road map of hey, like this is what this integration should look like of how you're going to put the businesses together.
Here's your cost savings, here's where your legacy hardware's at. Like we did this entire thing for them. Nobody asked us, presented it to them and um they ended up selecting us to be their services provider moving forward and really removed the current legacy MSP that everybody thought was going to take over the entire business because they went back to that MSP and asked them like, "Hey, can you produce something like that?" And they kind of brushed it off like, "Hey, it's the really not needed because we can still support you, we can take care of you." And after talking to the CEOs, they were just like, "You guys had a different level of thinking and strategy that we haven't seen from other partners before." So they really leaned into that and that was a massive win for us.
I love that, especially the part where after seeing what you did, they went to the competing MSPs and said, "Can you produce something?" If your client ask you, "Can you do this?" The answer is not you don't need that necessarily. If they're asking for a proof of concept, so I think it's really incredible that you were able to anticipate and show that you were one step ahead during the whole process, thinking about challenges before they could even come up at those at those tables and those conference rooms.
So really excellent story there. Shifting gears a little bit, Joshua, I want to talk about tool sprawl. We're seeing consolidation become a priority for many businesses in 2026. Many organizations have accumulated dozens of tools, some of which overlap or are not even fully deployed in their environments. So what's the real cost of security tool sprawl that companies often don't see until it's too late? Yeah, so it used to be in enterprises that they would say they had over 70 tools that were actually bought and purchased and less than 40% of those were deployed.
So think about that that you're you might have 30 tools that you bought and they were never fully deployed into your environment. And that's more enterprise, right? So that's larger, but that number was always staggering to me that you're you're paying that much money for all those tools and you're deploying less than half of those tools. There's gaps that happen in these businesses because they have too many tools and then there's a because they think that they have a tool that's doing something that it's not or it's not configured correctly.
Or they then just have so many tools that they're buying things that are already a part of another tool that they have already. And you know, they could be buying an EDR MDR platform that does both EDR and MDR, but they don't think or know that it actually does MDR, so therefore they then and go buy an MDR solution and they're double paying for things. The costs run really high when businesses do that and we see that a lot. We even have that with our current customers where we're trying to provide them constant education about what the tools and services that we provide them.
And then they might ping us out of left field and say, "Hey, we're really looking at this solution because it does XYZ." We're like, "Yeah, you already have that tool and we already do that for you." And they're like, "Oh, we forgot, right?" And like that happens. I mean it it happens to me. I mean I'm sure it happens to you in our lives. There's just so many things that just are more or less on autopilot you just kind of forget about after a while and then the shiny object catches your eye and you say, "Hey, I want that thing, right?" So that's very important for us to stay on top of with with customers with the tool sprawl and I think it's a really large challenge for SMBs because they just don't know and that's the reason why they lean into MSPs to try to provide them that advice.
It's not just saving money, it's also saving time and saving downtime when you think that you have a tool set up to catch something and you actually don't. We also don't mention often enough about many of those tools are not one-time payments. You're paying monthly for cycles for what you use with them and don't even realize it. So it's a it could be a lot of lost revenue if a company doesn't realize what they do and don't have deployed. I should bring up, Joshua, during our prep call you also raised an interesting point to me that the industry cycles between best of breed tools and consolidation strategies.
Where do you think we are in that cycle right now today and how should MSPs decide which approach is right for their customers? Yeah, so I'm on the opposite end of most people on this one right now, I believe, and I believe that we're coming out of people trying to consolidate tool sets and we're going to go back to best of breed. We again, I think it's very cyclical. I've been we've showing my age here in this industry for 20 plus years and I've seen this just happen every four or five years.
We go to tool consolidation, we want to go to the same one or two vendors and consolidate the entire stack to them, which has its advantages and then people go back to now I want to be best of breed, I want to go best of breed of what everybody does because there's a good reason for that. I felt like four-ish, three-ish years ago, we went back into, "Hey, let's consolidate into vendors." I believe we're coming out of that cycle at least for the larger organizations, MSPs, we're coming out of that cycle because of AI and automation.
