Syncro XMM: MSP’s Secret Weapon (EP 828)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. Today I have with me are two people from Syncro, and it has been some while since we have had someone from Syncro on the show, and I have been waiting for this for well over a year, but it has finally happened. For those of you that do not know, Syncro MSP is one of the all-in-one RMM PSA platforms that we talk about and is usually at a very good price point for most of us that are on the smaller side, where you are paying per technician, not necessarily per endpoint.

But Syncro has done what many of us think is going to be a game changer in this space. They have now added this platform called XMM that I'm going to ask about. It has a ton of integrations and a lot of things that I think will be of a big benefit to all of us.

Now, full disclosure, I am not a Syncro user. I did evaluate the product. Most of you know that I have stuck with my initial platform that I got back more than 10 years ago, but I am always looking.

So I did evaluate them a couple of years ago, and let's say I was about that close to making the change. It wasn't a huge thing, but it was one of those things where I'm like, I got comfortable where I was and just wasn't ready. But this might be the time.

So without further ado, let me go ahead and bring on the folks that we will be talking with today. I have joining me the CEO, Michael George in the house, who is a veteran of the space and has led several companies and of course, has shown up here in a big way to really make Syncro shine. Michael, welcome to the show.

[Michael George]
Marv, thank you very much. Really a privilege to be here with you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And joining us also is Dee Zepf, and as the bio says, a seasoned technology executive and product manager and has also been with Syncro for a little while here. I think you started back in 2022.

Am I correct, Dee?

[Dee Zepf]
No, I started last year. So I started right around the same time that Michael joined.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So let me ask this, because I know that both of you were at Continuum. So is this something, Michael, where you said, oh, I got to go get Dee and bring her on board?

[Michael George]
That's precisely what it is. In fact, I'm happy to give you a little bit more of the history of how I ended up joining Syncro, and Dee was a very big part of that.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, let's go ahead and do that now, since you brought it up. Go ahead.

What was the path?

[Michael George]
Yeah. Well, first of all, I had the privilege of working with Dee, dare I say, back in the early 2000 era, still in that dot-com bubble, but joined a very, very interesting company at the time. And Dee was an instrumental part of the products there.

She didn't report directly to me, but I found her to be an incredibly bright, thoughtful, customer-focused product leader who also had deep technical skills. And so when I started Continuum, I considered myself a refounder. It was started from some assets that were acquired out of a company called Zenith Infotech, one of the two founding companies.

This whole industry was started from a vendor side by ConnectWise and Zenith Infotech. And when I did so, Dee was somebody I reached back out to. I hadn't really done anything with her for seven or eight years.

We stayed in touch generally. We had a very successful experience together in the early 2000s. And so she was literally employee number one for Continuum.

And so she led all of our partner initiatives there. And for those who maybe weren't in the space at the time, it would be a hard thing to not remember, but we took a very, very small company. You know, at the time it was just the RMM assets.

We built out a technology platform, adding both backup, and then we're the first company to launch cybersecurity in the entire managed services space, bar none. And it just fueled Continuum into a hyper growth mode. And Dee was responsible for all of those major initiatives.

She drove us into the backup space, and then she drove us into the cybersecurity space. And we took a risk. I mean, Mark, we bet the company on cybersecurity when everybody was saying it's a big company, enterprise company problem, and not a problem for the small to medium business market.

And we were, we were, we did, we bet the company on it. And, you know, lo and behold, look at how the, I mean, this is a security led industry today, you know, through and through. But anyway, Dee was responsible for all of the innovation and putting together a partner advisory council and do it.

So when, when I was asked to step in and lead Syncro into this very, very, you know, new form of high innovation with a bunch of new enabling technologies to do it, you know, Dee was absolutely the first person that came to mind. And I reached out to her and she was, she let me interrupt her perfectly good job and career that she had doing something else. And so she, she, she joined us.

She said, you know, she noted shortly after I was announced as a, as a CEO here.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Dee, did you reach out to him and say, Hey, I see you got a good gig, bring me on board. Is that how it happened?

