At Pax8 Beyond 2025 in Aurora, CO, transformation wasn’t just encouraged; it was celebrated. With powerful Pax8 innovations and a bold vision for the AI-powered future, MSPs can begin to experience what’s possible. The message was clear: Those ready to evolve have an opportunity to lead.
“This is our moment for transformation,” said Chief Experience Officer Craig Donovan during the event’s Innovation Keynote on June 10. “Artificial intelligence, and specifically the rate of change, is leaving us no time for that sort of slow, step-by-step approach.”
Here’s a rundown of the new strategy and big innovative offerings introduced during Pax8 Beyond.
Shift from Managed Services to Managed Intelligence
Pax8 Beyond coined a phrase for the forward-looking identity it envisions for MSPs: “managed intelligence providers.” More than a rebrand, this is a roadmap to the future. As MIPs, service providers will orchestrate AI-powered workflows, act as business consultants, and guide clients through their own digital transformations.
“This goes way beyond supporting networks and provisioning licenses,” said Chief Product Officer Libby McIlhany during the Innovation Keynote. “This is about architecting agentic infrastructures … and guiding clients through a reinvention of how business gets done.”
Pax8 Innovations: Storefronts, Integrations, and MCP
Pax8 announced several tools and product enhancements in its Pax8 Marketplace. These capabilities are designed to help MSPs transition into their new role as MIPs.
- Public Storefronts: This bold evolution of last year’s Storefronts feature allows partners to showcase their own branded solutions publicly for lead generation and client self-service. This was driven, in part, by the success of the original Storefronts introduced last year. “Partners who leaned in drove a 30% increase in client self-service revenue,” McIlhany said during the keynote. Public Storefronts was available to Beyond attendees on June 10, with a global launch planned for July 15.
- Integrations Hub: This is a centralized ecosystem where partners can connect third-party tools, PSAs, and more. It’s aimed at helping reduce hours of custom development work. The Integrations Hub currently supports 14 live integrations with 30 more in development. It builds on Pax8’s growing API ecosystem, which now sees more than 50 million public API calls each month. That represents a 150% year-over-year increase.
Libby McIlhany says Pax8 will walk the innovation journey with its partners.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP): A standout new capability now in beta, MCP enables service providers to use AI agents to securely query the Pax8 Marketplace in natural language and automate workflows. “You can bring your own LLM, agent or AI to connect into our MCP interface … The intelligent, conversational future of managing your business — it’s here,” said McIlhany during the keynote.
The good news for smaller MSPs: Pax8 kept them in mind from the beginning, McIlhany told ChannelPro in an interview.
“They can actually connect those [AI tools] into our MCP server and start having a conversation with Pax8 about the products and subscriptions that they have. Any MSP of any size can use it to their advantage.”
Customized Learning for the AI Era
To help partners turn AI readiness into real-world action, Pax8 rolled out the new Data & AI Guided Growth curriculum. This is an AI-first extension of Pax8’s broader enablement program.
The journey begins with a readiness assessment that assigns MSPs to a profile (Strategy, Technical, Sales, or Operations). Using that assessment, the program curates role-based, short pieces of educational content. From there, partners progress through five phases:
- Understand Best Practices: Learn proven AI adoption strategies
- Build It Your Way: Tailor the path to your unique service model
- Get Buy-in: Align your team and earn client trust
- Implementation: Deploy, integrate, and transform workflows
- Inspect What You Expect: Measure outcomes and refine strategy
“We created assessments up front that evaluate partners because the vector is so wide. They’re not going to all implement the same AI business model,” Donovan told ChannelPro. “This assessment actually lets us create consumable bites of about five to six courses at a time and roll them out based on the topic that they’re interested in. This is a great starting place and then we’re going to continue to invest in developing content.”
To date, Pax8 has more than 100 courses in its growth curriculum, which Donovan said likely will expand to 200-300 by year’s end.
Looking Ahead: AI Agent Marketplace
Rather than imagining the future, Pax8 wants to bring the agentic AI opportunity to MSPs now. The Pax8 Agent Marketplace, expected to launch in 2026, will offer a platform where MSPs can create and deploy their own AI agents.
“Agents will just be built through Pax8. You’ll buy, orchestrate, and scale agents through Pax8,” McIlhany told ChannelPro. As a precursor, McIlhany encouraged MSPs to begin building comfort with MCP and AI workflows now. That way, they’ll be ready to scale with agentic services by the time the marketplace launches.
Voyagers Can Earn and Redeem as They Scale
Meanwhile, the company wants to double down on incentivizing its partners to grow. So, Pax8 is expanding its Voyager Alliance program with Voyager Alliance Rewards, letting MSPs earn points based on growth and license additions, redeemable for discounts and exclusive offers.
“This is our moment for transformation,” Craig Donovan tells the audience at Pax8 Beyond.
Set to roll out in fall 2025, Voyager Alliance Rewards will provide partners with monthly points tied to their tier level — and bonus points tied to Pax8 Marketplace activity. Points earned can be redeemed via a new dashboard and catalog spanning professional services, Pax8 Academy offerings, exclusive vendor deals, and more.
“We wanted to craft a way where partners could start to use these points to invest in the business in the ways that made the most sense to them,” Donovan told ChannelPro. “If they want to expand some line card and add some more vendors, we can do that. If they want to up their academy game, we can support them there as well.”
These features build on recent investments in partner experience programs — like the Pax8 Voice Network and Advisory Council, both of which were unveiled at the previous day’s keynote. This is in an effort to deepen engagement across the community.
From Transformation to Opportunity
Both Donovan and McIlhany emphasized that AI isn’t just another toolset. Rather, it’s a complete reimagining of what it means to be a technology service provider.
“MSPs are going to evolve into these managers of hybrid workforces — both people and agentic employees,” Donovan told ChannelPro.
“We’re with you,” McIlhany added. “We’re going to lock arms with you and walk this path with you.”
The takeaway? The future of the MSP is beyond technical. It’s strategic, consultative, and AI-augmented. And with Pax8’s new toolkit, that future is already taking shape.
Check Out More of ChannelPro’s Pax8 Beyond 2025 Coverage
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