I can now leverage AI and automation to pull these tool stacks together for me and do the exact same thing that the vendors are saying they can do because if you buy all of the products through me. And there's an advantage now to saying, "Hey, I can buy best of breed products and tie them all together with AI and automation and now I have a best of breed solution for my clients that isn't all-in-one and I can see that and provide telemetry and visual visualization around it where you thought you could only do that before if you consolidated to one or two vendors.
And at our size, um we can buy tool sets at the same cost that we could if we were trying to consolidate to one or two vendors. I believe that consolidating to one or two vendors is extremely important for smaller shops and smaller businesses where they just don't have the buying power to drive margin when they're trying to do best of breed and EDR MDR firewall. Like they're trying to do it across the stack. They just couldn't do it because they don't have enough quote unquote endpoints to do that.
Joshua, I think you set me up perfectly for this next question because it's not a podcast unless we talk about AI. So you actually just talked about AI and automation that they would be allowing organizations to connect best of breed tools more easily. So do you think AI could actually reduce the need for platform consolidation by making disparate tools work together more seamlessly? This is probably a little redundant to what you were just telling me, but I I I'd love to hear maybe some examples of what you could point to that you've seen or you're seeing coming down the line.
Yeah, a million percent AI and automation is able to do that today. Like we're seeing that in our business. I saw an interesting stat uh this past week that although we hear about AI and automation everywhere. I mean I think if you go on LinkedIn or any other platform, you think that everybody probably believes they're behind at that point in time and everybody's like creating some new great flying car with AI and automation, but there's like less than 25 million people in the world that actually pay for AI.
So, there's not that many people that are using it at a large level, but it's extremely powerful now. An example is is like we've been able to tie our EDR and our MDR, which are two separate vendors, together to give us better telemetry data. And just 2 and 1/2 weeks ago, we had our SLT and our SKO offsite. And in the evening, I'd finished my last session, was talking to some of the executive team, and I was walking through the lobby, and one of our VC so's stopped me, held up a cell phone, and he was like, "Look." He was like, "This happened in less than 15 minutes.
We'd called the customer." And our EDR had popped an alert for a customer. Within 2 minutes, the MDR had sent an alert. They tied that together. It then emailed our entire SOC team, put an alert on the SOC board, and text messaged to everybody in the SOC, and he had it on his cell phone. All through AI and automation that we've built internally, and they called the customer in less than 15 minutes. The customer was having a pen test done, and they had not told us.
So, thankfully, nothing bad was happening, but they were so impressed and so shocked that we responded so quickly that it just wowed them over. And to me, like that's the power of AI and automation that within 15 minutes, all of that happened with disparate systems that we pulled together through AI and automation, and it text messaged, you know, our VC so, and he was showing it to me 15 minutes later. You got to admit, that was like a little bit of a nerd out moment where you went, "This is so cool." Yeah.
We were talking for We talked about it for like an hour the next day. Like everybody was so excited about it, right? Like it's But, you know, the marketing was there like, "We're turning this into a case study. This is amazing, right?" But >> Awesome. But like that's just a small example of like what we're able to do. And these are disparate systems. They're not the same vendor, right? And we're able to pull that together cuz we're using best of breed and using and leveraging AI and automation to do that.
I think it's even better that it wasn't an attack happening. It was a pen test. So, you're seeing something that is not even nefarious going on behind the scenes. You're seeing just a slight maybe change in the system, and your your systems are acting the way they should and letting you know. So, I mean, what a great case study. I think that's amazing. I look forward to seeing that when it's written and comes out. Please send it my way. Absolutely. >> But, incredible, incredible.
I I do want to see if I can if I can counter you on something because when we were having our prep call, I asked you, "What is 2026, the year of?" And you actually told me AI disappointment. And we just talked about some awesome use cases for AI, but you did do the caveat saying there's only so many millions of people who are actually paying for AI tools. So, when we talk about the year of AI disappointment, what does that refer to in in practice?
Are you referring to on the user end level? Are you referring to on people who are just kind of throwing money at it still on the enterprise level? What does that mean? Yeah, so to me, it means more from a business perspective. I think that there's going to be a lot of disappointment and regret of businesses spending a lot of money on AI and automation, and they're just not getting their ROI for it, right? So, again, we're doing great things with AI and automation, and we're seeing others do the exact same thing.
