XTIUM, which ranked No. 9 on the 2025 MSP 501, enters 2026 with new leadership.
Russ Reeder stepped down as CEO after overseeing XTIUM’s formation through the October 2024 merger of ATSG and Evolve IP. Reeder was replaced by Michael Pisterzi, who had been a board member of ATSG and XTIUM for six years.
XTIUM, based in Tampa, Fla. with offices in Netherlands and the U.K., has about 800 employees and 1,700 customers in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.
I spoke with Pisterzi about his plans for the MSP as it begins its first calendar year under the XTIUM brand.
It appears everything's running smoothly now following the merger and integration. What are your priorities are going forward?
Pisterzi: We're going to continue with the core missions that we've outlined for the company. Our core strategy is basically to be security-first, customer-first, and innovation driven.
How do you see the MSP market these days? What are the big trends you'll be focusing your managed services on?
Pisterzi: Everything we do is security first, and certainly AI enablement is a big part of this going forward. What we're seeing in the industry at large is consolidation, even vendor consolidation. To be successful in this business, you have to have scale. We're very fortunate—as you know, we're in the top 10 of the MSP 501 -- so we have scale. We have a full-stack MSP capability and we’re fully integrated with security and AI enablement. That is really an essential element going forward for the success of our customers.
Our customers are typically in the IT business—that's where we operate. Security is an evolving element, literally on a day-to-day basis. In order for us to be a great partner to them, we operate 24/7/365.
You mention consolidation. XTIUM came from two MSPs merging, and those MSPs had bought companies before. Are you looking to continue to expand through M&A?
Pisterzi: Yes, the basic path to becoming a full-stack MSP was to develop internally — we have internal DevOps, of course — but we also acquire best-in-breed solutions to build our entire product portfolio. And then we will fully integrate those across all the lines of our business with this mask of a full security envelope with AI enablement.
What are your expectations in 2026?
Pisterzi: It's definitely going to be a growth year for XTIUM. We have made enhancements to our current product lines. We’ll continue to evolve our product line and add enablement from an AI perspective, both from internal usage and from packaging what we built internally into product offerings for our customers.
I spoke to Russ Reeder back in September at the MSP Summit, and he was talking about some of your AI initiatives. What are some of the things you're doing with AI? Do you have any revenue drivers from AI yet?
Pisterzi: We have enabled AI internally in the company, and we have AI proofs-of-concept with some customers today. What we're looking to do with AI is simplifying very complex environments for our customer base. We’re using complex technology to simplify the overall customer experience.
Our intent with AI is really to make sure that we provide speed, accuracy, and an overall improved customer experience. Internally, everything we do with AI is about the customer experience. Certainly, we get efficiency gains, but it's all about providing a much better customer experience. With AI, we have the ability to automate network provisioning in our cloud offering with a robust control plane. That has been a significant differentiator in our go-to-market approach.
We also offer AI advisory services as part of our professional services. Being on the front end of technologies is part of that process.
Where do you see the growth areas, whether organically or through M&A? What areas would you like to focus on, whether geographic or new different services?
Pisterzi: Everything's on the table at this point, but we're focused internally and externally on organic growth. We have some new product offerings going into EMEA and a new go-to-market motion focused in Europe.
Do you see XTIUM growing headcount next year?
Pisterzi: We will grow in 2026, but our key initiatives from an AI perspective help us do a lot more with the people we have. We will add AI in key areas that are heavily people dependent, but the internal enablement of AI really allows us to be more efficient. This hasn't been an exercise in eliminating positions. It's about giving our people the tools to be more successful—to provide faster results, more consistent results, and comprehensive results for an improved customer experience.