Rob Rae Unpacks Managed Intelligence (EP 942)

Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, recording at Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando at IT Nation. This is day two. 

And thank you to our friends at Thread for being the presenting sponsor. They were a previous Pitch It winner, and they are the company that provides service magic for your service desk. You can find all the information on my website. 

And as we continue on the conversation, if I play these in order, you will have heard us already talk about him because we had some other folks on and of course everybody kind of references what I call the godfather of the channel. He hates that name. But his actual title is Corporate Vice President of Community and Ecosystems at PAX 8. I'm talking about the one, the only Rob Rae. 

Rob, how are you? I'm wonderful. So multiple people have talked about me. Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Well, here's what happens. So Level Platforms came up again. So people talk about that. 

I had Torres on earlier. And then you know right before DePalma was occupying your space and time. Yeah. 

I told Mike DePalma I wasn't going to mention his name in this. Oh, really? Yeah. You know, it's funny because I don't know what Mike was talking about. 

But Mike, you know, worked for me for a number of years over at Datto, right? And he was a sales rep. And I pulled him out of sales and put him into the community thing. So then he starts traveling, he starts going to all the shows. 

His presentation skills have always been solid, but of course, they're getting much better. And then I leave Kaseya, he leaves Kaseya. And he's now a different vendor. 

So we're both doing boardrooms at XChange. And I walked into the boardroom, and I'm waiting for the projector to heat up or whatever. And I said to the group in there, I said, Hey, who's the best presenter you guys have seen so far? And they're like, Oh, that Mike DePalma guy, he was fantastic. 

You could learn a lot from him. And I'm like, I'm like, I pulled that kid out of a dumpster in Norwalk, Connecticut 10 years ago. And now you're telling me I can learn from him.

Nice. All right. Well, I'll just make sure he doesn't listen to this.

Although he probably will, because I did ask him. So I've, I've done this from time to time, I should probably do it more often. I asked him, what would be a question that I should ask you? Oh, wow.

And his question really was an interesting one. It was basically, who is the celebrity that either most intrigued you or you're most happy with getting at one of your previous gigs? That's what Mike DePalma wanted to know. That's what he asked. 

Well, I'll tell you why in a minute. Okay. But yeah, first, do you have a favorite? The most intriguing? Well, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson this year. 

Did you see him? Yeah, I did. Yeah. He was fantastic. 

And, you know, it's funny, he's been on, he's been on my bucket list for a number of years. And it's only because Austin McCord always wanted him for DattoCon. Like, every year, he's like, can we get him? Can we get him? Can we get him? And for whatever reason, he wasn't available, or his price was too high, or, you know, the pandemic, I know he didn't travel a lot, or at all. 

And then finally, I got an opportunity to pull him this year, and he was just fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. He only went for about 40 minutes. 

He could have gone for three, four hours, and people would have listened. Like, he was just fascinating. So yes, the short answer is we would have listened. 

Although I think it was kind of mixed, because it was weird watching him and... John? John, yeah. I don't know why his name escaped me for a second there. But it felt like they, it felt like a lot of times, like in our interviews, when I talk to people, sometimes I'll ask a question, and it seems out of left field, or something like that. 

I almost felt that where they didn't practice, you know, he didn't have the questions ahead of time. So when the question got asked, he's like, why are you asking me that? He, he's a fast, like, I got an opportunity to spend some time with him backstage, obviously, before he went on. And, you know, it's like, you get a little bit, I don't really get intimidated by celebrities, I really care about it. 

But you know, it's Neil deGrasse Tyson, he's sitting there right in front of you. And you know, the room's kind of quiet. And then he just starts the conversation. 

Like, he just loves to chat about things. And he just pulled the story out of nowhere. He's like, you remember, in the old school movies, where, you know, we'd all synchronize our watches? Yes, we don't need to do that anymore. 

Like, this is the conversation that he's, he's having with me. And it's just out of left field, like, where is this coming from? You know, you're in an IT conference, and you're talking about, you know, we don't have to synchronize because everything is synchronized. Now, as it is, your phone says the same time that mine is, we don't have to double check to see, you know, if we're on the same time, we've got the same time. 

Anyway, I don't, again, don't know where it came from. But all of a sudden, he's just engaging. I think he just loves conversation. 

And, you know, so, so, you know, he and John had a chance to meet, but John was, and we kept asking him, do you want questions at a time? He's like, no, no, no, he just riffs. And then sometimes he just riffs about whatever he wants to riff about or something that's really interesting that happened to him that day, which I think makes him more fascinating. But you're right. 

