(This is the first of a series of stories looking at MSP 501 winners).
After several years of finishing near the top of the MSP 501 rankings, Zayo Group ascended to No. 1 in the 2026 MSP 501. Zayo's rise to the top came primarily from selling SD-WAN managed services to distributed enterprises.
Max Clauson, the SVP who leads Zayo’s managed services, sees even brighter things ahead for this year. Zayo closed its $4.25 billion acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions business May 1, following a consolidation of Zayo’s network connectivity and managed services groups.
“We're excited about the pieces that we've put together,” Clauson said. “We're excited about what the second half of this year and 2027 will bring for us, and we're eager to tell the world about it. We've got a bunch of big things that have just happened. We brought together the managed services and network connectivity business — that's big thing number one. Then you layer on the Crown business — that's big thing number two. Now we have not only a bigger, more rational enterprise portfolio in the market, but a much bigger footprint and a much bigger sales team to sell it. You'll see us start to be louder in the market, and we'll be selling a much broader suite of services.”
The Crown deal was Zayo’s 57th acquisition overall and 11th in the past eight years.
“The managed services group was born out of acquisitions plus some of the managed services pieces that Zayo had in its legacy portfolio,” Clauson said. “Bringing those pieces together and working them independently made sense, but we've realized enterprises are really buying a much broader suite of services from us. Yes, they want SD-WAN services, but they also want connectivity, DDoS protection and other things. So combining network connectivity and managed services to really create an enterprise portfolio made a ton of sense. That shift happened about three months ago, so that's my current remit — overseeing all of those pieces.”
Managed cybersecurity is another big piece of Zayo’s business, as customers have more reason than ever to secure their networks. AI plays a role there, as a tool for both those who secure networks as well as those who attack them.
“We continue to see evolution around security threats on both the network connectivity and managed services side, and AI is obviously changing that landscape,” Clauson said. “Vendors and customers need to be much more nimble and aware. That’s top of mind for everyone, no matter what the underlying network is, as things move into an AI-driven world.”
He said Zayo uses AI internally for things such as predictive modeling and to allow customers to access information about Zayo more easily. Zayo is also working on more ways to use it inside services.
“We're thinking about ways AI could help customers monitor and observe what's happening on their networks,” he said. “It's definitely top of mind. That's all counterbalanced by security concerns, making sure we're not getting carried away and that we're acting in our customers' best interest, and that our networks and security will stand up to enterprise use.”
Clauson said Zayo’s main challenge over the next year is effective branding to reflect its changes.
“I think we have a brand recognition challenge,” he said. “Zayo has historically been a seller of big pipes to big buyers of bandwidth, and that's been the bread-and-butter branding of the business. There's a huge opportunity for us to really level up our messaging in the market and our narrative around enterprise to take advantage of everything we've been talking about. That would be a real step-function change in our visibility, branding, and positioning in the market.”