One MSP leader tells CRN that MSPs are ‘absolutely mission-critical.’
ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo kicked off his keynote at the company’s IT Nation Secure event by sharing that the night before he and a colleague hacked into someone’s unattended phone.
“Within a minute, he broke into it,” said Rivelo this week at the conference in Orlando, Florida.
The message was a stark reminder that the cybersecurity threat landscape is expanding at an alarming rate and basic mistakes can have serious consequences. And this is where the MSP is so critical.
During his keynote, the CEO of the Tampa, Fla.-based vendor said that the global market for managed services stands at $5.4 trillion, with 44 percent of that tied to the SMB market.
But what’s an even bigger market is cybercrime.
[Related: ConnectWise Confirms ScreenConnect Cyberattack, Says Systems Now Secure: Exclusive]
“Cybercrime will hit $10.5 trillion this year,” he said. “That’s the third largest economy in the world, bigger than Germany or France. Only the U.S. and China are bigger.”
He added that there are 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs worldwide, underscoring both the demand and the opportunity for jobs in the industry.
Bill Campbell, CEO of Waldorf, Maryland-based MSP BalanceLogic, which is on the 2025 CRN MSP Pioneer 250 list, said MSPs have always been essential, “but now they’re absolutely mission-critical.”
“Cybercrime is rising and SMBs rely on MSPs to provide the security tools and services they can’t staff or build themselves,” Campbell told CRN. “It’s simple, when the threats increase, the value of the defenders skyrockets.”
And this is where the shift from “industry 4.0 to 5.0” begins, which Rivelo (pictured above) explained is driven by AI and “helpers” that support automation and operational efficiency.
“This 5.0 world is where AI helps you run your business more efficiently, increase profitability and drive growth,” he said. “We need to simplify, unify and drive value by reducing human middleware.”
Campbell’s company is already leaning in, not only adopting AI in its own operations but also helping clients do the same.
“Cloud and AI are the future, there’s no way around that,” he said. “MSPs that don’t evolve risk getting left behind. It’s like when MSPs first emerged. Traditional IT providers offering break-fix services just faded away. We’re now at a similar inflection point. You either transform or you become irrelevant.”
The future of the MSP is no longer about simply managing systems, he said. It’s about becoming a strategic partner that can harness AI, secure data in an increasingly hostile cyber environment and offer proactive, agile solutions across multi-cloud ecosystems.
“We don’t even call ourselves a traditional MSP anymore,” he said. “We’re what I’d call an enhanced MSP. That’s where the industry is heading, faster than most realize.”
Rivelo ended his keynote by driving home the power of community that helps build up MSPs, which in turn helps the entire community.
“There’s no place to learn how to be an MSP,” he said. “It’s the community that teaches you.”
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