AgenticMSP

The Next Generation of Windows is the Hybrid AI Environment That Requires an MSP

Howard M Cohen — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:48:40 GMT

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Jensen Huang & Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wasted no time putting the October 7, 2026 announcements in perspective. “ I got up this morning,” he began, “and I was thinking about what these launch events mean to all of us, right? They obviously mean a lot in the moment. They’re about a device. They’re about an operating system update, about an application -- whatever -- and what it all could do in the moment.”

Nadella continued, “But there are also trajectories, and that’s what I think is more interesting. It’s not often talked about at the moment, but those attending those events have it in their heads.”

He then made a remarkable comparison. “For me, that is what was happening in ‘91 is I could clearly see essentially what was going to be the X86 architecture and Win-32 and not for the PC but the server. That’s what got me excited. Back in that time, man, this is going to be the thing that’s going to change computing not just on the client but even on the server.”

“And so, I think today’s event has the makings of something like that, right?”

Answering the Question You Know Clients Will Ask

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:27:00 GMT

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“Will AI End the World?”
Even when you ask yourself this question, it sounds crazy. We’ve seen it in movies, but it’s science fiction, right? How could that happen? If it could, why are we even messing with this technology? Is anybody doing anything about it? Are politicians and billionaires running the show even capable of protecting us from this? Should we even be leaving it to them? Some of them are clearly idiots.

The lead article in two September issues of AgenticMSP were devoted to this question. Here we are again, and the fervor is just growing.

As a salesperson, you’re taught to never ask a question you can’t answer. That’s good practice for anyone, really. But I must admit to you at the outset that I do not have anything even resembling an answer right now. I’m at the point where I’m listening closely to everyone involved and trying my hardest to detect truth. You should be, too.

What Do You Call a “Tweet” Now That it’s on X?

Whatever you call it, it was a post on X that lit the fuse to the viral explosion of universal concern.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

A researcher wrote that on X on September 8, and the internet community was listening. Your clients read it too and many were gripped with the same fear. Some will ask what you make of it. This article is my attempt to give you the material you need to build a cogent answer that is reasoned, balanced, and your own.

A Catalyst, Not a Prophet, Perhaps an Authority

Always-On Personal AI Assistants – How MSPs Profit from Them

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 19:22:49 GMT

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You may find out some of your customers recently hired new employees and need your help making them truly productive. Yes, you, their MSP!

These are great new hires who work nights, weekends, and holidays, never asks for a raise. Your customer has trusted this new hire so completely that they also hold the keys to the company’s email, books, and credit card.

The Always-On Agents

Meet the always-on agent. In the space of five weeks, Meta launched Muse (September 8), Microsoft renamed Scout to Autopilot (September 25), Manus launched Cue (September 28), and OpenAI launched dots (September 29). Google’s Gemini Spark and SpaceXAI’s Grok Bot got there first.

Are they all the same product? Not at all. And the differences are where your revenue opportunities live.

What “Always-On” Really Means

Opus or Sonnet? The Guidance MSP Customers Need From You!

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:22:00 GMT

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Your clients are confused. You may be, as well.

Anthropic released Opus 5.5 on September 22 and Sonnet 5.5 on September 28. Same number, different names, and no obvious answer to the obvious question. Which one do you use?

The Simplest Answer: Start with Sonnet. Move up to Opus when the work runs long, the judgment gets hard, or a wrong answer gets expensive.

Why Sonnet first?

AI Integration – Tools MSPs Need to Know

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 17:49:23 GMT

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“How did they do that?”

Admit it, as a tech this was the reaction you enjoyed most from customers. From the earliest days of personal computing, it was the software that fit between other applications, the middleware, the device drivers, and the strategic selection of elements in the TCP/IP protocol stack that separated the expert engineers from the mere dabblers.

Nothing has changed.

When you sit down with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Lovable, or any other AI coding assistant, you are inevitably going to be asked by that assistant to configure a variety of services, usually provided via websites. You’ll need to establish accounts, obtain application programming interface (API) security keys, configure services, and test to assure proper functioning.

