Pax8's Rob Rae: AI Leaders Are Already 'Light Years Ahead' Of Rival MSPs

At Pax8 Beyond EMEA 2026, CVP of partner experience Rob Rae discussed marketplace evolution, AI adoption and why partners that are embracing AI are finding more opportunities.

MSPs that are failing to start AI conversations with customers risk being left behind, according to Pax8.

Speaking to CRN UK at Pax8 Beyond EMEA, Rob Rae, CVP of partner experience at Pax8, said that partners investing time in understanding AI and discussing it with customers are uncovering new revenue opportunities and outperforming peers that remain hesitant.

In a conversation with CRN UK, Rae outlined why AI has become the biggest challenge facing MSPs, what separates the fastest-growing partners from the rest of the market and how Pax8 plans to support partners through its next phase of growth.

What are your biggest priorities for the Pax8 partner ecosystem over the next 12 months?

“Our partner advisory council is one piece that we're making a significant investment in, especially with this new agentic move that we're all making. It's going to be absolutely critical that we continue to get that feedback from our partners. So, asking them if we are going in the right direction, those kinds of things. So, that's one area of investment.

“As far as partner programs go, I want to connect our partners and our vendors in a closer way where we're working more directly with them on things like lead generation, upsell, cross-sell and helping them grow their businesses. I'm looking at different programs around MDF, looking at other programs around how we can help partners achieve whatever their goals are, which is generally more growth. We have the technology within the marketplace to actually go and do these things.

“There are softer goals, like our Voyager Alliance program, to create more value around there. We are doing a lot of different things heading into 2027.”

What separates the fastest-growing partners in the Pax8 ecosystem?

“If we're looking at today's world, the Pax8 partners that are out there having conversations about AI right now are finding those opportunities. [Partners that have already started the AI conversations] are already light-years ahead of pretty much most of the managed services market, not just the Pax8 partners.

“Those that are learning more and are a little more open-minded, spending time to actually understand the opportunity around AI, those are the ones that are growing faster and finding opportunities where they never found them before.”

How has the Pax8 partner conversation changed over the last few years?

“Pax8, around three years ago, identified as a distributor. But I think with the advent of the marketplace and the continued investment that we make in our marketplace, and turning it more from a grocery-store-type experience into an Amazon marketplace-type experience, where partners have smarter access to better things, that is more custom-catered toward what their actual needs are.

“That's a significant change that we've made over the last two years because I think what we're doing is creating a unique value proposition for our partners. I don't think anybody else in the market is actually doing it in the way we’re doing it, or the way in which we think about it. But that also is opening the door for things like the agentic 8os product, which has allowed us to take that next leap. We are continuing to develop the marketplace, help them find agents better, help them find newer technologies better.

“I think the other thing, too, is our exclusivity around focusing on the managed services market allows us to actually gather all of that intelligence and market information to be able to bring that cumulative information from our partner base to other MSPs. We have one priority, and that is helping MSPs. So, if I can focus my energy, my time and my money around that and create things that they actually care about, as opposed to trying to be something for everybody, I think that's worked really well for us over the last couple of years and has really helped us fuel our growth.”

What are the biggest challenges facing MSPs globally right now?

“It’s funny, because if you had asked me this question a year ago, it would be sales and marketing. There's always a piece of sales and marketing that's been the challenge for MSPs.

“They're thought of as technology experts, which they absolutely are, but the softer skills around sales and marketing have always been secondary to the technical skills that they have to be able to deliver those services, which means finding new business, going to the part of the SMB market that is not using a managed service provider. That's always been a little bit of a challenge.

“That is still a component of this, but right now, the conversation around AI is probably the biggest challenge. MSPs need to get in front of every single one of their end users to be able to talk about AI, and they're not. Mostly because a lot of them are still customer zero themselves, and they're still trying to figure it out on their own.

“One of the mistakes I’m seeing MSPs making right now is they are looking at the verticals that they handle, the different SMBs that they're managing, and thinking, this is maybe an older vertical, they're not ready for AI, or they're not interested in AI, which is actually untrue. A lot of times, there are people within those organizations that are adopting it, and the owners of those organizations don't know that people are playing around with AI.

“The AI component of this right now is probably the biggest priority. We want the SMB world, and all the end users out there, if they are thinking about AI, playing around with AI, are they doing it right? Is it safe? Is it secure? Is it governed? That's a conversation they need to have with an MSP, and I think that's kind of the essential piece right now that I think is missing.”

Are you seeing any major differences between partners in North America, EMEA and APAC?

“Traditionally, yes. In the MSP market and the technology world, the United States has always been ahead. It happened with cloud. It happened with cybersecurity. It even happened with managed services when that transformation happened. With AI, I'm not seeing that at all.

“We've been polling our advisory council partners, which are some of the most engaged MSPs that we have, and what's funny is, although everybody is still pretty much at the start of the AI journey or kind of on step two of this journey, they're all pretty much in the same spot, regardless of where they are globally.

“With AI, we don't have to wait for enterprise technology to come to us. We can actually use AI now. AI seems to be this common denominator that's available for everybody right now. It seems to be a completely level playing field.”

What is the biggest mistake that MSPs are making around AI today?

Rae said MSPs often underestimate how aggressively customers are already experimenting with AI.

“There are numerous examples where traditional industries that you wouldn't think are very forward-thinking from a technology standpoint actually are. They’re maybe still not technology-forward, but they’re actually looking at and leveraging AI in different ways.

“There’s a good example that we use. It's a staff member of ours whose mother owns six restaurants. One would think that a restaurateur who owns six restaurants probably isn't playing around with AI. So, her MSP was not having a conversation with her.

“Meanwhile, she's been playing around with AI and is managing her menu, her food distribution between the six locations, consumption, all those things, and she's leveraging this technology to do it without even including the MSP in the conversation. Then you ask the MSP, why aren't you talking to this person? And the response is, ‘It's a restaurant. What would they need AI for?’

“It is those types of conversations that we are finding, but there is opportunity everywhere.”

What does a mature AI services practice actually look like for an MSP three years from now?

“[In the future] the relationship the MSP has with the organizations that they support is way more comprehensive from a strategic perspective.

“The MSP should be in the strategic conversations, the planning conversations, the direction that the customer needs or wants to head in. The MSP is being proactive in finding opportunities for how this technology can work with these end users, can help them with their businesses, give them something they're not even thinking about.

“I think it's all going to be, and should be, relatively easy to customize based not only on particular verticals, but it could be customized specifically to particular companies and even particular individuals within those companies.”

This article originally appeared on CRN sister website CRN UK.