As the AI wave continues to surge, MSPs face a critical choice: become bystanders—or become builders.
For years, managed service providers have been the trusted stewards of IT infrastructure, security, and support. But today’s clients want more than maintenance. They want intelligence.
That’s why the most forward-thinking MSPs are pivoting from Managed Service Providers to Managed Intelligence Providers. They're not just using AI to run their businesses more efficiently—they're packaging it as a product their customers can buy.
So what does that actually look like in practice?
If you’re just getting started, the first step is simple: use AI inside your own business.
That’s exactly what one Thread partner shared during the July 24 edition of AI Service Unleashed, Thread’s weekly live session for partners exploring AI in action. In the session, Reid, an MSP owner, explained how his team built an internal HR agent using Microsoft Copilot Studio. They trained it on company policies and benefits documents, deployed it inside Microsoft Teams, and gave employees a fast, self-serve way to get the answers they needed.
“We built an agent in Copilot Studio grounded on our HR documents—employee handbook, benefits info—and published it into Teams so our employees could get answers. Then we thought: we could offer this to clients too.”
— Reid, Thread Partner, AI Service Unleashed – July 24, 2025
This is how AI sell-through begins—not with a roadmap or a sales pitch, but with something useful, built out of need, that turns out to be repeatable. An internal solution becomes a customer solution. From there, it becomes a product.
MSPs aren’t waiting around for a perfect product roadmap, they’re building sellable AI services right now.
Some are launching internal knowledge bots for HR or IT, trained on SharePoint files and company policies. Others are creating smart landing page generators to support vertical-specific marketing campaigns. We've even seen partners create proposal calculators, onboarding workflows, and lightweight automations using tools like Copilot Studio or Lovable.
These services are often packaged with consulting, onboarding, and monthly support. That means predictable revenue, not just one-off project work.
The key is to move from “cool demo” to “sellable product.” Ask:
If the answer is yes, you’ve got something worth offering.
When you know your clients’ industries, you can move faster.
Healthcare, finance, legal, construction—every vertical has its own pain points, compliance requirements, and operational inefficiencies. They also have shared systems, workflows, and priorities. That’s exactly why narrowing your focus to a few high-value verticals doesn’t just make your AI services more relevant, it makes them more scalable.
If you’ve already solved for one clinic’s intake process, or built a policy-driven HR agent for a law firm, you’re already halfway to a repeatable product. With minimal changes, that same solution can be sold again and again with better margins each time.
“If you nail a few verticals, you’ll find patterns—and repeatable revenue.”
— Mark Alayev, Thread Co-founder, AI Service Unleashed – July 24, 2025
What starts as a custom build quickly becomes reusable IP: a templated bot, a pre-trained model, a branded portal. The development time shrinks. The value goes up. You can speak directly to client problems without lengthy discovery calls because you’ve seen them before.
In every case, the vertical unlocks focus—and focus unlocks scale.
What many MSPs discover is that vertical specialization doesn’t close doors. It opens bigger ones. It lets you command higher pricing, go deeper with less effort, and build a reputation as the go-to intelligence provider in your category.
Vertical specialization doesn’t limit your growth, it multiplies it.
If you’re going to sell AI to your clients, especially in regulated industries, you need to build trust from the start.
That means having structure. Standards. Guardrails. And a roadmap.
Enter ISO 42001—the first international standard for AI management systems. It’s not a requirement, but it is a powerful tool to help MSPs implement AI responsibly and communicate confidence to clients.
By grounding your services in a repeatable framework, you elevate your AI offer from “nice-to-have” to “mission-critical.” And that’s exactly the kind of confidence your clients need to invest.
AI isn’t just about tickets, time savings, or automation. It's about outcomes.
When MSPs start aligning their AI services to the metrics clients actually care about lead velocity, client retention, revenue per technician—the conversation shifts. It’s no longer about whether AI works. It’s about whether it moves the needle.
This was a recurring theme in the July 24 AI Service Unleashed session. Greg Lalle, President of Synthreo, put it plainly:
“If your client wants to grow at 22% this year and they’re at 9%, you’ve got an opening. That’s when you say: ‘Let me bring you some AI-powered sales and marketing automation ideas.’”
These are the conversations that separate a tool vendor from a strategic partner. Because at the end of the day, clients don’t care how the AI works. They care what it helps them accomplish.
Maybe that means surfacing insights from buried CRM data to improve close rates. Maybe it’s triaging service requests to reduce response times and boost CSAT. Or maybe it’s automating client onboarding to preserve margin. Whatever the use case, the common thread is value—measurable, visible, business value.
This is where you stop being “the tech partner” and start becoming the strategic growth partner. You’re not just keeping the lights on, you’re helping them hit their quarterly targets, impress their board, and outpace their competitors. You’re helping them win.
Selling AI is not about slapping a new label on the same old support contract. It’s about helping your clients work smarter, faster, and with less friction. It’s about designing intelligent services they actually want to buy.
This is the opportunity. To lead, differentiate and grow.
If you’re ready to shift from MSP to MIP, the path is already being paved by your peers. Start small. Build internally. Package smartly. And never stop aligning your services to the outcomes that matter most to your clients.