From left-to-right: Kelly Danziger, Jim Lippie, David Raissipour, Michael Adler, Robert DeMarzo.
At the 2025 MSP Summit this month, we asked the product leaders of ConnectWise, Kaseya and N-able to gather on the main stage for a panel discussion on the future of their platforms. In this first-of-its-kind discussion, managed service providers and channel leaders heard insights from Jim Lippie, Chief Product Officer, Kaseya; David Raissipour, Chief Product and Technology Officer, ConnectWise; and Michael Adler, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Product Officer, N-able. The discussion was moderated by Robert DeMarzo, Sr. Director, Content, Channel Events, Informa and Kelly Danziger, General Manager, Channel, Informa Channels. The product leaders each brought a unique perspective to the most pressing challenges of the day. What follows is Part One of an edited version of the discussion.
Friends, Foes or Friendly Competitors?
Adler: I think we've all been in the industry for a while. We all are running into each other here and there. Dave [Raissipour] and I share a background in cybersecurity that goes back with some history. We always have ways to bond, and then we leave here and go compete.
Raissipour: Competition is good. It brings out the best in you. Who wants to be in an industry of one?
Lippie: I love competition. I'm a former MSP and I used both ConnectWise and N-able back in the day. You know, it's a while ago, but I used both.
The Platform Economy: Past, Present and Future
Adler: I think the platform economy is in for a massive change, both economic as well as just technological. It is really being driven by the changes that AI is going to bring to the table. The AI economy is going to force a refocusing on a different set of economics. Because of the cost of AI, the efficiency of AI, the way that we're going to be able to automate more within the MSP ecosystem, it's going to drive a different set of models. We're at the precipice of big platform change as the platforms break up and the needs expand for everyone. They just have to be able to do more, accomplish more, and have a better handle on a wider range of data.
Raissipour: I don't think this is new. So, the platform economy may be accelerating because people are going to start to see the value from the platforms the vendors have been talking about for a while. The current trend is everybody is making investments in AI. Everybody's talking about agentic AI capabilities that they're building. Everyone's talking about how agents could replace this or replace that or automate that. None of those are myths.
The Economic Impact of AI
Lippie: We started having the platform conversation in 2017 at Kaseya. And we didn't necessarily know from an AI perspective back then that this is where we're going to be. But we were building out a lot of capabilities and acquiring new products, which ultimately leads to more data. Longer term, the best platforms are going to be the ones that have the most data to correlate and serve up in terms of actual insights for all of our customers. That's certainly a big piece for us, and I think for the industry at large.
The Evolution of Technology and Jobs
Raissipour: For anybody that's lived in the private-equity world, they buy companies, and part of the business model around buying a company is, how much are you going to optimize and rationalize work? I think AI is accelerating that. I'm one of those people that's not afraid of AI replacing people. I don't think Skynet is coming. I don't think it's overblown but this is not new. How many people go by and see a toll booth collector these days? That used to be a job. Toll booths didn't go away. Pay roads didn't go away. It’s simply an evolution where certain technologies can do things that are redundant, repetitive and can be automated. And they do it more consistently, provide better SLA and provide more consistent outcomes. That is just part of the evolution of the industry. We're just picking up the pace of it.
Adler: I've done machine learning for 15 years. And it's not new. I'm a big fan of it and it will drive change, and it'll drive technology change, it'll drive economic change. It'll drive, frankly, the way that everyone in this room does business, and we shouldn't underestimate that. Think about it.
Lippie: It's going to drive more outcomes and different outcomes, because it's going to be completely democratized going forward and everyone's going to be leveraging it. So that's the difference. It's not new in terms of the technology itself. What's going to be new is the application of it and how pervasive it is.
Advising Customers on AI
Lippie: We're in the early innings right now. I think the key is letting your customers know what is coming and that you are their trusted advisor in terms of getting them where they need to be longer term. There are law firms out there that inherently know based on what's coming and the technology that's available to them, that they're going to be able to do a lot more with a lot less in terms of labor.
What your customers need to know is that you're going to help them get there. You're going to empower them to get to that point. And actually, when that happens, you become even more valuable to them than you are today, because at that point you're like a utility. You're like water, electricity, gas. They literally can't continue to operate that model without you and what you bring to them. I see this next evolution of our industry as potentially even more exciting than what cloud brought to and what even cyber security brought to the MSP community.