[Dee Zepf]
That's not how it happened, but, but, you know, I was excited to join and excited because I do think, you know, in much the same way as when we were at Continuum coming in here to Syncro and coming in, you know, at the beginning of last year and really looking at the space and much the same way that, you know, we kind of looked at reinvention and innovation before kind of looking at the space now and going like, what might AI bring? What, you know, is happening in the Microsoft ecosystem?

What can we do as a vendor and the opportunity to work with Michael again, as well, all those things combined made it just really feel like a great fit for me to come in with the team.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, before we get into some of these technical details, I'm going to ask this one question. And, you know, back in 2022, 2023, when I was talking with Syncro before it was pretty much, I don't want to say stuck.

That's probably not the right word. But the focus was on UI, UX, making it look better, making it feel better. And I think that there was this sense that things just kind of weren't moving.

There were some good features and some good integrations, but it was it was kind of stuck. And I think a lot of the let's just say the smaller RMM products, even the ones that are integrated, that are, you know, geared towards the lower end of our space for people like me, except that people like me still want some of those advanced features. We want to be able to scale.

We want to be able to do all that. What was it like coming in to that environment and, you know, making the transition? Because that's not where I see you guys today.

[Michael George]
Yeah, you know, I'll start with just saying, you know, companies go through different cycles, frankly. And so and a lot of what the early successes of Syncro were really built around things that you mentioned in the introduction here, which is, you know, it was an all in one, right, RMM plus a PSA that had this unified platform that was relatively low cost, which made it a really good value for early stage or smaller MSPs. And the company did really perfectly fine doing that.

But, you know, over the last like two, two and a half years, it was that no longer was in and of itself a big enough differentiator. A couple of other companies followed that model and came out with, you know, perfectly good competitive products. So it was no longer a meaningful differentiator.

And I think that that's partly what caused, you know, a bit of a stall for the company. And it wasn't a full stall. It just slowed down and just wasn't as innovative and wasn't as unique as it was in its previous life.

But the other thing that is really more of a macro dynamic, Marv candidly, is that the market has changed considerably. There's a huge, huge tectonic shift that's taking place in the industry. And really, the bigger challenge was that the company had, you know, was at risk of missing that opportunity.

And more importantly, not just missing it by coming in too late, but really missing the opportunity to lead that transformation. And so, you know, I have never done the same thing twice in my career ever. I've never gone back and repeated anything.

I've never been in the same category. And frankly, I feel like joining Syncro at this time was not like joining, you know, Continuum again at its time. It is a different enough industry in its entirety, you know, every element about it.

And the opportunity, and Dee started touching on it when she mentioned, you know, a new level of technology that we had strived for so many years to accomplish using more rudimentary tools for automation. And so now with AI, at the formation and at the state that it's in today, it was a new opportunity to come in and really accomplish something that never had been accomplished before, that the industry needs so much. And that's really in and around being able to automate so much of the rote, mundane work in everybody's, you know, tech lives.

So that, and again, as I mentioned before, there is a tectonic shift. And we'll talk a little bit later, you know, about that too, when we talk about XMM.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I was going to follow up and ask a question, but yeah, that may take us down a very long winding path. So let's do this.

Let's go ahead and do the introduction of Syncro XMM. And from what I understand, this is basically adding on all of the integration for, you know, 365 that people have asked for. It's got some automation in there.

It's got some reporting in there, kind of turning Syncro into another multi-dimensional platform where you can see everything together. Tell me more about what the actual goal of XMM is.

[Michael George]
Yeah, I'm going to give just a quick macro on it and then really turn this over to Dee. But, you know, Microsoft has ever so slowly been approaching the management of, you know, the IT services industry. They've long owned the operating system.

I mean, you know, Microsoft is 98% of the OS in the small to medium business market. They absolutely dominated that. But there's a next level up, which is management of that, you know, that environment and third party companies that today dominate the Airwaves, Kaseya, ConnectWise, Enable, you know, Ninja, Syncro, you know, Halo, right?

