With the
announcement of its nascent Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) in December, the Linux Foundation created a neutral and open organization where emerging agentic AI technologies and open source AI projects can be brought together and thrive in a vibrant ecosystem of development and innovation.
But while the Linux Foundation and the new AAIF are looking at agentic AI from developer and open source development points of view, several IT industry analysts who spoke with ChannelE2E about the new organization believe it could bring new opportunities and revenue for MSPs, VARs, and other channel partners across the industry.
“The Agentic AI Foundation is not just a technical update; it is a glue that could potentially allow MSPs and channel partners to build new AI services,”
Jim Mercer, a software development, DevOps, and DevSecOps analyst at IDC, told ChannelE2E. “Standardizing how autonomous AI agents communicate and access data helps remove the barriers that previously made AI too risky or complex for many MSPs to manage. So, their businesses may start to shift from managing devices to managing the agents that manage them.”
Anurag Agrawal, the founder and chief global analyst at Techaisle, agrees, calling the AAIF “a blueprint for how the next generation of IT services gets built. This is a huge signal for the channel because it moves us past the hype phase and into the plumbing phase. I am seeing major players align on open standards to solve the biggest headache enterprises have right now—getting different AI tools to actually work together securely.”
The AAIF Starts With 3 Critical Open Source AI Project Contributions
Advancing this work within the AAIF are its first contributed technologies from three critical open source projects -
Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic,
Goose from open source vendor Block, and
AGENTS.md from OpenAI - according to the foundation.
MCP is a universal standard protocol for connecting AI models to tools, data, and applications, while Goose is a local-first AI agent framework that provides a trusted environment to create agentic workflows. AGENTS.md is essentially a README file for agents, providing a place to supply context and instructions to AI coding agents as they work on projects.
These initial AAIF project tools, said Agrawal, will be useful to MSPs and other channel partners so they can jump in early to transition from managing infrastructure to architecting automated workflows for their customers.
MCP “is effectively the USB-C for AI tools,” he said, allowing users to “solve the integration nightmare by allowing partners to connect an AI model to a client's CRM, database, or file system once, rather than writing custom spaghetti code for every integration.”
Goose is “a game-changer for building custom, local-first agents,” according to Agrawal. “Partners can use this to build secure, internal workers for their clients that automate tasks without sending sensitive data out to the public cloud - a massive selling point for compliance-heavy industries.”
And AGENTS.md is useful because it provides a needed instruction manual for AI, said Agrawal. “By implementing this standard, MSPs can ensure their clients' codebases and systems are AI-ready, allowing any future agent to understand how to build, test, and deploy software within that specific environment. It turns documentation into a tangible, high-value asset.”
By getting involved in the foundation early, channel partners will gain “a first-mover advantage,” he said. “They stop being just the people who fix the server when it breaks and start being the strategic partners who build the automation rails the entire business runs on. That is a direct line to new, high-margin revenue.”
‘Agentic AI Is Moving Out of Experimentation’
The birth of the AAIF “signals that agentic AI is moving out of experimentation and into an open, standardized phase,”
Paul Nashawaty, principal analyst for app development and modernization at theCUBE Research, told ChannelE2E. “Historically, when open foundations like this take hold, the channel plays a critical role in turning standards into real-world outcomes. Partners that engage early can develop hands-on expertise, influence best practices, and position themselves as trusted implementers, rather than chasing proprietary point solutions that may not scale or interoperate well.”
And because these efforts are anchored by the Linux Foundation and the MCP, Goose, and AGENTS.md project contributions, channel partners will have a safe place to get involved, said Nashawaty. “Partners get a neutral, vendor-agnostic foundation to build against. That reduces fragmentation, lowers integration risk, and gives the channel a clearer blueprint for how AI agents will connect to tools, data, and workflows across customer environments.”
This is all good news for channel partners and their businesses, he said, because agentic AI brings more work and revenue.
“Agentic AI introduces new demand for design, integration, governance, and operationalization, not just software licenses,” said Nashawaty. “Channel partners can deliver value through advisory services, custom agent workflows, MCP-based integrations, and ongoing management of AI agents in production. Those are high-margin, repeatable services that align well with how customers already buy from the channel.”
