Here Are The Biggest Moves 20 MSP 500 Executives Made In The Last Year To Drive Success

As part of the CRN MSP 500, CRN asked top executives to describe the biggest, most significant change their MSP company made in the last year to drive success. Here’s what 20 had to say.

Success Factors

To effectively meet the rapidly changing IT needs of their clients, MSPs and MSSPs must themselves be constantly changing, adopting new technologies and business processes to stay at the top of their game.

Over the last year MSPs have been particularly focused on developing expertise and services around AI for their clients—even as they adopt AI tools and automation internally and embed AI within their own business processes—to improve their own operations and services delivery.

But it’s not just about AI. MSPs have made strategic acquisitions to expand their technology and service portfolios and extend their geographic reach. They have partnered with new IT vendors and expanded alliances with existing partners. Many have broadened their offerings beyond just IT as a service to include higher-value services such as consulting while others have revamped their pricing models.

And some have worked to infuse a “customer-first” culture throughout their organization amid ongoing consolidation and commoditization in the managed services space.

As part of the CRN 2026 Managed Service Provider 500 project, we asked executives at the MSPs on this year’s list the question: What is the single biggest/most significant change your company has made in the past year to drive success?

Here’s what 20 MSP and MSSP executives had to say. (The complete profiles of the MSP 500, including their answers to this and other questions can be found here at crn.com)

Align

Vinod Paul

President

The most significant change we made this past year was embedding AI-driven automation and intelligence across both our internal operations and client-facing services. By integrating AI into service delivery, security monitoring and sales enablement—while strengthening our partner ecosystem—we improved efficiency, accelerated response times, and delivered more proactive, scalable outcomes for our clients. This shift has positioned Align to grow alongside emerging technologies while maintaining the high-touch service our clients expect.

AllSafeIT

Bones Ijeoma

CEO

Offering co-managed IT services was our most transformative change. Instead of competing for SMB accounts seeking full IT outsourcing, we now partner with midmarket and enterprise organizations that have internal teams but lack specialized expertise in cybersecurity, cloud architecture and AI automation. This shift fundamentally expanded our market and repositioned us from commodity MSP vendor to specialized expertise provider.

The change required retooling service delivery models, pricing structures and client acquisition strategies, but results are clear: higher-quality engagements and sustainable growth in market segments largely untapped by traditional MSPs competing on price alone.

ArcSource

Dave Monk

CEO

The most significant change ArcSource made this year was expanding beyond traditional managed IT into AI consulting, training and implementation services. Our clients now rely on us not only to secure and support their technology, but also to help them harness AI to improve workflows, reduce manual effort and make better decisions. This strategic shift has elevated our role from IT provider to growth partner and has opened new value streams for both existing and new clients.

BetterWorld Technology

James Keneflick

CEO

We expanded internationally by opening a bilingual service and delivery center in Puerto Rico, enabling seamless support across the U.S. and Latin America. This move allowed us to scale operations, serve a broader client base, and deepen our commitment to nonprofit and enterprise customers through localized, culturally aware service delivery.

cb20

Chris Pickett

President, CEO

Growth: We hired 31 new employees last year, doubled down on our security practice/offerings, and continued our geographic expansion throughout New England with the opening of a new Boston office and the acquisition/build-out of our operations facility in Malta, N.Y.

ConRes

Mary Nardella

CEO

Over the past year we consolidated and standardized our services by simplifying our offerings, streamlining our technology stack and introducing a simplified pricing model. These enhancements enable greater repeatability, scalability and ease of engagement for our customers.

ECMSI

Ralph Blanco

CEO

This past year we’ve done a lot of work internally to prepare for our growth plans. We’ve spent time redefining our accountability chart and making sure we have the right people in the right seat and making sure their roles are clearly defined and recognized. We have redefined our co-managed IT model in terms of updated pricing, value proposition for the different co-managed service offerings, as well as the sales strategy. We’ve also added a fourth location under the ECMSI umbrella, which increases our geographic footprint and provides a larger territory of businesses that need to be served.

Ensono

Jeff VonDeylen

CEO

Ensono’s most significant advancement in 2025 was the introduction and rapid scaling of the Envision Predictive Engine, a next-generation AI/ML platform that transforms how managed services are delivered. Envision shifts Ensono’s operating model from reactive incident management to predictive, intelligence-driven operations, enabling the team to identify and prevent issues before they impact clients. Built on machine-learning models trained across diverse infrastructure signals, Envision analyzes millions of data points to forecast failures, detect anomalies and automatically trigger remediation workflows.

Envizion IT

Mark Veldhoff

CEO

Incorporation of AI into triage process, customer reporting and ticket escalation. Significantly decreased noise from account management and tickets that were affecting customer experience. Freed up our IT managers (account managers) to focus on customer strategic planning and selling more fixes. It created a continuous improvement cycle that saw many customers drive their support costs down by 20 percent or more.