So, I'm kind of taking a little bit of a counter argument here, but I just think like that's what we're going to see. We're already kind of seeing it in news cycles now where larger CEOs are saying, "Hey, like we spent millions of dollars, and we can't track any ROI on this." So, I think they're seeing some disappointment. And during our conversation, I leaned into it. I told you like I think there's going to be a lot of burnout, too. Like I talked to a lot of people that are just they're exhausted by just every Like again, you go on LinkedIn, and it looks like people are just winning the day with AI and automation, and some people don't even know how to get started.
And I'm talking to business owners where business owners are thinking, "You know, maybe I should just think about selling. You know, I'm I'm in my early 50s, but I thought I was going to hold this business until I was in my 60s and retire, and I just I think I might want to get out because I don't want to have to worry about AI and automation and how it plays into my business." And they think it's this huge hurdle, and I think it's scaring people.
It's burning them out. So, I just kind of look at it a little bit different way. I I do think there'll be great things that come with AI and automation uh in '26, but I also believe there will continue to be a ton of burnout and disappointment. I think that's a really good way to to show the other side of the AI argument where yes, we're seeing some wonderful things happen with it, but then we're seeing a lot of expectations put on it that shouldn't have been put on it in the first place to get that ROI.
Um and I think the burnout conversation is very real. Uh I see that happening even at a level of people just trying to use it creatively how they can do so, and they feel really burned out in trying to understand how can I marry my skills to this in a way that doesn't make me look unnecessary in this whole project. So, I appreciate that conversation. I appreciate that that argument to it very much. Something to consider for other MSPs, what is one piece of advice that you'd give MSPs on maybe one strategic priority for the next 12 months?
What should they focus on right now to stay competitive? AI and automation comes from the top down, right? They need to be leaning in with for their entire organization and asking their employees to use AI and automation 10 to 15 minutes a day every day. And they should be asking them to look at the most manual, repetitive, mundane tasks that they do, and guaranteed you can automate 50 to 80 to 90, if not 100%, of those things. You should be able to do that.
And then once you do that, you can leverage those people into more roles that are customer-facing to provide more value, and also put them in roles where they're feeling more value to their personal and professional lives as well, right? If you had a person that was just pressing a button every single day, and that's all they did, and that added value to your business, but it doesn't add value to their life necessarily, you can probably automate that and move them into some other role.
And I would challenge them to do that, but that has to come from the top down cuz otherwise, you're never going to get the entire organization moving in the same direction. Really, really good advice, Joshua. Thank you. Thinking about there's a lot more 2026 to go. What's next for Logically and for you? We're diving into the AI and automation, right? You know, I just got off of a meeting I just got off a meeting um uh prior to this to talk about some AI and automation initiatives.
Again, like we're heavy into it. There's just so many cool things that we're doing. We've We've spun out a research engine around for cybersecurity around AI and automation. We're trying to get that back into our customer base, and like that's what we're really leaning heavily into the rest of the year, which is trying to empower our customers on how to leverage AI now um because it's a question we hear a lot, and I feel like we're in a perfect spot to be able to answer it a lot of those questions and help them as technologists of, "Hey, like let us get inside your business a little bit further, and we can tell you areas of where you could leverage AI and automation to help you get ahead of your competition as well." And like that's going to be a big aspect for us in '26.
Joshua, I have loved this conversation, and I could ask you a million more questions, and I'm sure those listening and watching have a million for you as well. So, for those who'd like to learn more about Logically and who maybe even want to sign up to become a a customer, where can they go to learn more about you? Please go to www.logically.com, and go to our contact us page. Amazing. That plain and simple. You had it ready to go. Thank you so much, Joshua, for the conversation today.
I appreciate your time. Thanks so much, Katie. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks again to Joshua for joining me, and thank you as always for watching or listening. Check out every episode of Channel Insider Partner POV on channelinsider.com, or watch us on YouTube at youtube.com/channelinsider_newsandtrends, or listen to us as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow wherever possible to never miss an episode.
Come connect with Channel Insider or me on LinkedIn and X. Once again, I'm your host, Katie Bavoso, and I'll see you next time. >>
This transcript was generated automatically from the
video's captions and may contain errors.
