Rob Rae On Pax8 Helping MSPs With AI: ‘Somebody Has To Help Tie It All Together’

‘Our business only grows if MSPs grow. By helping them understand AI, giving them education and training and connecting them with the right tools, they’ll build stronger businesses,’ says Rob Rae, corporate vice president of community and partner experience for Pax8.

After spending the past year explaining why and how MSPs should embrace AI, Pax8 is helping MSPs roll out the next phase: execution.

Through its Managed Intelligence Program, MSPs will be guided on how to implement AI inside their own businesses while also developing repeatable services they can sell to customers.

“We did the ‘why.’ We did the ‘how.’ Now it’s the, ‘Let’s go get it done,’” Rob Rae, corporate vice president of community and partner experience for Pax8, told CRN. “It’s a really comprehensive program that helps guide MSPs into instituting AI not only into their own businesses, but also into being able to sell it to their end users.”

Rather than just offering technology, the program combines education, implementation guidance and business templates to help partners navigate customer discussions.

“What kind of conversation should you have? How should you start? We’ve built a bunch of templates and resources to help those MSPs,” Rae said. “That links into the agent store, where we now actually have agents that MSPs can leverage and use. As this technology continues to evolve, we’re providing the training, the education, the support, the guidelines — everything they need — along with the actual technology.”

This initiative, he added, reflects Pax8’s belief that distributors and marketplaces have a broader responsibility than simply connecting partners with software vendors.

“Vendors are building AI into their own products, but each one is only a piece of an MSP’s business,” he said. “Your backup company is working on AI, your cybersecurity company is working on AI, but somebody has to help tie it all together.”

And over the next year, Pax8 plans to identify early adopters and turn them into teachers for the rest of the channel.

“I think we’ll learn faster by seeing people actually doing it,” he said. “We want to find partners who are implementing AI, understand what worked, what didn’t, what the bumps were, what the successes were and bring them on stage to share those experiences with everyone else.”

CRN spoke further with Rae about Pax8’s role in evolving MSPs to managed intelligence providers, its Global Partner Program and goals with partners over the next year.

How has the conversation with partners about AI evolved over the past 12 months?

Twelve months ago, at Beyond in Denver, we launched the Agentic Inflection Point report. That was really the ‘why.’ Why should MSPs care? What should they start thinking about? What should they be planning for? At that point, there really weren’t a lot of applications that worked well in the SMB space outside of Microsoft.

Then, at Beyond EMEA, we launched the Managed Intelligence Playbook. That became the ‘how.’ It gave partners ways to think about their businesses, how to talk to customers about AI and how to prepare for what’s coming. Now we’re at the implementation stage. We did the why. We did the how. Now it’s, ‘Let’s go get it done.’

What does the Managed Intelligence Program provide to partners?

It’s designed to help guide MSPs through implementing AI in their own businesses while also giving them the tools to build services for their customers. It’s not just technology. It’s conversation guides. It’s templates. It’s best practices. It’s training. It connects into our agent store where partners can actually begin using AI agents. As AI continues to evolve, we’re trying to make sure partners have the education, the support, the guidance and the technology all working together.

So what are your prioritizing over the next year?

First is creating awareness. As big as Beyond is, it’s still a small percentage of our overall partner base, and this isn’t just about Pax8 partners. It’s about the MSP industry as a whole. Whenever I’m speaking or presenting, the goal is to educate the broader community. If they become Pax8 partners, great. But the important thing is moving the industry forward.

The second part is finding the partners who are actually doing this. We need examples. We need success stories. We need to understand what worked, what didn’t, where they struggled and what they learned. We’ll learn faster by watching real MSPs implement AI than we will by talking about theory.

Whether you’re a one-person MSP that’s just getting started or a large provider already building AI agents, there’s a place for you. The reality is this market changes almost daily. New technologies and new capabilities appear all the time. So the challenge isn’t just getting started, it’s creating continuous awareness. Even the biggest MSPs still primarily serve small and midsize businesses. This is really about helping those MSPs translate AI into something meaningful for their customers while also improving their own operations.

What’s the biggest challenge partners are telling you they face today with AI?

The biggest challenge is simply knowing how to start the conversation and how to keep it going. A lot of SMB customers still don’t really understand what AI means for them. Some are worried about it, some think it’s too expensive and others believe they’re too small to benefit from it. There’s still skepticism…some people think AI is a bubble. Others are resistant because they’re afraid of what it means. That’s where we think we can help. We can give MSPs confidence in having those conversations.

Why does Pax8 feel responsible to lead the AI charge for MSPs?

Where we sit in the ecosystem is actually pretty unique. Every vendor is building AI into its own products, but that’s only one slice of an MSP’s business. Your backup vendor has AI. Your security vendor has AI. Your productivity vendors have AI. Somebody has to help partners connect all of those pieces. Most Pax8 partners consume multiple technologies through our marketplace, so we’re in a position to help tie everything together.

Our business only grows if MSPs grow. By helping them understand AI, giving them education and training and connecting them with the right tools, they’ll build stronger businesses.

You’re also expanding the Partner Advisory Council globally. What’s changing?

We’ve had Partner Advisory Councils for years across different regions, but they’ve largely operated independently. The Americas had its group, EMEA had its groups and so on. What we’re doing now is bringing those regional councils together globally. We’ll still have local representation, but now we’ll create opportunities for partners from different regions to learn from one another because, honestly, MSPs face many of the same challenges regardless of geography. We also want representation from different-sized partners, different verticals and different markets so that we’re hearing from a broad cross-section of the community.

What impact do you expect that global council to have?

We’re already seeing it. Before Beyond, we brought advisory council members together to preview executive presentations and gather feedback. They told us what resonated, what didn’t, where messaging needed work and where we could improve. One of the announcements at Beyond actually came directly from feedback we received just weeks ago. A partner said, ‘It would be really helpful if you could do this.’ The team looked at it, realized it was achievable and incorporated it into the launch. That’s the kind of collaboration we want. It’s not just valuable for the people sitting on the council. Those conversations ultimately benefit the entire partner community.

Looking ahead to next year, what do you expect the conversation around AI to become?

It’s honestly impossible to predict because this market changes so quickly. We’re going to continue down this managed intelligence journey. We’ll see what comes out of the Managed Intelligence Program. We’ll see what comes out of the Managed Intelligence Alliance work that’s underway, and I think there are going to be significant developments in a relatively short amount of time. But even looking ahead just a few months, I’m confident we’ll be talking about things that none of us are anticipating today. That’s just the pace AI is moving.