These are all the companies that have been creating this management capability of it with third party tools. And we see that changing completely and that having an opportunity now to leverage Microsoft as the underlying management platform, too, is really what's taking place. And that's the tectonic shift that I alluded to earlier.

Dee?

[Dee Zepf]
Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm happy to talk a little bit more about it in detail. You know, the idea was really to help MSPs simplify their stack while fortifying the security posture for their clients.

And the capabilities themselves, I can talk about for days, but no one wants to do that. But, you know, we have some Entre ID integration. We're looking at 365 baseline management.

We have an assessment tool that's branded for clients. And so really, you know, in talking to some of my early access partners and some of the folks that are using it today, one in particular, they were, you know, talking to me about how they're juggling 365 management, right? Devices, security, compliance across dozens of clients.

And they just feel like they're spending a lot of time kind of going back and forth between the tools, understanding the posture of the tenants. And it's really slowing down their techs and their response time. And so they were really thrilled to see us coming out and launching this platform so they can work RMM, PSA, and Microsoft 365 management kind of all from one place and having it all unified for them.

So like syncing up their users automatically, getting their security baselines in place, you know, doing all of that is really how they feel like it's going to speed their resolution times and make it so they can eliminate some of the extra products from their stack. And so for us, that was part of the inspiration behind pulling all of this together is it's really what we've heard the market wants and what people need to make themselves just more efficient.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So one of the things that I think is different is that there are tools that have been trying to do that. But it's been that API integration and, you know, it's, you know, your RMM tool talking to this tool, talking to this tool, and then you hope that it flows all, you know, down the line correctly.

And there are some other good tools out there, but I still see this, you know, it's another tab on my screen that I've got to keep open and stuff. Now, I haven't looked at XMM, but from what I can tell, the integration is direct within Syncro. Am I hearing that correctly?

[Dee Zepf]
Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is not another set of tools. It's all fully integrated.

So your user in Syncro, you right click, you click and your actions are all right there. It's all fully integrated. So it's not really just another tool.

It's really a new operating model that you can work inside of.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I'm going to hit a couple of things directly, and this will kind of help the listeners out. So core integration.

So it's, you know, still doing RMM, PSA, and now this Microsoft 365 multi-tenant integration. That's the first thing I want to say, multi-tenant, because I did try another tool a while back, and it was a pain in the butt to set up. So in terms of that, I mean, are we talking something where it's as simple as GDAP, or how does that work?

[Dee Zepf]
Yep. So you can do a GDAP integration across everything if you have a CSP, or you can go tenant by tenant. And what we allow you to do is actually sync up with your tenants and then bring your users across, and you can bring your users across either by group or department or location.

There's a bunch of different ways you can figure out which users come across right into the Syncro platform. You get their license information, you get security score, you get the ability to reset password, reset MFA, kind of do all of this. And so the setup, you know, does require permissioning, right?

All this stuff requires that you set up the permissions at the beginning, and you know, it takes a little bit of, you know, making sure you have all your permissions in place, but it's as simple as a GDAP.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. And then let me ask this question here, because when you talk about integrating into the automated secure score monitoring and some CIS baseline enforcement, that's all within that panel as well?

[Dee Zepf]
It is. And so today, what we've done out of the gate is we do bring in your Microsoft Secure Score, so you can see across all of your tenants, your Microsoft Secure Score. And then we've also added the ability to have baselines, and we've created one baseline out of the gate, which is a CIS-aligned baseline that has 22 rules that are aligned with CIS.

And you can apply that baseline to any one of your tenants and see how each tenant is doing compared to that baseline and then get a set of instructions for how to remediate that.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice. And I know you said it at least twice, but the intra-ID integration, being able to do user management, user Syncronization, I mean, I'll be honest. Again, I've tried a couple of tools, and I worked with another 365 partner that I do that with, and I have to go into their portal and do it, and it works, but it's an extra step.

So are you really telling me that I can set up a user and do all of that stuff from within Syncro?

[Dee Zepf]
So, no, today, sorry, you set up a new user on the Microsoft side. So today, Syncro is bringing in everything from Microsoft. So you set your user up on the Microsoft side, that comes over into Syncro, and then you can manage everything about that user inside Syncro.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. The things, like you said, the password resets and the management there. Okay.

