‘What’s opening the door for us is people having us set up the AI for them. … We don’t talk about tech at all. It’s about business. What can we do? How is it going to impact your business? We’re using tech to solve problems; nobody cares about the tools,’ says Michael Cervino, co-founder and CEO of Circle Square Consulting.
Customer acquisition is getting tougher, AI is getting louder and specialization is becoming a survival strategy for MSPs trying to stand out.
For Michael Goldstein, one of the clearest shifts is how quickly AI conversations turn into bigger discussions around data readiness and security.
“Everybody says they have to have AI, but when you go in and do an analysis they don’t know what to do with it,” Goldstein,market president, Southeast Florida, for Fort Myers, Fla.-based Entech, told CRN. “They don’t know where their data is. So for us, it turns into a security play. In reality, as we go out there and look at this, it’s the time to say, ‘Hey, AI could see everything in SharePoint or see your files.’ Most midsize corporations don’t know where their data exists, or it exists in another entity. That’s the problem. So I think it all does lead back to security.”
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For Stanley Louissaint, founder and president of Watchung, N.J.-based MSP Fluid Designs, customer hesitation is due to a more cautious buying environment. Customers are scrutinizing budgets, preparing for uncertainty and looking harder at technology investments. In that kind of market, he said MSPs have to be sharper about the value they bring.
And according to a 2026 State of the MSP report by Miami–based vendor Kaseya, 71 percent of MSPs view customer acquisition as their biggest challenge.
“Getting the new customer is becoming an even harder challenge. What we’re seeing is the demonstration of value to SMBs and the midmarket is getting tougher,” Dan Tomaszewski, executive vice president of channel at Kaseya, told CRN. “Customers want to know, ‘How are you going to help me with AI? How are you going to help me with compliance and security?’ They want to know you’re building a path to success together versus just replacing another MSP.”
Internally, MSPs are adopting AI to improve service delivery. More than half of the 1,000 global MSPs surveyed in Kaseya’s report are already using AI to automate ticketing, patching and monitoring tasks.
“It’s not that these tasks weren’t being done before. The question now is, ‘How can I use these tools to help people do their jobs better?’” Louissaint told CRN. “If you can empower people in an organization to utilize these tools to make themselves more effective in their jobs, that’s really where the strength lies.”
Michael Cervino, co-founder and CEO of Radnor, Pa.-based Circle Square Consulting, said his MSP is seeing opportunity in that environment, especially when customers start experimenting with AI and realize they need help going deeper.
“What’s opening the door for us is people having us set up the AI for them,” Cervino told CRN. “People are paying us to set up Claude for them. We connect some of their line-of-business apps to it, teach them a little bit how to use it, and then they start messing around with it. We don’t talk about tech at all. It’s about business. What can we do? How is it going to impact your business? We’re using tech to solve problems; nobody cares about the tools.”
Specialization is also becoming one of the best ways to stand out, according to the report.
Cervino said specialization in his business has evolved naturally over time, from legal to finance to manufacturing and now into AI-assisted development.
But Tomaszewski said MSPs cannot rely on technology alone to fix growth challenges. Strong operations, culture and retention still matter, especially as MSPs try to scale new services on top of core security and backup businesses.
“The foundation matters,” Tomaszewski said. “If you lay the foundation right, everything else you do has growth potential instead of crumbling underneath you.”
The MSPs breaking through are the ones that can translate AI into efficiency, find a specialization, and reframe cybersecurity into a business conversation, according to Tomaszewski.
“Everybody says they have to have AI, but if you don’t know your data, if you don’t know your risk, if you don’t know your business problem, then you’re not really talking about strategy yet,” Goldstein said. “You’re just talking about tools.”