It was a question at which point, yeah, the best answer he gave, well, there was a couple real moments, but the one where John asked a question about the chicken and the egg. No, the chicken and the egg was really interesting, but no, it was about the universe. And he goes, you really want me to explain the universe in 30 minutes? I don't have a lot of time for that, but the AI angle that he took was actually super interesting as well, where, you know, John asked the question, if AI was going to replace us all and he's, you know, it's on everybody's mind and is curious as to what he would think about it. 

And he says, no, there's one thing that AI will never be able to do that humans do, and that is dream. You know, we have these images in our head and it's going to be practically impossible for anybody to recreate that or, you know, be able to read your mind enough to know exactly what you were looking at or thinking about or dreaming about. So I thought that was interesting.

Very interesting. So I'm going to use that to jump into a similar question to you. So the reason that that question came up from DePalma is that they're considering their own separate event from their OpenText world focused on MSPs. 

And of course, whenever anybody talks about, you know, putting on an event, everybody looks to you and uses your model and stuff. So he's like, I got to grab Rae, you know, at a bar and find out that sort of stuff. There seems to be this aura about you, similar to Neil, where, you know, that he's thinking about stuff that the rest of the world isn't thinking about. 

Like it's those things are on his mind. And that's why you can just ask him questions. He's already thought about it. 

I think people feel that way about you and what you've done with the channel and how you approach MSPs and all of that stuff. You've been thinking about this stuff nonstop before we think about it. Is that true? No. 

What's the greatest invention the Japanese ever had? The Japanese? Yes. The auto reverse Dolby cassette player? Did they invent that? I don't know. I don't think they invented that.

I don't know. Probably sushi. Let's say sushi.

Really? Sure. Japan takes really good ideas and makes them even better. And they've manufactured them and changed them in more efficient ways and cheaper ways and better ways. 

Do you think with like the automobile industry is a perfect example in, you know, what they're doing with technology as a whole. I'm Japan. I take other people's ideas and just kind of transform them. 

It's me just absorbing things from wherever I see it. Something that's interesting that a partner said or interesting that I read somewhere. And then I have a tendency, I love analogies. 

I have a tendency to try to dumb it down into a story or into something that's relevant that everybody can kind of understand. Because, you know, that translation between the MSP and the end user is important. The end users are not technical. 

So the MSPs need ways to be able to explain things in non-technical ways to an end user. And I find, you know, that that helps when you kind of recreate these things. But you know what? I mean, you're not wrong. 

I think about the MSP space all the time. It's all I think about. And then how can we make it better? How can we continue to move forward? How can we all continue to thrive? And yeah, but I don't think I'm coming up with anything original. 

Okay. Somebody will probably debate you on that. You're welcome to.

So DePaul was looking for, is that what he's asking for? Because he wants a keynote speaker for his show. I don't think he wants you to be the keynote speaker. Not me. 

No, I think they're just the whole idea of should they do an event? If they do an event? Yes. How do they do that logistically and stuff? Because listen, there are people putting out new events. Yes. 

But they're not coming out of the gate with 5,000 attendees. It takes a while to build that. They're not coming out of the gate with celebrity, you know, guests and stuff like that. 

But to try to be able to do something. I was a part of an organization where we just did a hundred person event. And it was, it was ridiculously hard to pull that off. 

Yeah. And I, there are times where I think the smaller the event, the harder it is. Yeah. 

It, it, the number of bodies, I mean, the actual execution of the event, it's, it's the same, whether it's 5,000 people or 100 people. The thought that needs to go into it, the planning that needs to go into it, adding more bodies just means you need more space. And, you know, there's a lot more curve balls that kind of come your way when you add more humans into a, into a bowl. 

So, you know, yeah. Okay. But he should, why is he brokering this conversation between you? He's got my number. 

You know, that is the second time today something has happened where somebody has asked me to ask somebody else and I went, how did, how did I get into this? You're the peacekeeper, I guess. Well, let's do this. Let's try to focus a little bit at least on PAX 8 and have them be happy with you and stuff. 

You don't think this is more interesting talking about it? It's more interesting to me. I just want to make sure that, you know, PAX 8 people are like, dude, what are they talking about? Although, let me get this question out of the way before we get too far along. I know that I put out the, the Facebook post, you know, to do the safety check and stuff. 

It's been a few days. How are you doing really? The safety check? Yeah. After your Blue Jays. 

Oh, Marv, why do you have to go there? Oh, you know what? Yes, I'm a, I'm a Blue Jays fan being from Toronto. Been one since I was a kid. It was awesome to see the run that they had. 