That's not so bad.

[Dee Zepf]
Yeah. Didn't mean to mislead. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
That's okay. Let me ask, because, again, those other tools I've mentioned, they seem to struggle with doing that. So let me ask, is this something that took a long time?

I mean, did you guys have a big pain trying to get this set up and making it work?

[Dee Zepf]
So we've done a few things. Yes, it's hard work. I will say it was not easy.

We had an initial integration that was here when I joined the company that we decided was not good enough, right? Like it did the job, but, you know, not in a useful way. And I'm, you know, very focused on the user experience.

And so in meeting with folks and talking it through and watching them work, we decided it wasn't good enough. We ended up bringing onto the team some expertise, folks that have worked in the Microsoft ecosystem for years, so that we had some really solid expertise on our team. And then we spent quite a bit of time working on this and making sure we got all the boundaries set so that it does work seamlessly when you set it up.

It's something that getting that foundation in place, I think, might have even been frustrating for some folks on the team. It's like, this is just the first piece. Why is it so hard?

Why does it take so long? But it's such a foundational piece of the system. We really wanted to make sure we got it right.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So you mentioned that it was started when you got there. So did this have to do a setback to some of the UI stuff that was already in the works as well?

[Dee Zepf]
So there was an initial integration with Enter ID, not using GDAP, not using Graph API. There was kind of an older school integration that we ripped out and replaced with this new integration. But in terms of did we stop working on UI and stop innovating there?

The answer is no. Our team is a lot larger than when we first joined. And we're operating at a whole different cadence than when we first came into the building.

We are kind of going down a bunch of different tracks of work. And one of them is we've built out an entire product design function. We're using a standardized design system.

We're in constant prototyping and testing and making sure that the user interface for everything we add is really usable, modern, kind of responsive. And so we're bringing that through the whole platform as we go.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, we've talked about Microsoft a lot here. I know that there are MSPs that are also doing stuff in Google Workspace or whatever it's called over there.

So are you looking to do the same thing with that and other integrations down the road?

[Dee Zepf]
For right now, we are focused in on Microsoft 100 percent. It's what we've heard loud and clear from our audience. And so I'm not picking my head up from that anytime soon.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Michael, just so that you're not sitting there wondering if we're going to get too technical, I want to ask this question in a way that I hope is appropriate. This sounds like a lot of money, bringing in smarter people, bringing in more people.

One of the good things about Syncro has been the price point. So I'm going to ask you a two-part question. I expect that there will be a little bit of a price hike at some point.

And then part B to that is what's the long-term look in terms of all the PE money that we hear coming into the space?

[Michael George]
Yeah. So don't worry about asking questions for me just to get me involved. I love listening to the two of you go off on this stuff.

It's a wonderful thing. And all the things you were just talking about are super important to the channel. So I was happy to listen on to it.

But so first of all, as it relates to pricing, we will always be massively both respectful and honor any kind of pricing that we have existing with existing customers. And a lot of them are really smart and they're signing up multi-year contracts and so forth because we'll do price preservation under those things. Never say never, but at the moment, we don't have any immediate plans to do anything different as it relates to pricing.

The private equity dynamic that you're referring to really is really a dynamic that's quite unfortunate with what's happened in the channel. And all MSPs are experiencing this. Maybe they don't exactly understand why.

And I'm happy to demystify that for them, which is simply this. There are two forms really, just like in all the different asset classes, there are different forms of investment and investor dynamics. There's growth equity and there's private equity.

Growth equity is really more earlier stage where you're high on the innovation curve and you need to invest a lot in the product and you're driving the business forward to get growth and to get scale and everything else. I was on both sides of that at Continuum. We were first owned by a growth equity firm that was making constant investments in the business.

And that was Summit Partners. I'm happy to note that because they were a terrific financial partner with us and they understood that we had really important work to do and we're willing to invest in it heavily. But our lives changed.

