Cloud News
As Microsoft And Google Battle Over AI, Some Partners Are Already All-In On ChatGPT
Wade Tyler Millward
Employees with VCPI, Sourcepass and Net Friends talked to CRN about ChatGPT and generative AI in the channel.
AI Tools And MSPs
Back in October, during CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange NexGen 2022 conference, two MSP executives spoke about AI, machine learning (ML) and automation tools already in the market that partners should look into.
Zac Paulson, CEO of Fargo, N.D.-based TrueIT — a member of CRN’s 2022 MSP 500 — told the crowd about IBM Watson, Oracle AI and Microsoft’s Power Automate as automation tools for enterprises.
Other examples he mentioned include Crushbank, which aims to help MSPs with data organization, and MSPBots.AI is for service technician efficiency.
IronScales, Proofpoint and SentinelOne all offer automation around threat protection. In addition, MSP Toolshed offers automated client on-boarding, and ServicePulse can be used for identifying and assessing customer interactions.
Rewst can help with ticket, security and operations automation. And multiple remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools have built-in automation.
Danny Perry, managing partner and chief of operations at Houston-based ITCubed, told the crowd his own company has used automation tools aimed at MSPs to speed up ticket resolution and for tracking customers’ past IT issues.
“Our clients already utilize AI, machine learning, automation, obviously, at some level,” Perry said. “If they are using it heavier and heavier in the future, what are their expectations of us going to be from the perspective of support, from the levels of expertise that we will need as MSPs in order to manage their workloads using machine learning, AI and automation?”
Snyder told CRN that he is excited for all the lower-level, “subtle AI” features that have been rolling out. Users increasingly grow to expect this “subtle AI” in their applications – just as word processor users lost their excitement long ago over spell checking tools.
An example of “subtle AI” is Slack’s transcription function when a video is added, Snyder said.
“What we‘ve seen is actually AI that’s not in your face,” he said. “It’s not like a segregated tool set. We’re seeing it starting to get woven in. … The best AI is going to simply be part of tools we already use.”