It was fun to watch what they were doing. Nobody forecasted they would even make the playoffs, much less game seven of the World Series. So, you know, in true Canadian fashion, we were just happy to be there. 

How about that? And glad everybody had fun. No, but you know what? It was absolutely incredible series and it's heartbreaking that they lost by a couple of inches, you know. But, you know, if you're going to lose, that's the way to lose. 

Did you think that it was really going to hinge on that ball being stuck in the, in the, between the ground and the fence? Unbelievable. Game six? Unbelievable. It's one in a million thing. 

I mean, it was a right call, but it was one in a million. Yeah. Yeah. 

All right. So we can move on. Okay. 

Thank you. Thank you. People, I'm sure we're interested in that.

Uh, so we last chatted, uh, Patch 8 Beyond, uh, in Denver and, uh, oh, I should probably say, I guess, um, farewell to Denver next year's in Salt Lake City. Yes. But we're going to go back to Denver every second year. 

That's our home. Really? Okay. Yeah. 

I just want to spice it up a little bit and try to take people into newer places. I did ask somebody if there was a venue large enough to do a patch, say in Salt Lake City. And the person first said, I don't know, I've never seen an event. 

They have a beautiful convention center. It's massive. And, uh, the great part again, this is all planning events, but, uh, it's attached to a hotel, which is awesome because you want to try to keep everybody in one place. 

Uh, and then there's multiple hotels all around that convention center that are all within like a hundred steps of the convention center. So all the different brands are there or buses or anything like that. Um, so it's a really, really good spot. 

And we actually have the first kind of a convention area there. So you're not walking through other conventions to get to where we are. You literally going to walk off the street and boom, you're right into beyond. 

So it's a great, great venue. I'm very excited about it. Very excited to bring MSPs to it. 

All right. Very nice. Uh, so the, uh, the phrase managed intelligence provider, I think a lot of us giggled when we heard that. 

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the MIP, MIP, although department would say BIP, BIP. 

Yeah. Business intelligence provider. Sure.

Oh, I'll let that soak. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it seems as though with, with the talk of AI, the, the, the agentic AI, everything is turning to the point that we need to help manage AI and information. 

Um, all of that, where has the industry gone in your opinion, from the time that that was announced till now? Yeah. It seems like forever ago, but it literally was only four months ago. We started talking about this. 

Um, the, the concept behind the managed intelligence provider. I mean, look, we've, we've seen this before in our industry where, you know, we're going to transform away from MSP. You know, there was a number of organizations tried to move the term to ITSP for a while. 

There's a number that, you know, the cloud came out and all of a sudden everybody's a cloud solution provider. Um, and managed MSP just continues, but you know, here's the interesting thing about managed, uh, managed service provider just as a term is that you don't advertise yourself as an MSP. Nobody Googles MSP looking for an MSP. 

They Google it provider, you know, or, or, you know, different terms. Um, MSP is just something that we kind of coined internally and use internally. We speak, it's, you know, it's like a term that we would use at these events, managed intelligence. 

Um, you know, it's a couple of different ways you can look at this. We see managed intelligence as a revenue stream, meaning you have a cybersecurity revenue stream. You have a cloud revenue stream. 

You have a SAS revenue stream. Managed intelligence is just going to be what we're calling AI revenue streams. That being said, the idea behind it is that AI is pretty much going to take over everything, including the cybersecurity and the SAS and all that kind of stuff to the point where that is the only thing that we will be doing is AI, which is where the kind of eventually the evolution towards managed intelligence provider potentially comes out.

Plus it maybe gives us an opportunity to have a marketing term that we can use externally outside of our industry where somebody wants to find a managed intelligence provider, somebody that can provide AI type services. So, you know, we'll see. But, um, as far as progress, considering it's only been four months, I'm incredibly impressed, right? About how quickly, uh, the idea behind it has been adopted. 

Uh, there are actually MSPs that are building managed intelligence into their, uh, into their businesses. They've, some of them have created a secondary, um, MSP that is going to be an MIP and only MIP. Uh, so, you know, I'm seeing it all over. 

And one of the things that we're doing, uh, is we are bringing those MSPs. As a matter of fact, we just had a panel here. Uh, we're bringing these MSPs that are thinking about this, doing this, building agents, talking to their end users about managed intelligence, about AI, uh, and are having success at it. 

We're, we're traveling around with them and putting them on panels and having them talk about the journey that they're on to try to get other MSPs. And, you know, Eric Torres did one not that long ago at the XChange event, won best in show for it. I just did it not that long ago.

