“This Isn’t an AI Conversation. It’s a Business Conversation.” – Chance Weaver, Pax8 VP of AI Adoption

AI keeps coming up in every MSP conversation right now. Customers are asking about it. Vendors are packaging it. And a lot of partners are still trying to figure out what it really means for their business.

In this conversation, I sat down with Chance Weaver, Vice President of AI Adoption - Americas at Pax8, to move past the buzz and get into what’s actually changing as AI shifts from something MSPs experiment with to something they’re expected to sell, run, and stand behind. We didn’t spend time on models or hype cycles. We talked about where MSPs are getting stuck, why simply adding AI to existing services doesn’t work, and what it takes to build services around intelligence instead of infrastructure.

We also unpacked the move Pax8 calls managed intelligence, why AI agents are becoming another thing MSPs will need to deploy and manage, and why curation often gets partners to revenue faster than building everything from scratch. And we didn’t dodge the hard parts: multi-tenant complexity, cost and consumption control, pricing AI without wrecking margins, and how to choose a first use case that actually lands with customers.

ChannelE2E: When MSPs try to take AI to market, where do they get stuck most?

Chance Weaver: I think what I see most is MSPs getting stuck because they’re overcomplicating it. This technology shift isn’t different from other shifts we’ve seen, like the internet or cloud. It’s just moving at a scale and speed that’s faster than before.

What AI, especially agentic AI, is going to force MSPs to do is something they’ve historically been bad at but always wanted to do: really understand their customers’ businesses. MSPs are good at help desk, fixing outages, monitoring systems. But we haven’t always known why customers use applications the way they do.

Now we have to know. We have to understand business processes, why customers do things, and how they do them. Once MSPs realize this isn’t really a conversation about AI, but about business problems and processes and wrapping technology around them, that’s where things start to click.

ChannelE2E: What mindset shift is required to build a true AI-driven business rather than bolting AI onto existing services?

Chance Weaver: MSPs need to start talking to customers about their customers’ businesses. When a customer says, “I need AI in my business,” that’s a golden opportunity to go in and talk about their processes and the problems AI could solve.

That’s the shift. It’s not about selling AI tools. It’s about understanding business problems and outcomes. MSPs are sitting on a gold mine in their existing customer base and don’t even realize it.

ChannelE2E: In everyday language, how do you explain the jump from managed services to managed intelligence?

Chance Weaver: It looks a lot like what we’ve always done. Until now, MSPs managed users, endpoints, servers, and network devices. Now we manage agents. Agents need to be secured, monitored, and lifecycle-managed, just like applications. Managed intelligence is about finding the right AI solutions for customers, deploying them into the environment, and managing them over time.

Whether MSPs buy agents from a marketplace, work with partners, or build them themselves, it’s still about deployment, management, and services wrapped around that. It’s the same model, just applied to a new thing we now have to manage.

ChannelE2E: Pax8 is betting on curation over building. Why is that the faster path to AI revenue for MSPs?

Chance Weaver: Most MSPs will become brokers or sellers of agents. Very few will become builders who develop custom agents themselves. We’re building an agent store seeded by vendors and eventually partners. If you build an agent, you can sell it through the Pax8 agent store. Other MSPs can deploy it into customer environments and manage it.

There’s room for everyone. Builders create solutions. Other MSPs focus on customer conversations and deployment without needing to build the technology themselves. That’s how curation accelerates revenue.

ChannelE2E: MSPs aren’t starting from the same point. How is Pax8 helping them handle complexity like multi-tenancy, cost, and operations?

Chance Weaver: We’re working with a group of MSPs already selling agents to understand monetization and go-to-market strategies. We test those approaches with peer groups, then build services and solutions from what works. We’re creating co-selling resources, professional services for automation and basic agentic use cases, and partner-to-partner communities for more advanced solutions we can’t scale internally.

Some partners we teach. Some we do it alongside. Some we connect to others. That’s how we meet MSPs where they are.

ChannelE2E: How can MSPs run AI agents across many customers without losing visibility, predictability, or control?

Chance Weaver: Agents are consumption-based services, and consumption can get out of control. We’re seeing several monetization models emerge. One model bundles the agent, management, monitoring, and a fixed amount of AI consumption. Customers can see how much they’ve used and what’s left. Another model is pure consumption plus a management fee. Outcome-based pricing is also attractive, where fees are tied to measurable savings or impact.

MSPs will likely need to support multiple monetization models, even within the same customer, because different departments consume AI differently.

ChannelE2E: MSPs are told to start with one high-impact outcome. Where do they misjudge that first choice?

Chance Weaver: MSPs overcomplicate it. If you run a discovery workshop and identify a broken business process, the next step is asking the customer what fixing it is worth. The customer helps define the measurable outcome. If solving a problem saves a million dollars a year, the customer won’t hesitate to pay for discovery, management, or ongoing services.

The starting point is always the business problem and the outcome. From there, you map the process, apply the technology, and build the solution. It’s what MSPs have always done, just at a deeper level.

ChannelE2E: What signals tell you partners are moving from experimentation to real value creation?

Chance Weaver: We’re seeing real traction in vertical-specific use cases. One partner in the legal space built a document management agent for a law firm and then deployed it across multiple firms, charging management fees tied to value delivered. ERP-focused partners are often further along because they already have business-level conversations. Some MSPs are already operating as managed intelligence providers. Many more are close behind. That’s where Pax8 steps in to help partners move from figuring it out to executing.

ChannelE2E: With so many distributors talking about AI, how is Pax8 carving out a distinct lane?

Chance Weaver: Pax8 brings in people who’ve been on the partner side of the table. Everything is built through the lens of enabling and benefiting partners. That culture is what attracted me to Pax8 when I was an MSP, and it’s still here today. The difference is that Pax8 genuinely cares about helping partners succeed, not just about selling technology. That’s what sets us apart.