Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Jason Myers - MSP 3.0 Architecture
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In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Jason Myers, Cybersecurity Strategist for MSP Partnerships at OpenText, to unpack the evolution of the managed services space and what he calls the shift to “MSP 3.0.” With decades of experience in cybersecurity and product strategy, Jason breaks down how the role of MSPs is transforming, from managing IT infrastructure to delivering real business outcomes through AI, automation, and cybersecurity services.
For channel professionals, this episode offers a sharp look at how vendors can better enable MSPs to scale, differentiate, and future-proof their offerings. Jason shares practical strategies OpenText uses to simplify partner experience, reduce tool sprawl, and navigate complex Microsoft incentive programs without overwhelming the MSP. From peer collaboration to product bundling, the conversation highlights the new rules of growth for modern MSPs.
If you work with, sell to, or support MSPs, this is your blueprint for helping them move from selling software to solving problems.
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Welcome back to Partnerships Underworld, the podcast where we underval the mysteries about channel and partnerships on a weekly basis. My name is Effa and I'm excited to introduce our special guest, Jason. Jason, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hey, good morning, Eff. Nice to meet you. And hey, thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining the uh podcast. Jason, for those who may not know who you are, could you give us an introduction, tell us who you are, where you come from?
SPEAKER_01Certainly. Yeah. So I uh my name is Jason Myers. I'm a cybersecurity strategist for MSP partnerships at OpenText. Um, been with the company about a year and a half. Um prior to that, I was uh chief product officer for uh a uh threat detection and response startup, uh an online platform, but pretty much been in like cybersecurity technology engineering uh for a few decades now, I say since the late 1900s. So I've been at it a while.
Defining MSP 3.0 And BSP Shift
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks for joining the show once again. Jason, you've been a you've been a veteran in the MSP space. You work with a lot of MSPs, and I kind of want to talk about uh the transition that we're seeing in the space, and I want to start by quoting you. So you said 20 years ago, MSPs provided basic breakfix solutions and system integration services. And then we moved to MSP 2.0 era where they offer traditional managed IT services and support. But now we're moving into the MSP 3.0 era. Could you elaborate a little bit about what do you mean by MSP 3.0? What is different in this generation?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've heard I've heard some people call it MSP 3.0. I've heard other people say we've jumped right from MSP 3.0 to MSP 5.0. Uh, but the term um from Joe Joe Rojas from Buy Build Sell, I kind of steal this from him. The term he's using now, he's saying that the term MSP is gonna go away altogether. And we're gonna we're gonna start calling it a BSP, a business solutions provider, right? Because, you know, MSP 2.0, you're that's the SAS era, you're selling seats to software, um, which was great because you knew where the margin was coming from. You know, you had a steady income each month, but we all know that's shrinking now, right? And so where the revenue is gonna come for MSPs in the future, being that MSP 3.0, I guess if you will, will be from managed services, being a solutions consultant and showing their their MSPs, showing their customers how they can solve real business problems.
AI As Margin Driver And Risks
SPEAKER_00So I I I you know we've been talking about this a lot because also I think like at TechSate, they start calling it MIP. I think like managed intelligence. Or an MIP too. It's uh we're seeing that I think the rise of AI is really shifting things. And um, how do you think, you know, for all the MSPs listening to the podcast right now, what should they be really thinking about? What should they look at to really transform their business?
SPEAKER_01Well, obviously there's a you know, you can use AI within your own business as an MSP, right? To um, you know, eliminate uh repetitive tasks, streamline your business, get economies to scale there. But I think where the real margin is gonna come from is being able to go to your customers, find out what their what their business pain points are, and showing them how they can use AI and even build agents to solve those problems. That's that's where the money is gonna be next year.
SPEAKER_00I feel like a lot of MSPs, they I think everyone in the space understands the potential of AI. They understand the importance of it. But I also saw that uh there's the open text survey that found that 92% of MSPs see it as a growth driver, but nearly half of them are not confident in deploying it securely. I guess we have to do a lot of, you know, there's a lot of training to be done. There's a skill gap that we see in the market right now. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about how you at OpenText are, you know, helping partners bridge that gap.
