Dive Brief:
- Enterprises and small and midsize businesses are looking for help handling IT estate complexity, controlling cloud costs and deploying AI, according to Flexera’s 15th annual State of the Cloud report, published Wednesday. The IT asset management and FinOps company surveyed more than 750 technical professionals and executives late last year.
- Managed service providers and systems integrators are rising to the challenge, the research found. Nearly half plan to offer AI consulting and SaaS management services, while two-thirds are using AI to enhance cybersecurity.
- For these partners, the ability to differentiate through advanced services — such as AI strategy and SaaS optimization — will be key to growth, Flexera said in the report. “For customers, services partnerships remain valuable for specialized expertise.”
Dive Insight:
Generative AI and its agentic offspring are driving rapid change on multiple fronts in the channel. Partners are using AI to run leaner shops with faster workflows, better knowledge sharing, and less manual coding. Vendors, meanwhile, are embedding AI assistants into the platforms and marketplaces where partners already work.
The biggest partner prize is contract value — the sales, services, integration and consulting businesses are seeking from trusted third-party providers.
In the last year, enterprise reliance on MSPs grew three percentage points to 65%, while budget constraints led SMBs to pare back on partner spending. Only 39% of SMBs said they used an MSP, a nine-percentage point year-over-year decline.
Cloud support for security, compliance, migration and modernization, remain the bread and butter of the MSP industry. Nearly all providers either offer or are planning to add these services, according to Flexera.
“We’ve moved beyond treating the cloud as a cost-cutting exercise and now see it as the essential foundation for growth and the engine that allows us to turn ideas into global products,” Flexera CTO Brian Shannon said in a release accompanying the report. “That shift requires bringing FinOps, IT asset management and governance together.”
To that end, more than half of MSPs include cloud and SaaS cost management in their portfolio and 44% have added AI strategy to the mix.
“As AI is reshaping cloud economics and risk, having centralized oversight is more critical than ever,” said Shannon.
The opportunities for MSPs with established AI practices are multifaceted, Shannon told Channel Dive.
As customers spin up AI applications in the cloud, partners can help track spending and tie costs to users through FinOps tagging. There’s also room for MSPs to work with independent software vendors to bring industry-specific agentic AI solutions to market. But one of the largest challenges enterprises and many smaller businesses will face is AI overload.
“You’ve got CTOs, CMOs and even CEOs building using vibe coding, building AI tools and creating a lot of complexity,” Shannon said. “Multiply that by a hundred and you’re going to get a massive sprawl of AI solutions. That creates a real opportunity for MSPs to come in and help manage and govern the mess.”
