Based in San Francisco, MSP Mann Consulting counts many technology companies as customers. It also manages thousands of Mac devices. Harold Mann, Mann Consulting founder and president, said working with tech companies and creatives gives his MSP a sneak peek into trends such as AI. Or as he says, the Northern California MSP market is a “canary in the coal mine” that shows both the good and the bad aspects of AI.
I recently spoke with the leader of Mann Consulting, which ranked No. 219 on the 2025 MSP 501, about what AI can mean for MSPs and the tech world. He said while he sees a lot of “super cool stuff” around AI, it is also creating a tsunami for MSPs as companies seek to use AI to cut costs and jobs. And while AI receives much of the attention, cybersecurity still pays the bills for MSPs.
Here are highlights of our interview.
MSP Summit: What are you seeing out there now?
Mann: I think we might be more of a canary in a coal mine here in California about what’s coming. I think we see it way before it goes mainstream. I really think the MSP landscape is changing and too few MSPs are willing to acknowledge it. Leads are really drying up and companies are questioning a ton of IT purchases. It feels like early signs of a tsunami but these things often take longer than our paranoia tells us they will.
In what way are you a canary in a coal mine?
Mann: The tech companies in California that we work with are adopting the technology so effectively that they're able to make these cuts that you read about – Microsoft and the other ones -- because they're adopting the technology faster than the other industries. It’s just a matter of time before the other ones do it.
What are examples of how your customers are using AI so effectively?
Mann: They are letting their employees play with the toys, and that's been fun to watch. They're very cautious. They're nervous about their intellectual property being sort of sucked into these LLMs, but they're letting their employees just try out stuff and play and see what works. I'm seeing a lot of ideation and experimentation by a lot of our clients. And along with it, there's a lot of like fear of what to do with the data. Like healthcare obviously with all the HIPAA stuff, they have to be super careful about what they put in.
All of our big clients are doing their own initiatives and are locking stuff down. But the smaller businesses -- the SMBs -- are encouraging experimentation. They're giving people stipends for AI accounts to just try stuff out. They're mandating weekly or monthly show-and-tell where people just show what they've been doing, which is super cool. They’re getting people to say "Oh, I had no idea you could do that." It’s very exciting, and at the same time, it's also destroying some jobs, so it's hard to be completely bullish on it when you see the instant impact it's having. We're seeing so many people on LinkedIn that are open to work right now, while all this cool stuff is happening. I think those correlate directly.
Harold Mann
You say you manage about 15,000 Mac devices compared to about 1,000 Windows machines. Do you intentionally seek out Mac-heavy customers?
Mann: We work with 200 companies a year. Those who give their employees the choice of a Mac or PC, the majority of them just beg for a Mac. So that continues to be the computer of choice for a lot of folks, unless their industry just doesn't permit it.
With so many Mac clients, what industries do you mostly serve?
Mann: Our bread and butter was advertising and marketing for the first decade or so, but it has broadened significantly to healthcare, biotech, FinTech, software, and a smattering of education, nonprofits, et cetera.
From a tech perspective, are you seeing any interesting trends from Apple?
Mann: It's pretty widely reported that Apple has dropped the ball on the AI stuff, but they're playing the long game. That's what they do, right? They don't have to be the first MP3 player, but the iPod was a pretty good hit, right? They didn't have to have the first cell phone but the iPhone was a pretty damn good hit. On the AI stuff, I think Apple has plenty of capital to try to get this one correctly.
Cybersecurity is a staple for MSPs. What are you seeing there?
Mann: I think MSPs are better suited to focus on cybersecurity right now, because the threat is so immediate that the numbers are so big and so many companies are completely apathetic about security. That's way more in our lane than AI.
The problem with cybersecurity is, it's like climate change, every day you hear about it, but you don't know when it's going to be a problem. That’s different than Y2K where everybody knew when it was going to happen, so we all put all this time and money into it. It had a very clear date. If there were a clear date that you would be breached, you could spend a lot of money on cybersecurity. I once had an employee ask me, "When should I put the security cables on the laptops?" I said, "Before they're stolen." He didn’t like that answer, but it was the truth.