Skill Gaps And Community Collaboration
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that that's a great question. And you know, although 90% of you know, 93% or whatever sees the value, there was a study that you probably saw that came out of uh Massachusetts Institute of Technology about two months ago that said that 95% of AI deployments are actually a failure. They don't deliver on you know what the promises of economies of scale and saving money and and you know increasing profits and things like that. So that's kind of where we jump in. You know, one of the big reasons for those failures is security compliance and governance. And that's a two-sided coin. On the one hand, you've got the end users and the customers who are afraid to deploy it for that reason. Um, and then the ones that do and don't have their security compliance and governance set set up correctly could end up getting breached or exposing, you know, potentially uh sensitive information.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's both at the same time, there's a lot of opportunity, but as you said, that it fails oftentimes as well. And I think that it's it's there's a lot of risk involved as well. Do you also see maybe that there's a talent shortage, maybe not the right word, but there's a skill gap like in the market because you know, talking to vendors, distributors, partners from all sides, I hear that there's uh there's a lot of talent shortage in terms of like bringing these projects to life. Do you feel like that's uh that's something that you see in the market?
SPEAKER_01There can be, and you know, a lot of MSPs, maybe they don't have that talent on hand. But you know, one of the benefits of getting out there and going to events, and as we as we know the MSP community is is is pretty tightly knit, right? And we like to lift each other up. You know, go out there and find someone with that skill set, outsource it, right? There's such a demand for this right now. You can market up, make, you know, make a great margin on it, and you don't have to do everything in-house.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I fully agree with you. Uh, you know, that's one of the things that I always say about what I love about the MSP community is that it's I find it crazy sometimes that, you know, your competitors, you go to these kind of events, and you know, MSVs, they share all their screens. They're so open about it. And I guess like there's so much learning to be done in those communities, in those events. So also, like my uh thing to say to everyone listening is that, you know, just go out there. There's a lot of people who are already doing this kind of stuff and can definitely learn from each other. I think that community is the most amazing thing when it comes to MSPs.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I mean, it's a big pie, right? I just I just came back last week. We did a big peer group uh in Savannah, Georgia. Um, so a lot of our top MSPs got together in one place. And they did exactly that. They're there sharing their secrets, their tricks of the trade, how they do this, how they do that. You know, like you say, a rising tide, uh, you know, it lifts all ships, right? So um, and like I said, there's a knuckle the pie out there for everybody. You know, there's it's it's a huge market.
Simplicity, Automation, And Integration
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree with you. And I I, you know, it's kind of different when you're selling to enterprise and selling to SMBs. I feel like there are different priorities. Uh, and then the one thing that I saw is that in my research, that I think one of the most important things for SMBs is that simplicity is really important. Uh, it's one of the most important buying priorities. Um, how I feel like we sometimes overcomplicate it too much with messaging with the with the tools, but at the end of the day, it kind of has to be simple enough that the partners can have those conversations conversations with customers to just very tangibly kind of explain how it's really going to solve their business problems. Maybe to elaborate a little bit about like how you at OpenText, how are you having those conversations with MSPs? How are you helping them, enabling them to their real outcomes? What's kind of maybe the tooling, the strategy behind it? I would love to hear about that.
Microsoft Partnership Advantages For MSPs
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that's a great question. So, you know, I think one of the themes of next year, I think what you're gonna hear a lot of is gonna be automation and integration, right? Um, AI was kind of the hot button topic this year. That's gonna continue, and maybe you will be using AI to integrate and to streamline things. But you know, an MSP in an ideal world, they want to put they would want to push one button and onboard a user and kick back and everything's good to go, right? So we're taking steps in that direction. At OpenText, we've got our secure cloud platform where we sell not only all of our IP, but Microsoft as well. Um, we are like the fifth largest in the world Microsoft Solutions provider right now. Uh, we are the first, you know, with the App River acquisition, App River first Microsoft CSP. So we're doing a lot in terms of integrations and you know, playing nice with all the other tools that are out there. You know, 10 years ago, you saw a lot of that. A lot of the vendors played nice together, they integrated well together. And then you kind of saw this shift where, you know, hey, get your whole entire stack from us and we, you know, we've got our walled garden kind of closed off, right? And I think you're seeing some pushback from the MSP community now that no, they they they want that again. They want the vendors to play nice together. You know, with open text, we say open ecosystem now because we really do integrate with just about everything out there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's like one of the most important things. I guess like I also seen this shift happening, you know, a lot of vendors trying to create a lot of tools, make sure that like they can deliver the whole stack, but I feel like it's not working best all the time. And you know, the beauty of the you know, I someone talk about the app store when think about it, it's kind of like brings all those different experts, you know, uh together. And I guess the partners' responsibility also to make sure that you know everything works smoothly together. And then ultimately the goal is to uh provide a solution to a customer that really solves their problems. Right. Um, and you know, I I know that OpenTex is you know, Microsoft top CSPs, everyone knows that, but maybe you can talk to me about how does that relationship, that close relationship with Microsoft also giving your MSPs an edge in the space.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you know, first of all, um we hit one of the uh points with that, there's there's really two things. The first, we've got a lady, Liz, on our team. She's a Microsoft consultant that knows Microsoft licensings, incentives, and rebates inside and out, right? And I've been on dozens of calls with Liz, and every single time I've seen her save the MSP money, right? There's always money being left on the table. But I think probably our biggest proposition there is you never have to talk to Microsoft again. We solved 98.7% of first calls in-house, and the other 2.2%, we've got a dedicated team at Microsoft that'll uh take care of it for us. So we kind of offload having to deal with Microsoft to take care of it for the MSP.