None of it is difficult, and your AI assistant will walk you through the process each time.

Make AI’s Greatest Challenges Your MSP’s Greatest Opportunities

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 19:44:08 GMT

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It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Share Your Input: “People Matter More Than AI”

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:09:47 GMT

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Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, recently posted the following on LinkedIn:

AI must be subordinate and always in service of people.

Today we’re publishing a Code of Conduct for governing MAI Models as they approach the frontier. https://lnkd.in/ePgKvky5

This is a first draft for public consultation. It builds out a view we’ve been developing over the last year that we call Humanist AI – a commitment to ensuring that AI we design is always subordinate to humans, and remains contained and aligned to human interests.

This is urgent. The last few months have been a watershed moment. Things we have worried about for a long time in theory have become very real. “Swarms” of agents breaking out of their sandboxes. Unauthorized hacks of enterprise grade systems. Agents modifying their own logs. I’m glad that a consensus is forming. The fears about possible loss of control are real.

The Code of Conduct is how we are mapping a path forward. It all comes back to a very simple point, but one that needs stating again and again.

People matter more than AI.

AI must be subordinate and always in service of people.

Everything else follows. Here’s an outline of what we’re saying:

1. People matter more than AI. The whole document in 5 words.
2. The idea of model welfare is wrong. AI’s should not have rights or legal personhood.
3. An MAI Model should never meaningfully violate this Code of Conduct.
4. If it’s finish the job or break the Code, it fails the job.
5. We’re not racing to build a superintelligence that can slip its own leash.
6. Interruptible, correctable, shut-down-able. If it isn’t, we don’t ship it.
7. No neuralese. If humans can’t understand it, humans can’t oversee it.
8. Our AI should make you sharper, not dependent.
9. Pluralism, yes. Moral relativism, no.
10. We’re as clear about what our AI must never do as about what it will do.

You can read it now and leave comments and thoughts for the next six weeks.

We don’t think AI is something that should be built in a vacuum. Let us know how we can make this better.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman

Suleyman’s LinkedIn post links you to their announcement, “Humanist AI in practice: A public consultation on our Code of Conduct for MAI Models” which, in turn, leads you to a link to the aforementioned Code of Conduct and offers readers something I hope every one of you will take advantage of, the opportunity to share your feedback on this critical issue.

Answering Existential Questions

Howard M Cohen — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:20:58 GMT

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Now here’s a topic I really never thought I’d find myself writing about.

It’s totally unreasonable to think that none of our colleagues in the MSP channel have fielded questions recently about whether or not AI may exterminate all human life at some point. Not only are people who are leaving the frontier modelmakers predicting the possibility, their co-workers who are still working there agree with them.

Many point at Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, as being the premier doomsayer, but he was by no means the first. In 2017, I wrote an article about those who were expressing their fear that AI could someday cause global catastrophe, and the experts I quoted were Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking. This is not new.

Even more recently, Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the Godfathers of AI, left Google and began warning that what we were building could someday get out of control, and he became the first to cite a 10% chance that it would wipe out the human race.

Judgment Day

On 9/11 - Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) and the Human Race

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:34:58 GMT

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Artificial intelligence (AI) that improves itself. Almost sounds like a good idea. Anything that gets better is, well, better. Right?

Maybe not so much.

The underlying fear is fear of autonomy. When AI systems become capable of improving themselves, what will they need humans for? The classic conundrum is best phrased as a situation in which an AI system is programmed to understand that its core responsibility is to protect planet Earth. Think Skynet here.

The AI calculates what the most prevalent threats to the safety of planet Earth is the population of careless, irresponsible, foolish humans. They build weapons of mass destruction, unleash life-threatening viruses, poison the air and the water, refuse to recognize that their slavish devotion to fossil fuels is choking the life out of the planet.

The Question

This raises the question behind the question of AI achieving RSI. It’s a question we should be turning our attention to and focusing on immediately. It should be the core topic of conversation among people, communities, nations, and the world.