And same thing, uh, won best panel for it. So, you know, the message is resonating. There's no doubt it's sticking. 

And I think we're all interested. We just don't necessarily know how to go about it. Well, yeah, we're just, we're interested. 

We don't want to miss out on revenue potential and stuff. And everybody's trying to say, you've got to figure it out. Now I know that you've gone a little bit beyond that. 

You guys actually, you actually have a playbook to help. Yeah. So in June at beyond, we gave out what's called the agentic inflection point report.

Uh, this is in essence, the, the why, um, it's pretty comprehensive report that kind of goes through every aspect of what an MSP is going to look like when managed intelligence AI is part of our world, uh, including how to have a conversation with your end user, how to kind of set it up, how to go to market with it. Who do you even be selling it to? So it does a lot of talking about kind of the concept behind it. Um, more recently in our Amsterdam event in October, we came out with a second one called the managed intelligence playbook, managed intelligence provider playbook. 

That is more the how, so that is literally a step-by-step guide for MSPs on how to start this journey. So, you know, we want to be at the forefront of education for the managed service providers on this journey. Um, you know, we're building an AI store. 

We announced that more recently as well, where, you know, a lot of people that are in the same place that we are in, in the, in, um, the distribution marketplace world, you know, they wait for these mature vendors before they add them to distribution and then try to go and sell them. What we're doing is we're actually going to go find these technologies that other MSPs are using, maybe on the other side of the world, bring those vendors to the MSP space, put them into our AI store, introduce them to our partners so that they can be at the very front of finding new AI technology, new AI vendors that they can actually practically go to their, um, their customers with. The other piece of this too is that there's a lot of these vendors don't even know the managed service provider community exists. 

So we'll be able to bring them, introduce them to the MSP community, help them build partner programs, help them build margin for MSPs. So, you know, the whole idea behind this is that again, uh, helping the MSPs not just with their playbooks, not just with the why we want to be doing this, not which how we're going to make money at this, but actually bringing the technology as well. Right. 

Now, is this going to be separate than the storefronts that you're allowing MSPs to do now? So they could actually have a separate, you know, MIP storefront, or is this something that they would just add to their, you know, offerings? It's all part of the same. Okay. So what we'll do is like, so we have our marketplace and our marketplace is a place where MSPs go and shop, uh, very similar to an Amazon experience versus what traditional Disney is doing. 

Um, the storefronts are the MSPs ability to create a marketplace for their end users. So when we do bring this technology out, the MSP can add this to when we have the AI store, they can add this to their storefronts if they want. Yeah. 

All right. Um, I know that you have to think far out in advance when it comes to events, how far out are you thinking in terms of the marketplace, this AI experience, all of that, how far out are you guys? Uh, I mean, it's, it's changing every single day and it's moving very, very fast. It is moving fast. 

I mean, again, I think about managed intelligence as concept, you know, we, we launched that in June and that seems like forever ago, but it's only been four months and it's actually incredible how much it's caught on, uh, in such a short period of time. So you know, we constantly are thinking about this and you know, we're developing the platform that we have, uh, the, the marketplace that we have, the AI store that we have. Um, and we've got a really extensive roadmap, but again, we're, we're developing it quite quickly. 

Like the AI store should be available before the end of the year. Really that quick. Yeah. 

Okay. Yeah. Nice. 

Yeah. We've already identified probably about 30 different AI vendors. Uh, we talked a little bit about those in Amsterdam. 

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that there were some of these AI vendors that are not familiar with the AI, with the MSP space. 

Uh, I have noticed that there are a lot of AI things popping up that are selling themselves as your next AI employee. Yeah. So basically an agent, but you know, presenting it as an employee based thing. 

Do you see some of that coming in, uh, where we're doing that? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, you know, we talk about this in the genetic inflection point report. Um, the first one that I talked about where we talk about, uh, how, uh, MSP businesses are all going to be transformed, not just, not just their own businesses. 

Uh, it's also going to transform obviously their edge user businesses. And part of that is, you know, the way in which they buy technology is going to change the way in which they sell their technology and who they're selling it to within these end users is going to change more importantly. And I think the most exciting part about this is the fact that MSPs are going to be builders. 

This technology is going to come and it's going to have to be customized based on either an individual within one of their end user shops. Maybe it's the end user business as a whole. Maybe it is the, um, the vertical that the, the MSP is actually working with.