We got acquired by really more of a private equity firm, not a growth equity firm, where they're starting now to try to optimize the economics of the business. And they also leverage the business a lot. And by leverage, I mean put a debt on it.

Now, Marv, as we all know, debt up until pre-April 2022, debt in the capital markets was essentially free. The federal government subsidized it. It was sub 3%.

I mean, it was remarkable that we had that kind of capital. And so, the private equity industry has long depended on debt being a low cost thing. But what happened is if you look at the big companies that are in this space and they've been public about the amount of debt that they have on those businesses, one of them's out shopping $4 billion worth of debt.

It's public information. It's been circulated all through Reddit and everything else. But when you're carrying $4 billion worth of debt, when it's sub 3%, it's pretty manageable.

But when it went to three times that, if you looked at how the feds increased debt, so now you have three times your debt structure, nearly 10%, you got to throw off $400 million worth of profit before you can spend a penny on integration. And if you grew through acquisition, that's critical or innovation or any of those things. So, the large companies that are held by the private equity firms in the industry have a lot of debt on them.

And all of their money is going to servicing that debt. None of it is going into integration, innovation, or any of the other things that this industry has long depended on. And so, one of the beautiful things about Syncro for us is A, it was funded by a growth equity firm.

And B, I'm proud to say, I'm happy to say, and one of the reasons I joined is they put zero debt in the purchase of the company. So, we're not, other than trade debt, we have no sort of acquisition debt as a function of our existence with main sale partners. So, anyway, this is a dynamic that this industry is suffering painfully through.

And sadly, it does not look like, you know, sadly for the industry, it does not look like any of the federal interest rates are going to be abating anytime soon or meaningfully in any way. So, I don't think this dynamic is going to change. I don't think we're going to see any real innovation and all of the things around, you know, we're going to be building common platforms.

I mean, they don't have any money to do that. So, I think the top end of this market stalled out around that dynamic.

[Uncle Marv]
It is something to consider. I had a conversation actually earlier today with another MSP that in order to get out of his multi-year contract, actually, I'm trying to say this delicately, restructured his business, let's say that way. So, he basically shut down that name and did something else with another name so that he could close out.

And listen, one of the things, if you are a smaller MSP, and by smaller, I mean, under, let's say under two mil, you know, these contracts, you know, if you lose a certain number of endpoints, they could hurt. But as I understand it, I know that you talked about people signing multi-year, but do you do the minimum guarantee number of endpoints? Because that's probably the one question where I think everybody gets stuck with where, you know, yeah, I can, I'll, I don't mind doing multi-year if I don't get penalized if my endpoints go below a certain number.

[Michael George]
I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, go ahead. We have some beautiful news to share with you on it. Do you want to share?

[Uncle Marv]
I thought I asked a bad question there.

[Dee Zepf]
No, no, not at all. So, our pricing model is, today, is not based on endpoint. And so, today, we're actually working with our partners and basing our pricing per, you know, technician and Syncro user.

And so, you know, as a user gets more efficient and is able to manage more endpoints, they're able to take advantage of that with Syncro. And so, we are not, you know, causing them, like, harm if they lose a client, gain a client. We are, you know, really kind of trying to ride alongside them and be a partner with them in the way we price package.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I guess I was kind of asking that because, again, we talked about you guys adding, you know, the XMM onto there. Let me ask because I think, if I remember correctly, there was also some other things that you've either added or enhanced.

Any you want to talk about right now?

[Dee Zepf]
I'm happy to talk about a few things that we've done, you know, over the past months. We continue to release every single month pretty significant updates to the platform, both in terms of kind of new capability as well as shoring up existing capability because it's always, you know, a balance between the two. So, we've launched some AI features to help people categorize their tickets and figure out faster, better ticket resolutions.

We've launched network discovery tooling to make it so that you can easily discover all the devices on your network and really quickly put those under management. We've redesigned and relaunched our mobile app. Now, we've launched Microsoft 365 management.

So, those are some of the highlights for the past several months.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Michael George]
No price increase.

[Uncle Marv]
No price increase. Very nice. One thing I think when I was also looking back is that you guys did not have a backup solution as part of the package.