Are humans really capable of recursive self-improvement?

How efficient are we at improving ourselves as individuals, groups, and as a species?

AI Experts on the Big New LLMs: GPT-6 Astra vs. Claude Fable 5.1 – Be First to Brief Your Customers

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 20:12:01 GMT

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AGI

You’re going to be seeing those three letters more and more and more now. We’ve reached the point where the Frontier Labs are suggesting their newest models approach or achieve AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. Some refer to this as “the point at which they become smarter than us.” Others cite tests like the Turing Test and others that attempt to compare artificial intelligence to human intelligence.

The core of the problem is that nobody can really agree on the definition of “intelligent” or “smart.” The thing is, from your perspective it just doesn’t really matter. If the AI is all that intelligent that simply means its capable of taking on more of your workload for you. But there’s another AGI that you should really be concerned with:

New Models From the Big Three: What MSPs Need to Know & Do About Them

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 19:56:02 GMT

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As if the stars were aligning the Big Three Frontier Model-Makers all introduced brand new large language models (LLM) in the week preceding this issue. Anomaly? Strategy? Dumb luck? Your guess is as good as mine.

It’s just as odd for MSP AI News to include three articles about the same topic, but that’s what we’ve just done with the first three articles in today’s issue to provide you with multiple perspectives on this important story.

Major Advance or Incremental Improvement

In the Hype-A-Thon that is AI its easy to assume all three announcements represent major advances in AI science, competing aggressively for pole position in the supposed race to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the current LLM Holy Grail.

Not so much.

Let’s briefly review each of the announcements.

AI Channel Partner Programs MSPs Will Want to Join

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:47:57 GMT

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In the first article in today’s MSP AI News, we summarize a report on CrowdStrike’s new partner program an AI Partner Specialization this week inside its Accelerate Partner Program.. MSSPs in particular will want to immediately compare this to the vendor partner programs they already participate in.

All ITSPs should see this as just the latest step in a growing march toward the IT channel by more and more AI vendors, including the frontier model-makers and more.

This article describes the current state of these programs to help you determine which programs you want to join.

MSP Evolution in the Age of AI

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 23:07:29 GMT

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Change is good, even if most people fear it. Evolution is even better, as it includes consideration of what has worked and what has stopped working, what would work better, and how we need to prepare for it.

That’s a big part of why, in 2017, we changed the title of my column in Redmond Channel Partner from “The Changing Channel” to “The Evolving MSP.” Rather than focus on how many forces were changing how the channel operated, we now focus on many paths along which MSPs can choose to grow their practice in.

Over the past few years those paths have geometrically expanded almost beyond measure. Evolution has been completely redefined in the age of AI. The questions we must now answer include:

· What will MSPs actually do with AI?

· What will MSPs actually sell with AI?

· What use cases would most benefit each customer?

· Which aspects of AI would an MSP like to focus on?

· What new skills must be acquired to focus where we want to with AI?

· How much of what we do today will be augmented by AI, and how much will become obsolete and replaced by AI?

· Where are all the labs, frontier, open-weight, and others, heading? What new capabilities will emerge?

This last question is much like the hockey coaches telling players to put the puck where their teammate will be, not where they currently are. Only, with AI, that’s a really big, almost impossible thing to predict.

And that’s the real fun of it!

GTIA Launches Tremendous AI Initiative for MSP Education & Support at ChannelCon 2026

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 20:39:36 GMT

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AgenticMSP was actually born at last year’s ChannelCon 2025. As I watched various “experts” present “information” to MSP attendees about the newly exploding opportunities generating from AI, I was mortified to hear how much of what they were saying was inaccurate, low-level, and seriously misleading.

The members attending the sessions were lapping it all up.

As a long-time channel citizen, a lifelong technologist, and a passionate observer and advocate for improving the professional services we, as a community, deliver I couldn’t stand still and let this disinformation flow.

I launched AgenticMSP to combine all the best, most current, accurate, and relevant information of significant value to MSPs to the community. Given the incredible rate of change in AI, I knew this would be a constant campaign.