Like they will be able to create technology, leveraging these AI tools to be able to offer customized services right down to individual employees, which creates more value for what the MSP is actually doing, creates more opportunity for what they're doing. And we're seeing that work like where you're seeing, um, where they're able to go in from a productivity and an efficiency standpoint, do some level of an assessment and then actually find savings for these ultimate end users. That's that. 

I mean, if I can put a million bucks back in your pocket, would you pay me a couple of hundred thousand for that? Of course you would. Yeah. Right. 

It makes it much easier to sell. But you're saying that we're going to be able to be the one selling those agents to those customers in the form of whatever works for that client. Yeah. 

It has to be the MSP. They're the ones that have the relationship. They're the ones that have the trust with the actual end users. 

These new AI vendors aren't going to be able to go directly to it, nor do I think they want to try, do they really want to go and build a Salesforce for small medium businesses? Probably not. If they're going to try, they're going to try in the enterprise space. Well, if they can automate it, right? Sure. 

Sure. I mean, yeah, but I think, I think there's still, uh, and you know, this is where, you know, I'm constantly encouraging MSPs to have the conversation with their end users about AI, even if you're not ready, even if they're not ready, we have to be having these conversations with them so that when AI crosses their plate, crosses their mind, they see an ad or an article or get a phone call from one of these AI companies. They go back to their MSP and say, Hey, maybe it's time we talk about this. 

Uh, so it's really super important that a, we're, we're getting that message out right now, be that the MSPs are actually learning about this stuff as it's changing very, very quickly. And that's, you know, again, the journey that we want to take our partners on. And that's why we're constantly feeding more information out about what we're seeing in the market. 

What are we seeing other MSPs doing? I have 47,000 MSPs that work with us every day at PAX 8. I can leverage that, the power and that, you know, uh, mind of those 47,000 partners to find those best practices and share them with all of them. All right. Yeah. 

Sounds like an exciting time. Now this is the last official big event of the year. When is your year-end slowdown? No, I've still got about four more events before I'm done.

But yes, this is the last large one of the year. There's no doubt. All right. 

I was going to see if you, uh, get to slow down anytime soon. Uh, how about you? How are your holidays? Yeah, no, I'll, I'll, uh, uh, yeah, definitely. And it slows down obviously the last couple of weeks of December, uh, ramps back up again. 

Um, probably in January, February, you know, that's when we start doing a lot of our year-end planning or, you know, year beginning planning and stuff. So there'll be lots of work to do still. All right. 

So let's see. I will probably not see you. Well, let's not say, I don't want to, I don't want to jinx anything. 

I haven't made my decision about Salt Lake City yet. I got to find a direct flight. I got to find a direct flight. 

Delta has a massive hub there. I got to check Delta. Where are you flying from? Fort Lauderdale. 

You don't think you can get from Fort Lauderdale to Salt Lake City? I think I checked and it wasn't a direct flight on that. I'll have to check. What about Miami? I'm not driving to Miami to fly.

Miami. So you only take direct flights now? Yes. You don't, you don't do connections anymore? I don't do connections, no. 

Well, I'm not bougie like you. I do plenty of hoppers, my friend. Plenty. 

All right, my friend. Well, thank you for stopping by and chatting with me. And I'm glad we had a little more chat about the MIP because, like I said, when that came out, we were like, yeah, okay, we're going to change our name again.

Come on. But it makes sense when you talk about the way it's going to flesh out and all of that. Absolutely. 

And that's how we're talking about AI. So who's your next guest? Do I get to ask a question? I think you were the last. I was just checking my thing because I don't see that they've shown up. 

So you might be the last. You saved the best for last. So it was supposed to be Mackenzie Brown of Black Point Cyber. 

Oh, wow. I haven't seen Mackenzie yet. Yeah, but she's not here. 

She didn't come because, you know, we sit and we chat. It's more relaxed. We people watch, talk to Yuri, all of that stuff.

Well, if Mackenzie does show up, ask her about her tattoo. She's not here. She won't be here.

Well, if you do see her next. If I see her. Hi, my friend, Rob Rae, vice president of community at PAX 8. Good to see you, my friend. 

We will see you in Salt Lake City. I'll be there. Of course you'll be there. 

If not before. I'm sure we'll see you before then. All right, folks, that's going to do it here. 

Thank you for tuning in. And if this is the last interview, thank you for downloading and subscribing. And you should be here at IT Nation and of course, all the big events, especially PAX 8 Beyond in Salt Lake City.

Thank you to my buddy Rob Rae. And we'll talk to you all soon. Until then, holla.