Is that still the case?

[Dee Zepf]
That's accurate today, yes. We have some partnerships through our marketplace, but we don't have our own backup solution today.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Read my notes here to see if there's anything I can find. Scripting is, has that been better?

I heard that some people were complaining about scripting, especially when it came to PowerShell.

[Dee Zepf]
You know, I've heard from most folks that scripting is one of the things that we do well for them.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Dee Zepf]
You know, we do have the ability to use PowerShell. We have an entire community script library. And so, I've heard a lot of compliments in terms of the power of our engine and the ability to use platform variables and really tie in tightly.

That's not to say we're not going to plan to make any enhancements, but it hasn't come across as one of the things where we have a lot of work to do.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'm a weak PowerShell user, so that's why I haven't paid attention. And then, let me think, the other thing was remote access.

You guys are doing that using Splashtop, right?

[Dee Zepf]
That's correct, yes. And we also have our own set of, like, backgrounding tools for, you know, a secondary type of remote access if you don't want to interrupt the user while they're working.

[Michael George]
All right. Well, it sounds... Do you want to expand a little bit on network monitoring or anything, Dee, there?

That was a pretty substantial release. Oh, sure.

[Dee Zepf]
Yeah. I mean, so...

[Uncle Marv]
You said discovery, so if you're adding monitoring in there, let's definitely talk about that.

[Dee Zepf]
Ah, yes. So, we have both. So, we have network discovery as well as network monitoring.

And so, today, our network discovery tooling will go and identify devices on the network. If it's something that supports a Syncro agent being installed, you can easily install the agent, or you can set up an SNMP monitor on the device if it supports SNMP monitoring. We're in process right now of upgrading our SNMP monitoring to include support for v3.

That should be out any day now. I think we're getting done with that in the coming couple of weeks. And so, in the platform, you can really monitor unlimited network devices as well as deploy agents.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, so, I recently had on two of the big powerhouses, Avik and Domotz, on the show. We did a little mono-y mono series with them. And of course, one of the big keys is with their monitoring, you can kind of dive into things like managed switches, and cameras, and phones, and stuff.

How much of the monitoring can you guys do through Syncro?

[Dee Zepf]
Right. So, we're staying at the level of SNMP monitoring and allowing people kind of that higher level. We also do have a partnership with Domotz, and they're in, you know, our integrations marketplace.

And so, for folks that want to go deep, they can certainly use that, and we work together with that team.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. All right. Anything that I missed in all of these technical questions?

[Michael George]
Just a little bit. Maybe I was going to prompt you a little bit for yours, and for that matter, your audience's view on how AI can be a better enabling tool or technology for this sector.

[Uncle Marv]
You're asking my opinion, or what would I like to see?

[Michael George]
Well, yeah. Well, look, early on, you know, it came out, and a lot of people were saying, well, you know, this sounds like the next big, you know, marketing type, you know, and so forth. But we know, you know, we've done some things in this area already, and our partner community and our direct to internal IT customers are benefiting greatly from it.

And frankly, just because of the labor dynamics in this industry, I think this industry is going to be dependent on it, not only to, again, move up the stack of management from a technician's perspective, but also from a cybersecurity perspective, you know, talking about the need to fight fire with fire. I mean, the number of attacks that are taking place that are all AI driven is extraordinary. I mean, we don't have enough manpower on this planet to defend ourselves against what's happening in the cyber world.

So, you know, I think people are going to have to get over the fact that this is not just a bunch of marketing hype or some vendor model to go sell people more things. This is going to be an essential underlying and enabling technology for this entire industry. And we're certainly driving some of that through our partnership with Microsoft, who's the second largest investor and software company in the AI space, right?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, Dee, I'll ask you in a minute here about the technical side of the AI you guys are using, but I'll be honest. AI for me, I have liked the introduction of AI in my tools. I like it more from a predictive modeling where it can kind of tell me what's happening.

It can review all of my, you know, volumes of logs for me faster. It can allow me to go back and search, you know, any knowledge bases or history of stuff that has already been done so that if a problem comes in, it can tell me, yeah, you already have a solution for this. Do you want to do, you know, A, B or C to do that?

