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. All links are current as of July 27.
Barracuda Expands Partner Program Around Pipeline, Skills and MSP Growth
Barracuda has expanded its Partner Success Program with new marketing, training, and partner portal features that are designed to help MSPs and channel partners generate pipeline, build technical expertise, and move through the company’s sales process more efficiently. The changes are built on Barracuda’s recent program modernization and focus on areas like demand generation, technical enablement, onboarding, and access to sales support. Read the ChannelE2E story.
AI Takes Center State at Microsoft Partner Event
Microsoft has been outlining its partner priorities for the next fiscal year, with AI taking center stage The vendor used its MCAPS Start for Partners event to talk about the importance of being prepared to adopt AI agents, and how it was aligning its investments behind supporting that goal. Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer and CVP of global channel partner sales at Microsoft, wrote a blog that outlined the direction of travel the vendor wanted its partners to be going in. Read the MicroScope story.
Alphabet Flops, Intel Sgocks, and Tesla Tanks: Earnings Recap
Earnings season kicked into warp overdrive this past week with Intel, Alphabet and Tesla reporting. This week the market will hear results from the likes of Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. See the Yahoo Finance roundup.
Cato Networks and CrowdStrike Harmonize SASE with Falcon
Cato Networks integrated its secure access service edge (SASE) platform with CrowdStrike's Falcon flagship security suite. Both firms touted coverage across security operations, asset visibility, and threat hunting use cases, with the merging of Cato XOps with Falcon's Discover capability able to correlate endpoint detections with network telemetry to augment threat visibility and accelerate investigations. Read the SDxCentral story.
Partners Leave MDF Money on the Table and Can’t Say Why
Channel partners are leaving valuable market development funds on the table. Omdia research found many partners are failing to maximize MDF at a time when vendors are zeroing in on marketing-led demand generation and customer engagement. More than 40% of partners weren’t sure which MDF-supported activity delivered the greatest impact on their business, according to Omdia. Read the Channel Dive story.
MSPs are all in on AI but Revenue Hasn’t Followed
MSPs’ customers are no longer asking which AI tools they should buy. They want to know where AI fits, who is responsible when it goes wrong, how it should be governed, and whether it is actually delivering a return. GTIA found that 97% of IT service providers are already using AI but only 20% have the governance frameworks, formal policies, operating processes, and commercial strategies needed to use it effectively. Enterprise results tell the same story. Domino Data Lab's Fifth Annual Domino Enterprise AI Report found that while 93% of AI leaders say the technology has improved production capabilities, 57% say the returns still do not exceed the amount being spent. Read the ChannelE2E story.
Tech Companies Urge U.S. Caution on Open Models
A group of influential tech companies has signed on to an open letter urging U.S policy makers to avoid “premature restrictions on open models that stifle competition or drive innovation overseas.” The letter, released on July 24, reflects growing concern in official circles that Chinese open-weight models, which are available for anyone to download, modify and run on their own infrastructure, are gaining significant traction at the expense of the proprietary closed models from the leading U.S. tech vendors. The letter is backed by Nvidia, Dell, Hugging Face, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, OpenAI, SpaceX, AMD, Google, Cisco and others. Read the AI business story.
U.S. Government to Consider AI Kill Switch Law
U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would force developers of powerful AI systems – such as OpenAI or Anthropic – to maintain the technical capability to throttle, suspend or shut down errant AI models altogether. Cooked up by congressmen Ted Lieu of California and Nathanial Moran of Texas, the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act reflects growing concerns over the potential for uncontained AI models to cause havoc entirely of their own accord, without human supervision. Read the Computer Weekly story.
MSP Personified Taps into the Political Campaign Market
Political campaigns are a specialized yet lucrative market for IT service providers. New York-based managed service provider Personified is building a playbook for the vertical. Personified ranked No. 53 on the 2026 MSP 501 with a staff of 30. The company has punched above its weight class with a vertical-focused model that focuses on nonprofits and political campaigns, filling a glaring gap in the political world. Mike Marotti, founder of Personified, searched long and hard for an MSP when he was senior director of technology operations for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign. Marotti started Personified in 2021 to serve primarily nonprofits, political campaigns and public office holders. He recruited a team of IT veterans who know the political and nonprofit worlds. Read the Channel Dive story.