Pax8 spent the past two years making the case that managed intelligence will be the next evolution of the MSP industry. Now, the company is giving up control over what that transformation should look like.
At ChannelCon 2026, the Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) announced the Managed Intelligence Alliance, with Pax8 as its charter member. The goal is to develop industrywide standards around delivering AI services responsibly and at scale.
The decision to put the alliance under GTIA rather than Pax8 is deliberate. Pax8 executives said the opportunity is huge, and the need for common standards extends across the channel ecosystem.
“We’re not neutral. We have competitors; we have MSPs that do not and will never use us,” Rob Rae, Pax8 corporate vice president of community and ecosystems, said during a ChannelCon press briefing. “We needed to get this concept, this idea [out] because it’s bigger than Pax8. It needs to be an industry thing. It needs to be in a very neutral place that everybody wants to participate in.”
That distinction could prove important as MSPs work out how AI changes their businesses, their services and their relationships with customers.
From concept to industry initiative
Pax8 began talking publicly about managed intelligence roughly two years ago. At the time, it was a way to frame the role MSPs could play in the AI era. The idea goes beyond adopting AI tools internally. It envisions service providers helping customers manage AI, data, governance and ultimately business outcomes.
But the scale of the opportunity convinced the company that managed intelligence could not remain a Pax8-led effort, said Pax8 Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder Ryan Walsh. Pax8 has estimated that the market has roughly 90,000 MSPs that could serve hundreds of millions of small businesses. Many of those businesses are already experimenting with AI but struggling to turn that experimentation into an operating model.
Ryan Walsh on stage at Pax8 Beyond 26
“We think this can serve the overall industry,” Walsh told ChannelPro. “No one player, vendor or marketplace like we are can establish that trust layer.”
GTIA offered something Pax8 could not: a vendor-neutral organization designed to represent companies across the channel, he added. “What we believe the alliance needs is a vendor-neutral position — a voice of the entire industry.”
The channel gets to write the rules
The Managed Intelligence Alliance is not simply another AI education program.
As it stands today, there are no broadly accepted standards for managed intelligence. There is no common framework or shared definition of what good AI service delivery looks like. So, GTIA wants its members to help create those standards rather than wait for another organization, vendor or regulator to do it.
The alliance’s stated mission is to make managed intelligence “repeatable, governable and trustworthy at scale.” GTIA members will have a seat at the table as standards are developed. The association is seeking additional organizations from across the channel to participate. It’s also seeking a director to lead day-to-day operations on its behalf, which would turn the Alliance Charter into a running program, according to an online job post.
The alliance is part of a broader push by GTIA toward industry self-governance. At ChannelCon, the association also detailed its work with Texas A&M’s Global Cyber Research Institute on a self-regulatory organization for IT services. That initiative is intended to establish operational, professional and technical standards for IT service providers.
The push for self-governance resonated with MSPs like Ann Westerheim, founder and president of Ekaru. This gives the industry has an opportunity to help establish its own rules before others do it for them.
Ann Westerheim
“We need to step up as an industry to help establish what the rules are or the rules are going to be thrown upon us,” she told ChannelPro. “Now, we have the time to get out in front of it and say, ‘These are logical rules.’ It’s going to help all of us. It just means all of us have to do a little work right now.”
The underlying philosophy is the same. Standards affecting the channel should be created by the channel, not simply imposed on it. For managed intelligence, that could eventually mean a common language, best practices and accreditation, Walsh said.
“In the meantime, we can utilize the alliance to start sharing best practices about what we all do,” he explained. “What’s the common language? What’s the standard? And let’s establish accreditation, because if you’re like us, you’re also talking to partners that have got it right. They have incorporated the services.”
Why the timing matters
Another reason Pax8 and GTIA are moving now is because timing is everything. AI adoption is moving much faster than previous technology transitions.
Walsh said awareness is no longer the problem. Adoption and execution are happening quickly, though not often with enough guardrails. Small businesses are turning to their technology partners for help, he said. Without common terminology and standards, however, MSPs risk delivering a fragmented experience.
“If that outreach isn’t met with a common language or a standard that everybody lives by, then it feels disjointed and we don’t optimize,” Walsh said. “It needs to be a voice of the community.”
That urgency echoed throughout ChannelCon. In the opening keynote, GTIA CEO Dan Wensley said research showed that 97% of IT service providers already use AI internally, but only 20% have meaningful governance around it. Additionally, 25% have turned AI into a formal revenue-generating strategy.
For MSPs, the gap creates both opportunity and risk. They have spent years building trusted-advisor relationships with SMB customers. AI could deepen those relationships if MSPs can guide customers through governance, security and implementation. But those customers also have other options.
At the media briefing, Wensley tied the Managed Intelligence Alliance directly to protecting that position.
Dan Wensley (far left) and Rob Rae (far right) insist that MSPs need to set their own industry standards.
“We have to make sure that the trusted advisor status of the channel is maintained and, frankly, elevated, thanks to AI. They’re going to need us to come together and work together,” Wensley said. “The alliance is going to be a part of that. We don’t have the solutions yet, but the members will develop them.”
An opportunity to shape what comes next
That last point may be the most significant part of the Managed Intelligence Alliance. GTIA is not presenting members with a finished standard and asking them to adopt it. The standard itself is intended to emerge from the membership.
Walsh said GTIA plans to take open comments as the alliance develops its work, giving members the ability to influence what governance, standards and potentially accreditation ultimately look like.
“What’s being developed with this alliance is going to be free to all members, but they are going to take open comments so that the community is going to shape it together,” Walsh said.
For an industry accustomed to adapting to standards created elsewhere, that is a different proposition. Pax8 is effectively arguing that managed intelligence is too consequential to become one company’s framework. GTIA is betting that the channel can instead create one collectively.
Meanwhile, Walsh’s advice to MSPs is not to wait for the finished product.
“Keep moving and keep participating, whether it’s having a conversation or giving comments on the standards that are forming. Be a part of it. That makes the community more powerful and our voice stronger.”
Anjali Fluker is managing editor of The ChannelPro Network, where she covers news, trends, and best practices for the MSP community. She specializes in telling the stories that matter to IT providers serving the SMB market. When she’s not reporting on the latest in managed services, she’s connecting with channel pros at industry events across the country.
Images: DALL-E, Anjali Fluker/ChannelPro