I'm not a big fan yet of allowing it to do the automation. And I've always been a fan having a human be a part of that equation, even with things like scripting. It's nice to have that stuff, but if the script doesn't work, somebody's got to look at it.

Somebody's got to fix the script. And I see that with AI. Having said that, I will not be trying to stand in the way of progress.

And as much AI comes out that we can use, I will be there as well to do that. So with that being said, Dee, tell me, I mean, you mentioned it, I kind of glossed, I just kind of, I didn't want to ask the question, but what are you guys doing with AI over at Syncro?

[Dee Zepf]
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. And I'll talk a little bit about what we have in product as well as a little bit more of the kind of what's in plan.

And I think, you know, a lot of folks, we are trying to match what people have an appetite for while also trying to help bring them forward, right? Like, I don't want to go out 20 steps ahead of where everyone wants to use this, right? And so when I came in, you know, we really looked across the platform and decided to lean in a couple areas where we felt like AI could have a really strong impact, help people automate, but still allow a human in the mix.

And so today we have some custom trained models that ingest all of our tickets. They classify each ticket based on, you know, which type of issue it is. They match that ticket with a suggested resolution for the ticket.

Although the resolution is not AI generated. We went with the human, you know, curated set of resolutions for now in terms of how we're going with AI. As you're working inside a ticket, we're using AI to give sentiment for the ticket and either on the categorization or on the sentiment, you can then set up your own automations to run off of those, right?

So if you're seeing negative sentiment from a specific customer, you can actually trigger an automation for that or negative sentiment associated with a specific technician that's working on something, you can trigger something based on that. We are also using AI to do some natural language search. And we're looking at adding it in to just make, you know, crafting your messages easier, smoother, some simple, like low hanging fruit there is something we're looking at as well, as well as looking to add it to do things like how when someone comes back and thanks you for your ticket, how do you keep your ticket closed and kind of just, you know, doing some things around the edges.

And that's all the short term work we're doing. We're also really starting to dig in on like, what are the boundaries of this? And where can we take it?

And so I'll leave it for today as kind of more to come. But I feel like we think we're just barely cracking the, you know, the edge of the potential on what this can do. And we're, you know, we're being very thoughtful, I think, about how we bring this into the system.

We're being very conscientious about what we do with people's data. And we're keeping everyone's data kind of inside of the system. And so we're looking ahead.

And, you know, we're also doing it with an eye toward, you know, just moving in a really thoughtful way to bring people some real value.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Michael, do you approve of that message?

[Michael George]
I approve of everything that Dee talks about in the future of our technology and our platform. But yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And as I said, you know, as an MSP, you know, you're not going to be, you know, competitive financially, without it, frankly.

And as a technician, your skills are going to wane without embracing it. The other thing I do want to just quickly note, Mark, to your earlier comment around where you feel comfortable and where you don't, Dee and I were just at a partner advisory council meeting in Austin, Texas. Austin is one of the experiment cities for, what is it?

What is the?

[Dee Zepf]
Waymo.

[Michael George]
Waymo. The Waymo, the driverless Uber car.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, yes, yes.

[Michael George]
You know, it was a small group of us, we were crossing the street. And collectively, right, these are people in our partner advisory council. So they're all technical, and collectively, we all agreed that it would be much less dangerous trying to cross the street when the Waymo cars were coming by than the humanly driven ones.

It's just a fact, right? They're constantly monitoring through all these different spectrums, you know, for things like pedestrians. And it was going to be easier to stop a Waymo, you know, than it was going to be to stop a, you know, a driver.

That was number one.

[Uncle Marv]
That sounds like something happened. Did something almost happen there?

[Dee Zepf]
Some of us stepped off the curb quickly, and there might have been some thankfulness for the Waymo that was coming down the street. So you would have been dead.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay, gotcha.

[Michael George]
It was a little bit of that. It was a little bit. But then the other thing I do want to note, though, about your own proclivity to want to verify before releasing is, you know, Microsoft was very deliberate in calling things copilot and autopilot.

