Earlier this week, I was in Ft. Lauderdale for N-able’s Empower event—its largest ever, completely sold out with over 650 MSPs in attendance.
That alone tells you something.
When that many MSPs show up, you’re not just hearing vendor messaging—you’re seeing where the industry is actually heading. The conversations, the sessions, the hallway discussions—it all points in the same direction.
And this year, the message was clear:
The storm isn’t coming. It’s already here.
Joey Pinz Podcast – Live from Empower
While I was there, I also brought the Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations podcast on-site, recording five strong conversations with N-able leadership.
Each conversation gave a different lens into what’s happening right now in the MSP space:
- Nadia Karatsoreos (Director of Events & Community)
Why Community Wins in the MSP World 🤝 - John Pagliuca (President & CEO)
Building Resilient Businesses Like a Championship Team ⚙️ - Vikram Ramesh (CMO)
From Engineer to Storyteller: Winning in the AI Era 🚀 - Stefanie Hammond (Head Nerd)
Turning Trust Into Revenue for MSP Growth 🚀 - Frank Colletti (CRO)
Scaling MSP Success in a Changing Tech Landscape 🚀
Across all five conversations, a consistent theme emerged:
👉 The MSP role is expanding
👉 AI is accelerating everything
👉 And resilience is becoming the core value MSPs must deliver
From Mike Adler’s “before the storm” keynote to John Pagliuca’s focus on AI-driven business resilience, the takeaway was clear:
MSPs are no longer just managing IT
MSPs are now responsible for helping clients stay operational through disruption
1. The Cyber Storm Is Already Here—And It’s Intensifying
The numbers shared on stage were direct and hard to ignore:
- 56% of U.S. small businesses experienced a cyberattack last year
- 1 in 6 breaches now involve AI
- Average breach costs are approaching $4 million+
This is no longer edge-case risk. This is mainstream.
The framing has shifted from:
- “How do we prevent attacks?”
To:
- “How do we operate when attacks happen?”
Why it matters for MSPs
Many MSPs are still selling prevention.
But your clients are starting to realize something:
Prevention is not guaranteed
Downtime is what actually hurts
How MSPs should act
- Shift messaging from prevention → resilience
- Lead with business risk and impact
- Help clients understand:
- financial exposure
- operational disruption
- recovery expectations
The MSPs who acknowledge reality—and prepare for it—will earn more trust.
2. Resilience Is Not a Product—It’s an Operating Model
One of the strongest points from the keynote:
Resilience is not a feature. It’s an integrated experience.
It spans:
- Before the attack (visibility, hardening)
- During the attack (detection, response)
- After the attack (recovery, continuity)
Why it matters for MSPs
Most MSP stacks are still fragmented.
But your clients don’t care about tools.
They care about:
- staying operational
- minimizing downtime
- recovering quickly
How MSPs should act
- Package services into a resilience framework
- Bundle tools into outcomes
- Sell:
- uptime
- response time
- recovery speed
This is where MSPs move from vendor → strategic partner.
3. AI Is Compressing Time—and Changing the Rules
AI was not presented as optional.
It was presented as necessary.
Key reality:
- Detection, decision, and response windows are shrinking
- What used to take hours now takes minutes
- Human-only workflows are becoming the bottleneck
Why it matters for MSPs
The traditional model:
- Alert
- Ticket
- Technician
- Action
That model is too slow for:
- automated attacks
- identity-based breaches
- AI-driven threats
How MSPs should act
- Implement AI-assisted tools across your stack
- Automate:
- patching
- vulnerability remediation
- threat response
- Redefine SLAs:
- minutes matter now, not hours
AI doesn’t replace the MSP.
But MSPs who use AI will outperform those who don’t.
4. Visibility Is the Foundation of Security
A simple but critical point reinforced:
You cannot protect what you cannot see.
And yet, many environments still lack:
- full endpoint visibility
- identity awareness
- vulnerability clarity
Why it matters for MSPs
Most breaches are not advanced.
They happen because:
- something wasn’t tracked
- something wasn’t patched
- something wasn’t monitored
How MSPs should act
- Standardize full visibility across all clients
- Implement:
- UEM (Unified Endpoint Management)
- identity monitoring
- vulnerability tracking
- Make visibility a baseline, not an upsell
Visibility reduces unknowns.
Unknowns create risk.
5. MSPs Are Now the Front Line of Business Resilience
This is the biggest shift.
MSPs are no longer:
- just IT support
- just cybersecurity providers
They are:
The front line of resilience for SMBs
Why it matters for MSPs
Your clients don’t understand:
- AI threats
- identity attacks
- security architecture
But they do understand one thing:
“Can my business keep running?”
How MSPs should act
- Lead with outcomes, not tools
- Position services around:
- continuity
- recovery
- stability
- Become the translator between technology and business risk
The MSPs that do this well become:
- trusted
- embedded
- difficult to replace
What This Means for MSPs
Here’s the bottom line from Empower:
The storm is permanent.
Cyber threats aren’t slowing down.
AI is accelerating everything—on both sides.
The opportunity for MSPs is not to stop the storm.
It’s to help clients:
- withstand it
- respond to it
- recover from it quickly
MSPs that:
- adopt AI
- unify their stack
- shift to resilience messaging
…will become essential.
Those that stay:
- reactive
- tool-focused
- slow to evolve
…will struggle to keep pace.
Final Thought
Discipline is doing the work before it becomes urgent.
That’s what this event was really about.
Not reacting to the storm…
But building a business that’s ready for it.