And just as important, he said, channel partners will be able to help their customers with trust and control when using AI. “As agentic AI becomes more autonomous, customers will need help with security, compliance, and guardrails,” he said. “Channel partners that combine AAIF standards with strong governance and industry knowledge could become indispensable guides, helping customers adopt agentic AI confidently, not cautiously.”
Agentic AI Open Standards Are the Smart Path Forward
Shelly Kramer, founder and principal analyst of Kramer&Co., told ChannelE2E that the formation of the new AAIF creates immediate opportunities and strategic imperatives for managed services providers.
“Open standards are, without question, the smart path forward,” said Kramer. “Neutral, open governance should help spur innovation while also providing much-needed transparency, standards, stability, and a shared ecosystem of tools that bodes well for the business community as a whole.”
And with an agentic AI market predicted by Canalys to generate $158 billion in IT services revenue within the next couple of years, MSPs and other channel partners that dive into this work could find it worthwhile, she said.
“With MCP as the universal protocol, and with a customer base in desperate need of knowledgeable, skilled integration specialists who can connect disparate AI systems, tools, and data sources, this adds an attractive revenue opportunity, in much the same way that MSPs once monetized cloud integration, but with higher margins,” said Kramer. “And from a selling standpoint, open standards mean greater flexibility and choice and prevent vendor lock-in for MSP clients.”
To get there, however, there will be some preparation work to do by the MSP community, she said.
“The most successful MSPs are advancing beyond IT services and are already using agentic AI internally, providing ROI and building expertise before moving to client deployments,” said Kramer. “The leaders of the pack will be positioning themselves as ‘AI readiness advisors’ and providing consulting services designed to help customers become AI-ready, then working to build foundations for ongoing managed intelligence services.”
And for MSPs, opportunities here will not come from offering lip service and using buzzwords like MCP to lure prospective clients, she said.
“MSPs that simply support MCP will not capture premium value,” said Kramer. “But MSPs that build proprietary expertise in orchestration, governance, security, and vertical-specific implementations on top of open standards will thrive. While open standards lower the barrier to entry, differentiation through expertise, vertical focus, and proven implementations is where MSPs can prove they are trusted strategic advisors in an era when intelligence, not infrastructure, is the most strategic layer in the stack.”
Other Analysts Are More Skeptical of AAIF Channel Partner Benefits
Another analyst,
Bill Weinberg, cofounder and principal at Open Source Sense, told ChannelE2E that he is not as optimistic about opportunities for MSPs and other channel partners through the work of the AAIF.
“They can surely benefit, but participation and integration are double-edged,” said Weinberg. “Channel partners and MSPs will enjoy greater interoperability from emerging standards around a community-driven hub, with common governance and managed collaboration. And they will not have to invent their own approaches to tackling issues of agentic architecture and workflows for models, data, and tools.”
But because AAIF involves dominant major vendor members, including AWS, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, this could limit real choice and entrench protocols, said Weinberg. “The dominance of those giant vendors has the potential to mute the voices of smaller players and limit the impact of emerging technologies. Moreover, given the velocity of adoption for agentic AI, the channel could have to absorb responsibility for assurance, verification, and safety, especially in high-stakes domains like security, financial services, and infrastructure.”
If MCP, AGENTS.md, and Goose become the default stack for agents, that will place channel partners in the position of having to support these projects across the major cloud platforms and other SaaS offerings, he said. “That is great for interoperability but not for commoditized, meat-and-potatoes integration services. To stand out, MSPs will need to move up the stack into verticalized automations and managed outcomes, rather than just wiring agents to MCP-compatible backends, requiring reinvention as consultative entities, along with rethinking their go-to-market strategies.”
Another analyst,
Lawrence Hecht, principal of research firm Lawrence Hecht Consulting, said that while the AAIF will create more certainty about which standards and approaches have a longer-term future, he does not think most channel partners will need to join the group or be heavily involved.
“I think the more relevant topic for channel partners is how they make it easy to offer an online marketplace for their customers to choose which agents to use,” said Hecht.
