Acronis GenAI Protection For MSPs (EP 1027)

[0:13]Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the IT Business Podcast, recording live in Salt Lake City at Pax 8 Beyond 2026.
[0:23]
Event Kickoff
[0:23]We are into it, folks. Technically, I don't know what they call this day one or day two, but we were here yesterday. I did some interviews at the reception last night. Today is the first full day of general sessions, keynotes, breakout sessions, and I get a little bit of time with the vendors here and joining me right now. Is the channel chief officer for Acronis, Alex Ruslyakov. Did I get that right? That's pretty good. Okay. So, Alex, thanks for joining me here. How's it going for you so far? It's going great yeah very excited about what's coming up um the event is great lots of people here lots of hype around the event yep uh which obviously we appreciate as a platinum sponsor um at the event so uh.
[1:14]Much appreciation for Pax8 for arranging this um, and i mean there's a lot there's a lot a lot of things coming, there's a lot of things to comprehend right there is a lot of innovation and there is a lot of questions on how to handle this innovation oh yeah that's coming at us yeah at tremendous speed yeah uh, and you guys have been doing a lot uh over the last couple of years uh and a bunch of stuff already this year but let's start with uh how are you liking salt lake city, uh when did you get in did you get out and see anything any events any rock climbing or bungee jumping or anything like that i wish i wish did just came in yesterday right before the event okay i had a chance to, see the a piece of the downtown and the mount views and it looks amazing right it feels amazing, um i mean the city this definitely has the atmosphere.
[2:09]Um i love it um and i love the atmosphere here at Pax8 okay and this is not the first beyond event that I’m attending right and every year they're raising up the bar Oh, yeah. Yep. They were doing that. How was your booth space downstairs? You guys look pretty busy last night. We are pretty busy. It's going to get even busier. We have a pretty central booth. And there's a lot that we can offer on the booth. And there is a lot of new announcements and innovations that we're bringing to market. And there's a lot to talk about. And especially in the industry.
[2:47]
AI Protection Launch
[2:47]Ai area uh which is which is obviously the hot topic of course of course, everybody wants to wants to know wants to understand and there's a fomo in general in the market everybody is afraid of missing out right oh yeah so everybody wants to be at the edge everybody wants to make sure that, they are on top of it and they're gaining the maximum out of this opportunity Right. You guys yourself launched a Gen AI protection.
[3:16]Now, is that for all of your products, or is that just something for MSPs to introduce into their own stack? This is part of the MSP platform of the Chronic Cyber Cloud platform. It's fully integrated into the platform. It's part of the stack of the services that we're offering to the MSPs and to the customers of the MSPs through the platform. Where the MSP, and it's pretty innovative and it's pretty new, I would say unique. What we have with this offering is basically the ability for the MSP to deliver a protection service to their clients, protecting their AI agents, from data leaks, from prompt injections.
[4:04]And being able to set some rules and controls and regulations around how employees are using those AI tools. Because AI tool is, on one hand, a very powerful instrument. On the other hand, it's also a source of threats, right? Not the source but could potentially fall a victim of threats. And those users could fall victims of threats. So you have to have control and you have to regulate how your employees are using these tools to ensure that there is no harm for the company. And this is a new service that the MSPs can roll out for their customers. And this is something that we provide and this is something that we assist our MSPs with in terms of the rollout, in terms of the education, in terms of, how they can roll the service, in terms of how they can capitalize on the services, in terms of how they can deliver the value to the end customer. Right. Now, I've been hearing a lot about this. A lot of companies are rolling out AI protection services and stuff. You as the channel chief, have you chatted with others out there and kind of compared notes about what you're doing, what they're doing? because it seems like everybody's trying to protect the agents now. I think we're being the first ones in terms of the actual general availability. Okay. I mean, a lot of companies are talking about it. They're talking about it, yeah. I haven't seen much of new releases yet, so we're pretty much at the edge and.
[5:32]Delivering the functionality first and we're going to expand on it and we're going to deliver more in terms of agentic AI and the capabilities that our platform will provide and essentially we're going to, So we don't want to throw, just to throw the tools on the MSPs, because there is too many tools already to even comprehend, to even acknowledge, to even get to know.
