What does it take to be a managed service provider in 2026? Well, that answer looks different than it did maybe even just a few years ago. I'm Victoria Durgen with Channel Insider. After hundreds of conversations over the past few years with vendors, partners, enterprise IT leaders, and everybody in between it feels one thing is becoming increasingly clear, I think, to all of us. Your customers aren't just looking for IT support anymore. They're looking for a strategic business partner.
So, here are some things the customers are expecting from MSPs. And we'll start with the least surprising thing I'll say all day. AI expertise. Nearly every organization is trying to figure out how to adopt AI and make it work for their businesses. But most still don't know where to start or if they've started aren't sure on the steps to take next. Customers aren't looking for someone to just install a chatbot or procure some basic licensing requirements.
They're looking for guidance on a holistic AI strategy that includes governance, infrastructure, security work, and integrating that AI into existing workflows to ultimately make employees actually want to use the thing that they're spending the money on. The MSPs that can answer those questions are becoming a trusted adviser, a real business adviser, if you will, not just a tech provider. That brings me to point two. Proactive security is no longer a want.
It's a need and it's an expectation that your customers are putting on you. Customers are expecting MSPs to help prevent attacks, not just respond after something goes wrong or an attack does occur. That means continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, identity security, compliance support, security awareness training, and incident response planning, just to name a few, are all table stakes now. and boardroom conversations from the largest enterprises to the smallest SMBs.
Security is becoming a core expectation across the board because nobody wants to be the headline that everybody wakes up to read or write when something goes wrong. And for many, they're assuming that if they're paying you, a partner, to manage their technology that you're already doing that work, whether your SLAs's say that you are or not. So getting in the conversations with your customers now about what they think you're doing against what you are actually doing and what you could be doing moving forward is critical to long-term success and trust in the relationship.
Now point three, the hybrid infrastructure that's underpinning AI and security. We spent years predicting that an allcloud future would come where nobody was on prem anymore and everybody was in a cloud environment, but frankly that never happened. Most organizations are still operating on a mix of on-prem or cloud and even if they're fully cloud have SAS applications, edge environments, the list goes on and on. And now with data back at the forefront of everybody's minds because of AI, those workload conversations are changing and customers want to know that what they're building their entire tech landscape on is going to be able to withstand the added bandwidth pressures, data readiness challenges, security needs, and more.
Customers are expecting a partner that can help manage all of it wherever it lies and keep all of it secure simultaneously. That's where you come in. And that brings me to my last point, continuous guidance. The most successful MSP relationships don't stop once the deployment occurs. Now, that's probably not surprising to hear, right? This industry has spent a couple years now talking about recurring services models and how recurring revenue beats out on one-time fees.
But technology now is changing far too quickly for any one-stop shop to be able to keep up with an old model. Customers want regular business reviews, technology road maps, life cycle planning, AI readiness assessments, security recommendations, and ultimately advice not just on what to do today, but on what's coming next. So, in other words, they want a partner who helps them make smarter technology decisions throughout the year, not just when it's time for a contract renewal.
That's one of the biggest shifts that we're seeing across the channel right now. The MSPs growing the fastest aren't necessarily the ones selling the most products, adding the most new services to the portfolio. They're the ones getting deeper and stickier with customers, delivering expertise, building long-term relationships, and helping those business leaders navigate an increasingly complex technology landscape in which tech isn't tech for tech's sake.
It's driving real business value and moving the company forward. Those expectations are probably only going to continue to rise. And the providers that are investing now in advisory services, internal expertise across AI and other hot topics, and business consulting offerings today are likely the ones who will be leading the market tomorrow. For more information on the ways that the channel is evolving and how your peers are adjusting, you can head to channelinsider.com, like and subscribe wherever you saw this video today. I'm Victoria Durgen.
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