Insight

Joyce Mullen

President, CEO

The most transformative move has been the creation of Insight AI, a comprehensive suite of services designed to accelerate real value with AI. Launched in November 2025, Insight AI positions the company as a leader in delivering measurable business impact through artificial intelligence. This initiative was reinforced by strategic acquisitions, notably Inspire11, which added nearly 400 seasoned professionals and a proven track record in transformation consulting. Insight AI includes enterprise-grade accelerators to speed up deployment and close the gap between AI hype and tangible ROI. This shift signals Insight’s commitment to helping clients achieve real outcomes from AI investments.

Island Networks

Ed Waters

CEO

The most significant change we made was implementing outcome-based solutions and services to deliver measurable business results. We automated manual processes for service provisioning and approvals, standardized workflows for efficiency, and introduced flexible service models with integrated managed cloud billing. This transformation aligned technology delivery with client objectives, improved agility, and enhanced customer satisfaction through faster, predictable outcomes.

ISSQUARED

Bala Ramaiah

CEO

The most significant change we made this past year was our strategic shift from a services-centric organization to a product- and solutions-driven company. This transformation included the realignment of our MSP/MSSP offerings, the launch of StarWATCH, major enhancements to ORSUS Lifecycle Manager and PKeyFx, and the integration of all our managed services under a unified platform, ISSQUARED Connect, to deliver a more seamless and modern customer experience.

Mantra Computing

Garrett Brown

Founder, President

The most significant change we made this year was converting the majority of our clients to a consolidated per-user pricing model. This shift simplified billing, eliminated hidden costs, and gave our clients predictable, transparent security expenses that scale with their workforce. For us, it streamlined operations and reduced administrative overhead. The result has been stronger client satisfaction, improved retention, and a clearer path for growth as we continue to serve small businesses with affordable, enterprise-grade protection.

The Millennium Group Computing

Anthony DiDonato

Owner, CEO

The single most significant change our company has made in the past year is the strategic implementation of AI technology across our operations and core processes. By leveraging AI, we’ve been able to maximize efficiency, streamline workflows, and automate repetitive tasks. This transformative technology also enables us to analyze data in real time, optimize workflows and make smarter decisions, allowing us to scale operations efficiently, maintain high service quality, and drive sustainable growth—all without increasing overhead costs.

NWN

Jim Sullivan

President, CEO

The most significant change was strengthening our strategic technology partnerships to accelerate innovation and customer success. We expanded our cloud and GenAI capabilities through deeper collaboration with AWS and by forming new partnerships with Glean and OpenAI. In cybersecurity, we advanced to a national partner status with Palo Alto Networks, positioning us for major growth in this critical segment.

We also continued to build our multi-cloud expertise across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Additionally, the integration of EMP [Experience Management Platform] into Juniper, alongside our continued partnership with HPE, has further streamlined our offerings and enhanced our ability to deliver high-performance solutions.

OTAVA

TJ Houske

CEO

The most significant change OTAVA has made in the past year is deepening and expanding our strategic partnerships, specifically with Broadcom/VMware, Veeam and Scale Computing, to deliver more robust, secure, and fully managed cloud solutions tailored to our customers’ evolving needs. By aligning more closely with these partners, OTAVA has strengthened its managed cloud portfolio, enhanced data protection and DRaaS capabilities, and expanded edge-to-cloud solutions. This strategic focus ensures every offering is built with security and resilience at the core, enabling customers to operate with confidence while we manage the complexity behind the scenes.

Re-Quest

Ron Zapar

CEO

We have adopted significant automation tools and processes to increase the value of our services without increasing costs to our customers. The ability to be faster and more accurate with our SLAs and services provides our clients with ways to gain leverage on their competition without significant additional investment in other tools or services.

We have also begun using AI selectively in our practice to ensure some QoS [quality of service] and SLA initiatives, which are helping us to drive continuous process improvement with minimal overhead.

Stellar Technologies

Wayne Johnson

CEO

The most significant change we made this past year was moving to a true 24/7 operational model for security monitoring and response. That shift strengthened coverage, improved speed and consistency in incident handling, and delivered better outcomes for clients around the clock.

Uprise Partners

Malinda Gagnon

CEO

In 2025, we developed and launched our Kineo Technology Platform that powers our IT managed services. It integrates multiple industry-leading technologies with Uprise’s proprietary automations and intelligence built on top to surface key signals and alerts, analyze customer environments in real time, and share information across systems to enable accurate, data-driven actions.

We also expanded our strategic services portfolio by adding virtual chief information officers (vCIOs)—strategic advisors who provide executive-level guidance to clients for technology road map development, proactive IT planning, and decision-making around infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity and cloud strategy.

Visual Edge IT

James Hwang

CEO

The most significant change we made this year was unifying our sales and service teams under a single, integrated operating model. This alignment has sharpened execution, improved handoffs, and delivered a more seamless customer experience. With 73 locations nationwide, our aligned teams can coordinate and dispatch trained technicians directly to customer environments with greater speed and precision, resulting in higher reliability, stronger relationships, and a consistently superior experience.