[5:57]We are living in such a complicated era that just assessing everything that is available, both on the threat side as well as on the tool side, it's already too much. So our job is to simplify the life of MSP on one hand bring them to a unified platform which provides them with the different layers of protection that they can deliver to their customers. At the same time that gives them flexibility gives them integrations with third party tools that might be already using so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel and basically utilize whatever they have in place already, At the same time with a platform we want to give them with give them capabilities, that will allow them to reduce their operational costs and this is this is this is essential and this is what nick um was talking about Pax8 president and his keynote right, part of the equation that every MSP is trying to solve now is how do they optimize their resources.
[7:05]When they're facing this amount of different tools and innovations, and each tool and innovation requiring a lot of effort to acknowledge it,
[7:21]
Simplifying MSP Operations
[7:16]to study it, to implement, to integrate, how do they optimize their resources? This is where platform play is the answer. Automation is the answer. And obviously, AI orchestration is the answer. So this is what we're providing with our platform. We're providing first of all we start with the AI protection, then we add on top of it automation for MSPs which will allow them to automate workflows and build their own agents AI agents which is also where we have great synergy with Pax8 they're offering their marketplace platform for the AI agents.
[7:58]For the community to basically source this platform with the AI agents and everybody to be able to consume those agents. And this is what our platform offers, which basically I think comes along pretty well with Pax State Vision. Giving this ability to the MSPs to develop, integrate those AI agents and, deliver automated workflows with these AI agents, optimizing their efficiency, and optimizing their resource spend. Because resources at this point is the toughest challenge, one of the toughest challenges for the MSPs to solve. It is right now. It is right now. So glad to see you guys are doing a lot on the AI front, but I also want to make sure that I let you recognize that you guys are still also taking care of all the stuff that started with the Cronus and the backup and stuff. You added an S3 archival service earlier this year. You guys are still making sure to handle endpoint protection. You've added some additional capabilities to the Cloud Protect platform and stuff so um.
[9:07]I like the fact that you're not forgetting there's still basic stuff we've got to do and protect for our consumers so thank you our mission is to protect manage and automate all sorts of it environments uh, so that and deliver these capabilities through our partners because we're focused uh channel focused company we work through the channel um, this is how we this is how we grow. We grow with our channel partners. And this is the value that we deliver to the channel, as well as the value that the channel delivers to their end customers.
[9:43]But this is on the tip of the iceberg. So once the MSPs solve the resource problem, once they solve the optimization problem, the automation problem, the next problem they face is how do they scale? Where do they get the new customers? Where do they get the new opportunities? And how can vendors help MSPs to tackle these opportunities?
[10:09]
Partner Program 2.0
[10:09]So this is where we made our other recent announcement of the partner program 2.0.
[10:17]Which is where the whole idea of it is get away from the concept of having a separate partner program, and separate partner portal where partners can go and find certain things and integrate the program with the product that we deliver. So the program becomes part of the platform. Business tools becomes part of the platform. Business intelligence becomes part of the platform. This is the place where the MSP can learn how to learn the patterns of the end customers, learn what other MSPs are doing, other similar MSPs are doing, understand how they can approach certain types of end customers. So this is where they can get a structural view over different types of customers and different needs of customers and be able to cater particular marketing message and deliver it through either our embedded marketing tools or, third-party marketing agencies that we also provide and we train and we educate so that they are basically.
[11:28]Plug-in type of assistance to the MSPs. or if the MSP is mature enough and they have their own marketing engine, they can just take our collateral and, pre-built, pre-packaged, and run it through their marketing end. Okay. So this is where we're helping them to scale in terms of the customer acquisitions and workloads acquisition and increasing their footprint within their existing customer base. All right. Now, is this a program announced in February when you rolled that out? This is a program announced in May. In May? It's just a recent announcement. Okay, so that's this one. Okay. This is the recent announcement, and there is a lot of things that we bring in, a lot of innovation that we bring into the program and being integrated into the product, into the platform, because the platform provides the insights into the customer's environment, which oftentimes even the MSP doesn't have. So the MSP operates a limited piece of the customer's environment.