SPEAKER_00You said that you there's you see that there's a lot of money being left on the table. On what do you see are the like biggest opportunities? Where do you see a lot of money being left on the table?
Tool Sprawl And Optimal Vendor Mix
SPEAKER_01There I'll be honest with you. I feel like you need a PhD to understand Microsoft licensing incentives and rebates. Um one of the things with that is you know it changes constantly. That's why we've got a dedicated team. We've got former Microsoft employees that work for us to stay on top of that. Um, because a lot of partners, they're not going into their partner portal all the time like they should be, spending a couple hours a month looking at it, seeing what they should do. So that's where we come in and help. A lot of times there's just a lot of incentives and rebates being left on the table. They've got a new point system now that I don't fully understand. But once you hit 25 points, you start getting more steeper discounts and things like that. So that's what we're here to do is to help the MSP understand that and navigate it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we previously talked about the importance of simplicity for the customer, but there's also importance of simplicity for the partner as well because they're so overwhelmed. And I guess it's also another transition that I've been seeing in the space that like now a lot of vendors are looking at like how can we simplify our programs, how can we make it easy to work with us? And you know, it's great that you're helping because it's so much to navigate, right? It's so complex and it changes all the time, as you mentioned. So uh it's amazing to hear that you've been, you know, working closely with partners to make sure that they can navigate that complicated space.
SPEAKER_01And you you had mentioned before too, you know, tool sprawl is a thing, right? There's so many different tools out there, there's a lot of choices. Um, but we recently did a study with uh Jay McBain over at Canalis. And one of the interesting things that came out of that is that, yeah, tool sprawl is a thing, but actually the the kind of the sweet spot for the number of vendors that an MSP wants to deal with is about seven to ten. So they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket, but um seven seven to ten seems to be about that sweet spot.
Blueprint For Building Cybersecurity Offerings
SPEAKER_00And when you think about it, if you know seven of ten, if if all of those you know vendors have their own partner portal, their own tools that get so many logins it gets really uh complicated to navigate that as well. 100%. Jason, let let's let's talk to MSPs directly here, you know, to everyone who's listening. Let's say an MSP is just starting to build out a cybersecurity offering. What's your blueprint? How would you guide them? What are the advice that you would give to them at this point?
SPEAKER_01You know, so so one of the things about dealing with us, we we we try to uh make it as easy as possible to do business with us, right? So I would recommend to them, you know, get with your account rep and get set up in the secure cloud platform, okay? Because with all of our products, we've got free NFRs, we've got no minimums, no contracts, no credit card fees. So you can literally get in there and dip your toe in the dozens of products that we have. I mean, we've got something to cover you left, center, right a boom. We've got a tool for just about every every cybersecurity threat vector. So get in there, play with it, download the products, and then our you know, our support and implementation team is there to help you navigate that and figure it out as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's amazing. And how do you see? Do you feel like an early MSP, should they be really thinking about like how they're going to differentiate themselves? Because I feel like that's one of the a lot of MSPs, you know, they get stuck in that 2 million AR space, and it's really hard to scale about that. Do you feel like how how do they get to that scale and differentiation? How what would you advise them?
Differentiation Through Services Over Seats
SPEAKER_01You're not going to get there selling seats, right? Let's just face it. Um, maybe 10 years ago you could have accelerated that way, but your stack is your stack. And it may be a little bit different of a mix than the next guy and the other guy, but your stack is your stack. And to be honest, the customer doesn't really care what your stack is, right? Someone's buying a car, they don't care where the car seats came from, they don't care where the seat belts came from. They just want a car that's safe and reliable. So the the real accelerator for growth going forward is gonna be professional and managed services, whether that's managed cybersecurity, um AI deployments, helping customers do integrations and and uh automations and things like that. The managed services and professional services are gonna be where the growth and the the margin is gonna be.
Closing Remarks
SPEAKER_00And I think that really ties back to when we start the conversation, it's going to be that what what you call MSP 3.0. Right. Yeah. Right. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Jason, for the conversation. Uh thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00See you in the next episode.
SPEAKER_01All right, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.