Powering the Future of MSPs: What We’re Seeing in the Market, Opportunities and the Challenges

Craig Gordon, VP Sales, Infinigate Cloud & Gordon Lyon, Sales Director at Infinigate UKI

At Infinigate, our role is simple: we exist to help MSPs build profitable, scalable, and future-ready cloud businesses.

We’ve got over 25 years’ experience in cloud and cybersecurity distribution, so we’ve seen the MSP model evolve from reactive IT support into a strategic, business-critical function and so our support model has evolved with it. Today, we’re celebrating MSPs as being Infinigate’s fastest growing customer group, playing a pivotal role in end user business continuity, security, and productivity.

The State of the MSP Market

The MSP market is at a real inflection point right now. Demand for managed services is accelerating, the complexity of delivering secure outcomes keeps rising, and AI is reshaping the landscape on both sides of the equation, creating new threats while opening up new opportunities.

The MSPs that come out on top will be the ones who embrace automation and AI in practical ways, sharpen their specialisms to clearly differentiate in a crowded market, and build the right partnerships across the wider ecosystem to extend capability without adding overhead. That’s exactly where Infinigate Cloud comes in: helping MSPs scale faster, reduce complexity, and confidently capture the next wave of growth. Generative AI is already one of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in the last decade and MSPs are right at the centre of it.

We’re seeing:

• A percentage of organisations are already using MSPs to deliver GenAI initiatives
• Enterprises are turning to MSPs due to lack of in-house AI skills and need for speed to market

This year, we’ve really noticed some key opportunities that MSPs are leveraging. With compliance continually evolving, especially within the UK, secure data and governance has become a massive growing opportunity. Along with governance, we’re seeing that AI is being utilised more than ever to bring new opportunities to the channel, including AI-lead service desk and automation and cybersecurity and threat detection. Generative AI isn’t just a technology shift but it’s a services opportunity, allowing MSPs to move further up the value chain.

Resellers driving to becoming MSPs

We’ve seen more resellers driving to become powerhouse MSPs. This trend reflects the channel’s shift from transactional sales to recurring services. As margins on traditional product sales tighten, partners are increasingly focusing on managed services, cybersecurity, and cloud solutions to build predictable revenue and stronger customer relationships.

For the channel, this means:

• Greater emphasis on recurring revenue and customer outcomes.
• MSPs becoming more influential trusted advisers.
• Distributors providing more enablement, automation, and service support.
• Vendors adapting programmes to service-led business models.

Overall, it’s driving the channel towards higher-value, longer-term customer engagements rather than one-off product sales.

The Challenges MSPs Face

Despite the strong growth we’re seeing across the market, MSPs are under real pressure. Cybersecurity is becoming more complex as threats evolve and attackers increasingly use AI to move faster and stay harder to detect. At the same time, talent and skills shortages continue to limit how quickly MSPs can scale, while intensified competition and ongoing margin pressure make it tougher to grow profitably. Add to that the day-to-day reality of tool sprawl and operational inefficiency, and it’s easy to see how profitability can get squeezed even as demand rises. Put simply, demand is growing faster than capability, and that’s exactly why distributors play such a critical role in helping MSPs close the gap.

What We’ve Learned from Years Working with MSPs

Over the years, one thing has remained consistent:

The most successful MSPs are those that evolve from technology providers into trusted business partners.

What’s changed:

• MSPs are no longer judged on uptime, they’re judged on business impact
• Security and compliance are now board-level conversations
• AI is accelerating both opportunity and risk

How Infinigate supports MPSs

Infinigate helps MSPs spark faster, more profitable growth by combining partner enablement, best-in-breed technologies, and always-on technical support so you can scale managed services without adding unnecessary operational overhead.

1. Enablement & Growth Acceleration

• Dedicated account management and partner enablement to identify high-margin opportunities
• Go-to-market support, vendor alignment, and sales engagement
• Training and certification to build in-house capability

2. Access to Best-in-Breed Technology

• Curated ecosystem of leading cloud, security, and AI solutions
• Marketplace (CORE) enabling fast provisioning, billing, and integration
• Support for building bundled, repeatable managed services

This allows MSPs to expand portfolios quickly without the overhead of managing multiple vendor relationships.

3. Technical & Operational Support

• 24/7 expert technical support
• Pre- and post-sales solution design
• White-labelled services to fill capability gaps

This is critical as many MSPs are capacity constrained and facing talent shortages.