‘The new economy arrived. The models didn’t wait, the agents didn’t wait, and the small businesses trying to figure out what comes next aren’t waiting either. For the last four years, I’ve been watching the models, the chips, the timetables, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned … the exponential hasn’t slowed. There is no AI winter coming. The scaling laws are holding, and this ride is nowhere near over,’ says Scott Chasin, Pax8 CEO.
Pax8 unveiled a series of new offerings to help MSPs monetize AI while guiding their SMB clients through what executives described as a “once-in-a-generation technology transformation.”
The offerings, unveiled at the Denver-based cloud marketplace’s Beyond conference in Salt Lake City this week, include a new Managed Intelligence Provider Program, Managed Intelligence Services, a Pax8 Agent Store and an upcoming Agent Gateway platform that helps partners govern and monetize AI agents.
The strategy reflects what Pax8 CEO Scott Chasin (pictured) described as a rapidly accelerating shift from traditional IT management to managed intelligence.
[Related: New Pax8 Partnership Aims To Give MSPs Enterprise-Grade Support Without Enterprise Overhead]
“The new economy arrived. The models didn’t wait, the agents didn’t wait, and the small businesses trying to figure out what comes next aren’t waiting either,” Chasin told partners during his keynote. “For the last four years, I’ve been watching the models, the chips, the timetables, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned … the exponential hasn’t slowed. There is no AI winter coming. The scaling laws are holding, and this ride is nowhere near over.”
According to Chasin, three forces are converging at the same time: increasingly powerful AI models, agent-based systems capable of autonomous work and MSPs serving as the connection between those technologies and the estimated 400 million small businesses around the world.
“You are the last mile of the global economy,” Chasin said to partners. “You are the muscle, the marrow and the momentum of productivity because none of this reaches the 400 million businesses that need it most without you. Every one of them needs a partner who can manage the intelligence layer. We call it ‘managed intelligence.’”
To help partners capitalize on that opportunity, Pax8 introduced its Managed Intelligence Provider Program, a framework to help MSPs build repeatable AI practices. The program includes AI maturity assessments, role-based enablement, and operational guidance around recurring revenue streams for AI services.
The company is also offering Managed Intelligence Services, allowing partners to leverage Pax8 Professional Services teams to deliver AI engagements directly or through white-label arrangements. Those services include Copilot readiness assessments, AI-powered transformation discovery engagements, workflow automation and custom AI agent development, as well as Microsoft 365 data protection services built around Microsoft Purview technologies.
In addition, the new Agent Store gives partners access to AI solutions such as Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, ConnectWise Sidekick and Rewst RoboRewsty through the Pax8 Marketplace to simplify procurement, billing and deployment for MSPs.
“Agentic is the future,” Nabil Aitoumeziane, president of Vienna, Va.-based FSi Strategies, told CRN. “We have to start considering agents as the new service for us as MSPs.”
For Chasin, the broader opportunity is less about technology and more about trust.
“AI will not dilute the trust you’ve built with your customers,” he said. “It will make it more valuable. Small businesses will not navigate this transformation alone. They will need someone who understands the technology, the risk and the business. You are not here to resell AI. You’re here to manage intelligence, to secure it, to govern it, to make it useful and to make it human.”
