OpenText Exec: Success In The AI Era Will Come From Selling Business Outcomes

‘You guys are now business solutions providers. You’re providing business outcomes,’ says Mike DePalma, vice president of small- and midsize-business business development at OpenText.

MSPs that once saw easy margins of around 40 percent on backup devices may dislike the lower margins that can come with artificial intelligence products, but the money from AI isn’t in reselling.

Instead, successful MSPs in the AI era will sell outcomes reached through AI technologies and work with clients on business strategies, becoming what some in the industry are calling “business solutions providers,” Mike DePalma, the recently appointed vice president of small- and midsize-business business development at Waterloo, Ontario-based OpenText Cybersecurity, told a crowd of solution providers Monday.

“The phrase ‘MSP’ is already obsolete,” DePalma said during a session at the 2025 XChange NexGen conference hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company. “What you guys are doing is not managed services. You guys are now business solutions providers. You’re providing business outcomes.”

OpenText Cybersecurity AI

Tanaz Choudhury, CEO of Houston-based TanChes Global Management—a member of CRN’s 2025 MSP 500—told CRN in an interview that she is also focused on how solution provider business models will change in the AI era.

Her company skipped the hype over managed security service providers because of the extra liability saddled on those partners. TanChes calls itself a systems integrator and technology partner, but the BSP term DePalma used—and credited to solution provider coaching and mentorship consultancy Start Grow Manage—also describes the outcome approach and tight alignment to client business that TanChes employs.

“Our DNA is ‘resolutions fast,’” she said. “If their business is down, your business is down.”

OpenText—whose businesses include cloud products, email encryption, web content management, subscription data protection provider Carbonite and distributor AppRiver—has seen data that shows how important solution providers are to implementing AI and making AI customers successful, DePalma said.

The statistic showing 95 percent of AI projects showing no return on investment published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an opportunity for solution providers to work with customers on where projects went wrong and how to successfully deploy the cutting-edge technology with privacy and governance controls, he said.

“I do think there’s a gold rush coming,” he said. “We just have to figure out where we fit in it.”

At a time when vendors’ products are starting to become commodities and lack differentiation, solution providers won’t win business based on their technology stack and toolsets, DePalma said. Solution providers can stand out from the pack by telling customers how they will use AI and technology to make sure projects are completed on time and under budget alongside traditional security and break-fix services.

DePalma touted his company’s work with solution providers—the top 24 percent of OpenText partners integrated with the vendor’s tool stack saw returns of $6.73 for every $1 spent with OpenText, he said. Those successful solution providers leverage integrations, design services and other capabilities to create a revenue multiplier. “This is that business solutions provider type of mindset,” he said.

Solution providers can build trust with customers by explaining why insurance carriers, for example, have 10 times the pages clients need to fill out and the purpose of each security tool, he said. Solution providers can become more strategic talking through client pain points and leveraging AI in a holistic way. Otherwise, the solution provider could lose business to a separate MSP taking that newer approach.

“Most of the time, they [customers] are not going to really care about what’s under the hood,” he said.

Three-quarters of people are already using AI at work, with almost half of those workers saying they started using it less than six months ago, he said. That’s an opportunity for solution providers to educate clients.

But partners need more conviction, DePalma said. More than 90 percent of MSPs say AI is already driving business growth, but less than half feel confident in recommending products and services to customers. Some solution providers will need to invest in training time and acquiring certificates for employees to reach that business solutions provider model.

One example DePalma shared with the crowd—an MSP who sold a law office Microsoft Copilot and showed it how to save tens of thousands of dollars a year having Copilot almost fully automate the tedious prenuptial agreement writing process, with a human still getting final approval over the contract.

“That’s really where AI is going to be—it’s going to be about the knowledge that the folks have in this room to see how AI is going to impact those small businesses out there,” he said. “What SMBs are looking for is the expertise from you guys. To me, that’s the differentiator.”

AI expert MSPs can more successfully raise per-seat prices for customers without much fuss. He also encouraged solution providers to get more assertive with vendor partners, getting multiple vendors on one call to discuss business growth strategy and see how the solution provider can stack different resources from the vendors.

“You guys have got to take the power back,” he said.