Align, No. 40 on the 2026 MSP 501 list, has become a 501 fixture because of its ability to stay ahead of the innovation curve while focusing on the financial services industry.
The New York-based MSP’s approach to AI is a prime example of why Align is a regular MSP 501er. Vinod Paul, Align’s president of managed services, said Align is well past the preliminary stages of AI adoption.
“AI is not just a hot new thing to us,” Paul said. “We've been leveraging AI now for nearly five years. We were one of the first managed service providers to create a whole governance and readiness product for our client base. Because our clients are in the financial services space, they're very apt to adopting AI, so it's a core principle of our service offering to our clients.”
Align has been around for 40 years, but its strong business focus on financial service and cybersecurity over the past decade made AI a natural fit for its managed services.
Align last month launched a digital publication, AI & the Future of Alternative Investments. It includes insights on AI adoption across alternative investments, guidance on governance and security, and perspectives on what separates early adopters from everyone else.
AI isn’t the first time Align was an early adopter. “When I joined the organization [2017], we were going through a period of innovation. We completely verticalized the MSP business and leveraged the public cloud. We were one of the first managed service providers to completely go to the public cloud as the backbone of our foundational offering,” said Paul, who was a 2025 MSP 501 Lifetime Achievement winner.
Vinod Paul
“If you look at the threat landscape, for example, we’ve heavily leveraged AI into our threat mitigation platforms,” he said. “We’re not using AI to replace anyone; we want to leverage AI to enhance the customer experience. It’s great to automate manual tasks, but what really excites us about AI is making the customer experience better. We've never taken away from our core goal of white glove service.”
Doing all that required Align to use its own research and development while keeping up with third-party AI tools, even if it has not standardized on any yet. Meeting compliance regulations is a key to working with financial services firms.
“The biggest challenge is the technology is changing at a feverish pace, and there's no clear winner,” Paul said. “We were putting real dollars into research and development, and along with our clients, co-collaborating with them to come up with the best solutions, and that may change. The rate of change is a lot quicker than the rate of innovation.
“One of the things that we're really proud of is that we've been able to identify great AI talent very early on in our journey. We’ve developed those individuals, making sure that strong systems engineers can elevate themselves, become security analysts and business analysts by leveraging AI. That training aspect is a real important part for us.”
Paul said a big misconception in the industry is that MSPs will be able to use AI to reduce labor. He said its value is enhancing customer experience, not cutting headcount.
“I know there are one or two MSPs out there that are saying ‘AI is going to completely reduce our labor costs, and it's going to be so much more efficient, we're going to be so much more profitable,’” he said. “I'm sure the private equity firms are excited about that, but I don't think there's any reality in that. I do think it can enhance the customer experience. I do think it will make MSPs more efficient. The MSPs that have put real effort and dollars into AI innovation and the customer experience will be the successful ones.”