This week, Pax8 Beyond ’25 lit up Denver, Colorado, as the cloud commerce marketplace provider announced new programs and tools to help MSPs grow revenue and evolve their business model for the next era. Over 3,500 attendees from 30 countries tuned in to hear what’s next for AI—and what it means for their businesses.
Nick Heddy (pictured above), Pax8 president and CCO, kicked off the event. In his opening keynote, he shared a brief quote from MLK: “the fierce urgency of now.”
“That’s going to be even more relevant,” Heddy said. “The shift in how business gets done isn’t just coming someday. It is already here. What we do now matters. This year is the start of something bigger for all of us—new autonomy, a new model, and new possibilities. We’re not waiting for the future to arrive. We’re creating together.”
Pax8 Beyond ’25 Keynote: The Rise of AI Agents
“We are entering a new era, where ideas execute themselves,” said Scott Chasin, CEO of Pax8, in his keynote address. “Not months of planning, not armies of people, just a single spark. This is an entirely new era, where the significance of your idea matters more than the size of your company. This is the agentic inflection point.”
This agentic inflection point is the next phase of AI, where teams of AI agents work together to solve problems and complete tasks, largely without human oversight. At this stage, MSPs will no longer be limited by manpower hours or labor shortages.
Today, hyperscalers are investing in AI across the board. “These investments are laying the groundwork for a world where intelligence becomes as essential as electricity and bandwidth,” said Chasin. “AI inference won’t be a rare or premium resource. It will power every interface, every workflow. Apps won’t drive workflows; agents will, running across platforms and cloud.”
Model Context Protocols (MCP) standardize how LLMs interact with tools and data, and are already seeing rapid global adoption with thousands of tools and products. “These new protocols are going to remove the friction of pure API integration and empower agents with the world’s software products,” Chasin said. “But the future isn’t just about what agents can do. It’s about what humans and machines will do together. In five years’ time, the very nature of work will be unrecognizable.”
Naturally, MSPs will be on the forefront of this shift. In this era of Managed Intelligence, Chasin anticipated the next evolution for technology providers is a business model shift—from MSP to Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP).
The MIP Era—And the Jump to Get There
Chasin gave an early glimpse of what the MIP model will look like. “You’ll transform yourself and your customer. You’ll buy from agent marketplaces and build with visual tools. You’ll manage fleets of autonomous agents,” he said.
He went on to say that MIPs “won’t just manage endpoints or software. You’ll manage the intelligence behind the systems, networks of autonomous agents, deploying, negotiating, and optimizing on behalf of your customers. You’ll govern not by device count, but by the speed and success of ideas coming to life.”
“The great transformation won’t trickle in,” Chasin warned. “It’s going to hit fast. And the MIPs who guide this shift will lead the reinvention of the entire SMB economy.”
Pax8 Introduces Managed Intelligence Toolkit
The transition to a completely new model of work will be drastic, but Pax8 is already working to ensure their partners are braced for the change. A core component of this is the new Managed Intelligence Toolkit, which the company said will be available in Q2 2026. It’s designed to launch partners from MSPs to MIPs faster.
Libby McIlhany, Pax8 CPO, said, “So much is moving so fast in AI right now. We wanted to create a set of tools and integrations, almost like a path for our partners to go down, to be able to dip their toes in what it means to be an MIP.”
A key factor of this is Pax8’s endorsements for tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio. “It’s a tool set that many of our MSPs are using already,” she continued. “But bringing MCP into the mix was a way to take it one step further. We believe that [MCP] is a standard that many people are going to be using; it’s a good technology that’s going to help unlock a lot of agent interoperability and agent use. The toolkit is a way for us to help enable [MSPs] and give [them] the tools for what could be a potentially intimidating change.”
New Guided Growth Program for Transitioning from MSP to MIP
Pax8’s new Guided Growth program goes hand-in-hand with this. The program is focused on AI and the journey to becoming an MIP, says Craig Donovan, CXO of Pax8.
“This program is broken into three tracks with more than a hundred courses that will guide you on your journey,” Donovan explained. The program will include courses centered on technology, sales, and operations. “There are also the transformation elements,” he said. “How do you identify workflows in your business, then automate and create that transformation internally? How do you review [it] for your clients? That’s the essence of managed intelligence. You’ll need to understand your clients’ workflows, tools, and processes so that you can orchestrate a solution that ties it all together as they transform their business. [The Guided Growth program has] the tools and assessments that you need to jumpstart that journey. AI-guided growth is your bridge to managed intelligence.”
“You can put out all the technology on the earth, but if nobody knows how to use it, or it’s hard and intimidating, then no one is going to use it. You need the enablement piece to bring the technology piece to life,” said McIlhany.
McIlhany also hinted at an agent marketplace, to begin to roll out next year, that will make agents more discoverable and accessible to MSPs.
More Major Innovations from Pax8 Beyond ’25
In case that wasn’t enough, there were a few more big announcements from Beyond that you won’t want to miss.
Pax8 Marketplace Public Storefronts. Public storefronts take last year’s Storefronts feature a step further, allowing partners to create external-facing storefronts that will act as a lead generation tool. “Public storefronts [allow you] to showcase the solutions that you offer to anyone, not just to clients who are already in the Pax8 ecosystem, said McIlhany. “This isn’t just about revenue; this is about supercharging your reach with lead generation visibility and new revenue streams.”
Pax8 Marketplace Integrations Hub. The Integrations Hub acts as a central nervous system for your business, connecting your tools, systems, and solutions directly into Pax8, said McIlhany. “The fits together third-party integrations, PSA integrations, connected marketplace solutions, and more. This is a single location in our marketplace where you can explore, build, and manage integrations with these incredible new smart tools.”
The heart of the Integrations Hub is its MCP integration. “You can ask it a totally natural language question, and it will go hit our APIs, gather the data together, and package it up for you in a completely digestible and clear way,” said McIlhany. “The idea that we’re able to bring that amount of flexibility, creativity, and power to our partners through just one integration is pretty exciting.”
Voyager Alliance Rewards. Part of the Voyager Alliance partner program, which the marketplace rolled out last year, these new rewards will allow partners to earn as they grow. “You’ll be able to customize that Pax8 experience by investing in your business in the ways that make sense for you every month,” said Donovan. The rewards program will offer points for climbing tiers and adding licenses, which partners will be able to redeem for discounts and exclusive offers. “The available offers will expand and change frequently, allowing you to continue to invest in new vendors and professional services,” Donovan continued. The Voyager Alliance rewards program will launch later this year.
The Start of an Industry-Wide Shift?
There’s no doubt that the industry is changing drastically—but in disruption, often comes opportunity.
“We’re witnessing business models evolve in real time,” Heddy said. “For a lot of people, that feels massive disruptive and even uncertainty. But here’s what gives me hope—in every era of transformation, the people who lean into it define what comes next.”
