The Cloud Marketplace of the Future

AI—and emerging Agentic AI—are revolutionizing how channel partners approach sales, marketing, and growth. For MSPs like you, that means evolving from a managed service provider (MSP) into a managed intelligence provider (MIP). As an MIP, you’ll be able to develop and implement agentic workflows to create measurable outcomes for your customers.

This opportunity to evolve and grow your business is too good to pass up. And it’s vital that you begin the process now. But how do you get started?

Pax8’s Managed Intelligence Playbook lays out 6 powerful steps to help you get the ball rolling and create a workable rhythm:

1. Discover: unlock new opportunities

AI’s ability to analyze millions of data points in the blink of an eye helps MIPs become the perfect consultant for their customers. Standard chatbots like Microsoft Copilot can analyze website behavior, content engagement, social media activity, and more.

In the recent Pax8 podcast Beyond Traditional Prospecting: AI Sales Strategies, Erick Simpson, CEO of Channel Mastered suggests leveraging AI to help identify a company’s IT pain points like process debts, hidden inefficiencies, and repetitive, costly work that drains your customers’ potential. Armed with that info, you can approach them with products and services they’re more likely to value.

More partners are adopting this approach every day. In fact, research firm Gartner predicts that by 2027, 95 percent of seller research workflows will begin with AI. That’s up from just 20 percent in 2024. It’s a clear sign that partners realize the power and potential of digital sales strategies.

2. Sell: start selling outcomes, not software seats

Taking advantage of the new agentic economy enables you to offer your customers measurable business improvements instead of software seats and support hours. That’s a powerful proposition. As an MIP, you can expand your monetization models, offering agent subscriptions, outcome-based pricing, deployment fees, and sales margins.

3. Buy: curate agents for rapid results

MIPs rely on Pax8 to help rapidly deploy solutions that create immediate impact. For example, if your customer is struggling with the time and cost of customer service demands, you can help them quickly deploy a proven AI customer service agent to resolve tickets faster.

4. Build: create custom low-code and no-code solutions

Stepping into the future as an invaluable MIP means being prepared to offer custom solutions when an off-the-shelf agent just won’t do. But don’t worry, you don’t need a specialized engineering team. Pax8 empowers you with low-code and no-code tools to deliver proprietary solutions tailored to each customer.

5. Implement: deploy agents into live business environments

This is where agents really start helping your customers run their businesses better. It’s about helping them integrate agents with identity and access controls, providing data sources and systems of record, and creating workflows that help your customers increase efficiency and lower costs.

6. Manage: Optimize and expand to build lasting client relationships

In the old way of doing things, MSPs would commonly “deploy and disappear.” But as an MIP, you can create ongoing value through continuous optimization and strategic expansion, engendering trust and loyalty from each customer.

And when it comes to helping your customers move forward, you’ll be perfectly positioned to identify where future agent deployments make sense. In that way, you’ll be able to turn each project into an ongoing relationship and each transaction into recurring revenue.

Don’t miss this opportunity. Right now is the time to evolve from MSP to MIP and create the foundation for a thriving business in the era of agentic AI.

To learn how, download the free Pax8 Managed Intelligence Provider Playbook and visit the ever-expanding Pax8 Marketplace.

And to experience first-hand how AI, automation, and digital labor are reshaping how service providers build, scale, and deliver value, join Pax8 in Salt Lake City, UT for Pax8 Beyond 2026. This year’s event will be held June 7-9 and will focus on the transition of MSPs to MIPs and the myriad opportunities you can take advantage of in the AI era.