The content team at the MSP Summit site tracks stories of interest to the managed services provider community. Anyone selling managed services or partnering with MSPs will want to know about these developing stories or catch up on stories they have missed. With the help of ChatGPT, Claude, and AI tools developed by our parent company Informa, we're tracking top stories based on web traffic, mentions, impressions, reposts, and social media engagement. All links are current as of Feb. 2.
Shield Raises Another $100 Million From Thrive Holdings to Accelerate Growth
Shield Technology Partners, an IT services platform combining frontier AI, product and engineering capabilities, brought in $100 million investment from Thrive Holdings. This matches the investment Thrive Holdings put into Shield when it launched the MSP portfolio company in 2025. This capital will help to accelerate product innovation and pursue strategic M&A to strengthen Shield’s platform capabilities and market reach. See the Shield press release.
Microsoft AI Investments Raise Questions About Strategy
CEO Satya Nadella reported rising interest in cloud and AI sovereignty, which analysts warned could lead to more selective enterprise buying patterns. Roughly two-thirds of Microsoft’s $37.5 billion in capital expenditures last quarter went towards GPUs and CPUs. Remaining spend was allocated to assets including large data center sites. However, analysts are concerned about Microsoft’s significant AI investments. Read the Channel Dive story.
Amazon’s Layoffs are Staggering but Not Unprecedented
Big Tech continues to wrestle with mass layoffs, most recently with Amazon’s announcement to slash 16,000 jobs. It’s a trend that started long before the AI race: organizational change brought by the arrival of new technology. The 1990s and 2000s saw a wave of layoffs from industry stalwarts like IBM, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, which embraced technological advancements like personal computers, mobile devices and the cloud. Read CNN Business’ deep dive into this trend.
Thrive's Three MSP Pillars
The CEO of service provider – not to be confused with Thrive Holdings – calls his company a “next gen service provider” because it embeds AI and automation, in-house cybersecurity and cloud solutions into a managed IT services foundation. Thrive CEO Bill McLaughlin emphasizes those three pillars in mind as Thrive seeks to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2029. See the Channel Dive story.
Syncro Marketplace Offers Ironscales Email Security Services to MSPs
MSP platform vendor Syncro has teamed up with email security vendor Ironscales to combine the company’s AI-powered email security platform with Syncro’s automated billing services through the Syncro Marketplace. Under the deal, MSPs can deploy and configure Ironscales’ email protection services quickly for their customers while simplifying billing through the marketplace portal. Read the ChannelE2E story.
Hitachi Vantara: Customers Want Channel Help with AI
The AI opportunity for the channel has merged around getting customers ready to deploy and secure technology that continues to evolve. Research from storage vendor Hitachi Vantara has underlined the situation many users find themselves in, and the willingness of significant numbers to work with a third-party to help them with their AI strategies. Hitachi Vantara’s annual State of Data Infrastructure Global Report found that the overwhelming majority of IT leaders struggle with data complexity rising too fast to manage. The vendor also found significant numbers were looking to work with channel partners to share the burden of AI, and are concerned about security around the technology. Read the Computer Weekly Microscope story.