If you’ve ever felt buried in vendors, tools, and disconnected systems, ConnectWise wants to help. Following a major rollout at IT Nation Secure this week, the company showed it is leaning hard into Asio. ConnectWise’s unified platform strategy is built to reduce overhead, automate routine work, and improve profit margins for MSPs.
ConnectWise introduced PSA powered by the Asio platform, a streamlined ConnectWise Pro bundle, an upgraded SIEM solution, and a new cybersecurity integration with Microsoft via the Pax8 Marketplace. Together, these moves reinforce the company’s platform-first strategy. It also expands ConnectWise‘s growing ecosystem of AI-powered tools and partnerships.
ChannelPro caught up with a trio of ConnectWise executives at the conference to dig into how its larger platform strategy will benefit service providers:
- Jeff Bishop, executive vice president and general manager of product management
- David Raissipour, chief product and technology officer
- Angus Robertson, chief marketing officer
They unpacked how these updates are designed to help MSPs simplify operations, automate more, and increase margins. They also shared why they see this as a turning point for the managed services model.
ConnectWise Asio: From Patchwork to Platform
Building out the ConnectWise Asio platform has been in the works for some time. ConnectWise saw the limits of MSPs having to stitch together random solutions years ago. So, it made a deliberate choice to rebuild, Bishop said. “Trying to maintain 20 or 30 [disparate tools] and keep them integrated, and then to keep pace with the technology … it was becoming impossible,” he shared.
Now, with core applications like PSA, RMM, and SIEM built natively on Asio, ConnectWise is giving MSPs a single environment with fewer manual steps and deeper automation. “If everything is done in one platform, and you don’t have to spend 20 minutes jumping around between tools, that’s where you get from 13% profit to 15% to 17% and beyond,” Bishop said.
Fast, Iterative Delivery — and Owning Mistakes
Raissipour acknowledged that the company’s past announcements sometimes overpromised on timelines. This time, he emphasized, it’s ready for MSPs. “We’re not just talking about it. It’s here,” he said. “What we’re showing is not an artist’s rendition. Partners can try it today.”
He also noted a cultural shift at ConnectWise to build and iterate more transparently. “We’re going to make mistakes. Own them. Fix them. Learn from them,” he said. “Our release cadence now includes monthly improvements. We’re not waiting for big unveilings.”
David Raissipour emphasized that ConnectWise’s solutions will be tweaked and improved as needed.
Billing That Mirrors MSP Realities
One of the biggest updates, Bishop added, is a new per-user or per-endpoint billing model through the ConnectWise Pro package. “If our growth is based on exactly how many people you support, your growth is our growth,” he said. “That’s a true partnership.”
The Pro package bundles PSA, RMM, ARPA (for hyperautomation), documentation, and more into a single SKU. This aligns vendor pricing with how MSPs typically bill clients. It also streamlines reconciliation and supports clearer margin tracking. That resolves two persistent headaches for MSPs managing dozens of vendors.
Microsoft Integration and Open Ecosystem
A major highlight was ConnectWise’s expanded partnership with Microsoft, including integration with Defender and Intune.Plus, it has plans for leveraging Microsoft’s AI platform and SIEM capabilities in the future. Both Bishop and Raissipour agreed that Microsoft is the clear leader when it comes to robust security capabilities.
“Microsoft has great security products and we want to help our partners take advantage of them,” Raissipour explained. “If Microsoft already has great tech, we’d rather partner and bring it to market than try to reinvent it ourselves.”
Added Bishop: “Microsoft is really good at e-mail security and identity… Gartner Magic Quadrant, top quartile, and I think in every [category]. It makes sense to bring them in and utilize our channel MSPs to go down into the SMB market.”
“Your growth is our growth,” Jeff Bishop says to MSPs.
Additionally, Robertson noted that the Asio platform is intentionally open to integrations. “If an MSP wants to mix and match, that’s great. We’re not trying to lock anyone in. We’re trying to give them the tools and the optionality to build their stack their way.”
Scaling with Fewer People, Thanks to AI
It’s no secret that AI is a major theme across ConnectWise products. That makes a difference when you realize that most MSPs spend 80% of their budget on people, not tools, Robertson said. “You can only negotiate vendor pricing down so much. But if you can help one tech handle 200 or 300 tickets a month instead of 100, that’s how you scale.”
Raissipour pointed to ConnectWise’s generative AI engine Sidekick and agentic AI capabilities. These systems are evolving to offload tier-one tasks, open tickets, and execute workflows, he emphasized. “What automation framework sits behind the agent? That’s where we’re going next. It’s not just a chatbot. It’s a full-task executor.”
Focus on Profitability and Growth
For Bishop, the ultimate goal is to help MSPs grow sustainably. “Most of the MSP space runs in the low teens [percentage] in profitability, which means you lose one customer and you’re in trouble,” he noted. “We want to help partners get into the 20s or 30s — where they can weather a storm and scale.”
Don’t just adopt tools, he advised. Invest in operational discipline. “You can have the greatest solutions in the world, but if you’re not creating accountability or running your business well, you’re going to struggle.”
Check Out More of ChannelPro’s IT Nation Secure Coverage
➡️ ConnectWise Launches PSA on Asio, Pro Bundle, and Partner-powered Tools for MSPs
