If you ask 20 people in the MSP world what 2027 will bring, AI will come up often. But their answers also reveal an industry wrestling with some decidedly human questions.
- What should an MSP take responsibility for?
- Which new services will make money?
- How do you grow without letting service suffer?
Among their varying forecasts, some see room to expand an MSP’s role in a client’s business. Others warn that chasing every opportunity can pull providers away from the work they do best. Here are the predictions and priorities they believe deserve your attention.
AI becomes a service — and a responsibility
“I believe 2027 will be the year AI enablement becomes a true managed service for MSPs. Clients will need more than access to AI tools. They will need guidance around security, governance, automation, training, and how to actually use AI to improve their business.”
Mike Bloomfield
president geek, Tekie Geek
“Our clients are already thinking about AI and how it can make their businesses more productive. We need to be in that conversation, helping them identify the right opportunities, put the right tools in place and roll them out securely. If we’re not having those conversations with our clients, someone else will.”
Ann Westerheim
founder and president, Ekaru
“MSPs should be giving their clients a platform on which to build their AI, with oversight and help from the MSP when needed. Use a ‘token broker’ on the backend, so the client doesn’t have to choose the provider up-front. Then, build guardrails around the whole thing.”
Rory Sanchez
CEO, Forthright Technology Partners
“In 2027, MSPs must not allow AI governance to remain an unspoken responsibility or something that is assumed. They need to make it a defined service, establish exactly what they will and will not govern, and educate their customers about why ongoing AI visibility, monitoring, policies and controls are now part of responsible technology management.”
Brad Gross
founding attorney,
The Law Office of Bradley Gross, P.A.
“Tuning the AI that’s roaming around in your organization is more than simply telling it what we sell or who our target market is. It needs to know how we roll — our vision, mission and values.”
Manny Palachuk
MSP business coach, MSP Ascend
“If AI is supposed to make your MSP more efficient, eventually that efficiency needs to show up in the numbers. The firms that can measure that will have a major advantage over the ones that are simply using AI and hoping it’s working.”
Andrew Jordan
president, NodeWise
“We need to be careful of getting distracted by work outside of our expertise. We don’t all need to become vibe coding shops. AI can make building an app look easy, but developing, securing and maintaining software requires expertise that many MSPs haven’t traditionally built their businesses around.”
Matt Rose
CEO, Tech Rage IT
Security’s next big questions
“The risk is already here through ‘harvest now, decrypt later,’ where encrypted data can be captured today and potentially decrypted in the future. MSPs have an opportunity to help clients inventory cryptographic assets, identify long-lived sensitive data, assess vendor readiness, and begin planning for post-quantum cryptography.”
Philip de Souza
cybersecurity entrepreneur and founder of Aurora IT
“Threat actors will stand up their own MSPs using tooling duplicated from legitimate RMM/PSA/Automation tooling.”
Lawrence Cruciana
founder and president,
Corporate Information Technologies
“2027 growth goes to MSSPs, not MSPs, that stop selling perimeter tools and start selling continuous verification across the whole identity lifecycle, not just login.”
Anthony Oren
founder and CEO, Nero Consulting
Growth gets an operations test
“The constraint in 2027 will be process debt. If your service delivery, onboarding and QBR cadence cannot absorb more clients without breaking, new logos just create more chaos and thinner margins.”
Adam Bielanski
practice leader, managed services,
Net at Work
“MSPs cannot grow if they are only accountable to the checkbook. They must have a strong strategy that focuses on profits and their service agreements being aligned with their realized target rates.”
Chris Buckingham
founder, SolveCXO
“The tool that will drive the most MSP growth in 2027 is not another platform in your stack. It is peer-group benchmarking that tells you where in your growth curve you actually are.”
Paul Daigle
senior managing partner,
Biz Advisory Board
“Pick an industry and go deep. Generic IT support is a commodity; specialized expertise is not.”
Corey Kirkendoll
president and CEO,
5K Technical Services
“The trend I would watch for is AEO, answer engine optimization. That’s getting your firm cited in AI answers. The traffic is small today and growing fast. The buyers it sends are serious.”
Prasanna Perera
founder, RiseOak
The human side of automation
“AI is a support tool. It’s not a replacement for your SDR or sales staff. The MSPs who try to eliminate the humanity from sales will suffer and stagnate.”
Ian Richardson
founder, Fox & Crow Group
“2027 is the year that I believe many will leave the field due to AI fatigue.”
Nate Sheen
CEO, Astoria
“Be the person they want to come to. All our clients are going to start using ChatGPT or Claude to fix the problems. The difference between AI and a human is the warmth and caring you provide to a customer that the robots don’t have.”
Justin Esgar
CEO, Virtua Computers
“Our hiring patterns will have to change. We’ve said for years in this industry that we need business analysts to work directly with customers. Now that is actually true because AI gives SMBs a real opportunity to modify workflows.”
Reed Wilson
CEO, Courser
“While AI and automation will continue to increase efficiencies, the trends to watch for are beyond tools. The processes built around those efficiencies have become even more important. That means MSPs will need to pay more attention to the human handoffs that technology alone won’t fix.”
Dori Spade
president, Call To Action LLC
Matt Whitlock is ChannelPro’s tech editor, bringing more than 25 years of technology industry experience and a practical perspective on the tools and trends shaping the IT channel. A seasoned editor, podcast host and event moderator, he covers hardware, cybersecurity and emerging technologies with a focus on what they mean for IT service providers. Through product reviews, analysis and industry conversations, he helps MSPs and MSSPs separate useful innovation from marketing hype, with a little humor along the way.
Featured image: MdSona — stock.adobe.com