They're two very separate things. And until people get really super comfortable with things like scripting, any of the things that are happening until you're like, this is as good or better than I could ever produce myself, that they're going to flip the switch and go to autopilot with any function or feature. But in the meantime, you know, we have an opportunity to be in a copilot mode and let it do all the work and everything else, but then look through it, verify it, check it before releasing it.

And in many cases also have to edit it, right? It's not like I'm looking for perfection or not. It's like, oh, these are the minor imperfections.

But if you can save half an hour or an hour, you know, by letting it do that groundwork, that grunt work, the research and everything else and coming up with, you know, recommendations, you're saving yourself a lot, aren't you?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, yeah. And I will give one special note to that because for full disclosure, D was a last minute intro for this podcast. I didn't know she was going to be on.

And so when I went to go look up and find information about her bio, I had her starting at Syncro two years early because of AI.

[Dee Zepf]
So she does lie sometimes. It's true.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes, she does. But we verified it as best we could.

[Dee Zepf]
Absolutely.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Michael D. Okay.

Sounds like things are moving forward. I sense that the MSP space is turning from that. Yeah.

Syncro is okay. We like it. So now people are starting to say, oh, we love Syncro.

So I'm assuming that's what your PAC members are saying.

[Dee Zepf]
Absolutely. Yeah, we're starting to really feel for the PAC and beyond that groundswell of like, oh, you came in and said you were going to do all these things. You did all those things.

And then you did all these other things we didn't even know you were going to do. And I think people are just feeling really heard and feeling like we're really responding to things that they both asked for and things that they need and that are helping them. So it's really gratifying to see the kind of groundswell of support coming out from the base.

It's wonderful.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. You mentioned the word beyond. So that reminds me of PAX 8 Beyond, which is a conference coming up here soon.

I don't go to many conferences, but I will be attending several. Will either of you be at any of these conferences coming up? IG Nation, PAX 8, ScaleCon, DattoCon.

You're giving me a blank eye.

[Michael George]
So far next week, I will be at IT Nation Secure in Orlando. And so we're going to be there. We're going to be exhibiting and so forth.

I am planning on being at Beyond, as is our channel chief, Andy Comier, and potentially our CRO, Chad Lindsay, who, by the way, came from Barracuda. He was one of the top sales and customer success leaders at Barracuda. So that's IT Nation Secure.

And then Beyond, which is a week later. I'm also keynoting the Channel Futures conference later this year at the invitation of the Canalys organization. So I'm grateful for that.

And then later in the year, we'll be back at IT Nation. I don't believe we're going to be at DattoCon. We were at the Kaseya Connect conference in late April, early May.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, I will be both at IT Nation Secure and PAX 8 Beyond. I will be on Radio Row.

So if you're walking by and see me, come by and say hello.

[Michael George]
I'll make a point of it.

[Uncle Marv]
We'll make a point of it. All right. And Dee, we'll talk tech later on down the road as new things come out.

All right.

[Dee Zepf]
Well, thank you for the late-breaking invite. I really appreciate having the opportunity to be here with you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, thank you guys for coming on. Like I said, I've been waiting for this for a while.

We've actually tried to do this a couple of times and scheduling got in the way. But I'm glad we were able to do this. So, Michael, thank you for taking time out.

As CEO, I know you're very busy. And coming to talk to us, little podcast folks, takes a lot. Thank you very much.

[Michael George]
Nothing more important. You're an important part of the channel. Thanks for the opportunity.

And I hope we didn't disappoint with all that long wait.

[Uncle Marv]
Nope. You're fine. You're fine.

So, folks, there you have it. Michael George, CEO at Syncro and Dee Zepf, chief product person. And your page is over there, which is why I didn't have it there.

So thank you guys for coming on. Thank you all for watching and or listening. That's going to do it for this episode of the IT Business Podcast.

Be sure to follow us on all the social medias or on your favorite pod catcher, or you can see us at any of the conferences that are coming up. Like I said, that's it. Thank you for hanging out.

We'll see you next time. And until then, holla!