[12:27]But having the agents deployed in the customer's environment, and by the way, one of the major advantages of a current platform is having a single agent with the integrated management capabilities, integrated security capabilities, integrated, backup and disaster recovery capabilities, all in the same agent. So having this agent inside the customer's environment, being able to explore customer's environment and being able to explore the opportunities within the end customer environment, This is what a lot of MSPs are actually missing, the discovery piece, that will present them the opportunity and then being able to see that opportunity right inside the, product console and on top for the business people.
[13:15]Within the partner ecosystem, we're developing a mobile application so that they can see it on their platform. Now, when they go in and see that opportunity, is it something that other partners can also see? Or is there some tailoring of opportunities specific to vendors or partners in a particular area, particular demographic, vertical, that sort of thing? So this is the opportunity that the partner can see within their specific customer bins. If I'm a partner, if I'm an MSP, and I have my 20 customers that I currently serve.
[13:48]This is the intelligence that I can get about my customers. This is the discovery that I can get through the platform. What's additional for them. Yes. And what kind of additional offerings I can actually bring to these customers through the platform. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. But then there's still the additional marketing that they can use to send out to prospects using their own list and sort of. Absolutely.
[14:12]
Social Marketing Automation
[14:13]We launched a program with our partner Chemnext, where basically they deliver a platform, social media platform, where we connect our MSPs to that platform and set up on behalf of those MSPs. We set up a cadence of social media marketing that those MSPs will basically, once they set it up, they can choose, pick and choose what kind of topics they want to tackle, be it Microsoft 365, be it virtual infrastructure, be it something else. And with this set of topics, the platform will deliver automated social media drips on schedule towards their target audience through their social media accounts. So the MSP social media accounts. So this is the type of automation that we bring to the MSPs to basically automate their social media marketing. That's just one of the examples of how the platform helps out. Okay, great. And for attendees here, this will air after the show, but for people that didn't make it here, what's something that they would have been able to see when they visit you guys at the booth, hear about some of these opportunities, stuff's coming up down the road?
[15:26]
CyberFrame Unveiled
[15:26]So there is a lot of new things that we want to present, Genial Protection being one of them. We just launched our virtual infrastructure offering called CyberFrame, which is something that...
[15:40]A lot of MSPs, especially in the SMB space, can leverage and could be way more advantageous to them in terms of, cost and profitability versus major things like VMware or even Microsoft Azure, which they can offer as a service to their end customers with minimal footprint, on the MSP side, with minimum overhead on the MSP side. So this is part of the platform, comes as part of the services and platform. Unified console, unified billing, unified protection plans that they can offer through the platform. So this is part of the value add that we're going to talk about and we're going to explain to the MSPs how they can leverage this and how they can basically, improve their unit economics by offering more services per workload or more services per customer, without adding additional resources to manage the services. Okay. All sounds fantastic. and sounds like you guys are off to a great start in 2026. And you yourself, we talked a little bit before, again listed on the CRN Channel Chiefs Top 100 for the fifth year in a row. How far do you think you can go? Do you think you can go to 10 in a row?
[17:00]
Channel Partnership Philosophy
[17:01]This is not about me doing something. This is about the team and the company, and the way we approach the channel. We do not approach our channel as customers we approach our channel as true partnerships where we can only grow if our channel grows, what we try to bring the tools that our channel partners can leverage to grow their business and we try to innovate in this area, so this partner program to the low one of the things that I mentioned this is a pretty unique and innovative thing that we're bringing to market and the whole point around it is, to make those MSPs more efficient because we know we can only benefit if the MSP benefits. And that's the whole story. That's the whole reason we're getting nominated for the CRM awards. And we tend to continue to innovate. This is in our DNA. Since the beginning of the company, we started as an innovative software vendor.
[18:00]And we'll continue to do so. All right. Sounds great. I hear people are moving around and stuff. So I assume you've probably got some place to go. So I'll let you get going. Thank you very much for stopping by and chatting. And folks, be sure to check out Acronis. Check out the website. If you're here at the event, well, you won't see this. But if you were here, you probably saw a great booth. So nice footprint there right as you walk in. Very nice. So Alex, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Mark. All right. That's going to do it, folks. We'll be back with more from PAX 8 Beyond 2026 here in Salt Lake City. We'll see you soon. Holla!