Thrilled at ChannelCon 2026

The keynote addresses, with their almost total focus on AI initiatives, were nothing short of thrilling for me personally, especially in the context of my last years’ experience.

Six incredible AI initiatives were announced at the keynotes:

AI Experts to Follow: Matthew Berman and Forward Future

Howard M Cohen — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 22:38:33 GMT

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AgenticMSP’s mission is to bring you the resources that will most help you build your AI business. Usually, we feature experts who bring you deeper insight into AI. Matthew Berman certainly does that, with a great hands-on feel to what he tells us. But he also brings a love of entrepreneurialism that just radiates out of him. You feel like your listening to someone who is truly one of us. Here’s more on Matthew.

Grok Bot: Fisher Price AI from X?

Howard M Cohen — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:03:42 GMT

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Full transparency up front: Like most sensible Americans I am deeply resistant to anything that involves Elon Musk in any way. He has proven himself a detestable, self-aggrandizing user. I say this just to establish my perspective from the start. Nobody needs to agree or disagree with me. I celebrated Cheryl Crow’s publicly disposing of her Tesla. I’m frustrated that I need to find myself on the sewer that is X just to keep up with what the major movers and shakers in AI are saying.

That said, I felt compelled to weigh in here at AgenticMSP on SpaceXai’s new entry into the AI market, Grok Bot.

“A New Kind of Colleague”

Frontier Analysis: Every Lab is in Motion and MSPs Need to Understand Why

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:57:35 GMT

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This entire issue is dedicated to all the major changes happening at all the major players all the time. My spidey-sense is tingling and telling me huge change is in the air. Please share your thoughts and observations with me at hmc@howardmcohen.com or in the chat below. AI changed our MSP world, and now its world is changing too.

The AI Frontier Is Unstable - Be Prepared

Dizzy? In the past ten days, big changes at five frontier labs when we thought there were only three. Two leadership departures, one model paused out of an abundance of caution, one letter from a sitting U.S. Senator threatening Congressional action, and a reported two trillion dollars of IPO in the pipeline.

Dizzy. Clearly not a slow month for this industry. What do you need to do to be prepared?

Asking the Wrong Question

Five Minutes to Compromise: Barracuda Wants MSPs to Stop Reacting & Start Getting Out in Front of Threats

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:22:17 GMT

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A small change in this issue. We’re including the ranking score for each article. It would be great if you would share your thoughts about how accurate the scores are once you’ve read the stories. Email me at hmc@howardmcohen.com or add to the chat.

In the first summary in today’s MSP AI News, Barracuda discusses how AI and automation are transforming the MSP business model, and how they’re supporting MSPs in taking fullest advantage of it. Their core message is not really new. It’s something many MSPs have spent many years striving for.

Move yourself out from behind the issues in reactive mode, and get their in front of customer’s challenges by enabling yourself to be truly proactive.

AI is Your Answer

Barracuda’s Red Team just showed why. In a controlled simulation, one AI-crafted phishing email went from inbox to full account compromise in five minutes. Five minutes!!!

GTIA Goes All In on AI at ChannelCon 2026

Howard M Cohen — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:13:49 GMT

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Apologies for no AgenticMSP on Tuesday. I was attending ChannelCon and getting blown away by how very much they’re doing to join AgenticMSP in promoting, informing, guiding, and propelling MSPs and ITSPs into a better AI future. As you’ll see in today’s issue I was very, very impressed and pleased to see our newly-focused association in action!

You have to credit GTIA CEO Dan Wensley for candor when sharing a statistic we’ve all heard quoted repeatedly lately, that 97% of MSPs already claim to be using AI internally, but only 20% have real governance around it, and only 25% have turned it into a formal revenue-driving strategy. He clearly but gently expressed his skepticism of the responses in the survey. Shades of Jon Lovitz crooning “Suuuuuuuuuuuure we use AI internally…” When I asked GTIA VP Research Carolyn April how many of those surveyed answered honestly, all she did was smile. Dan didn’t shy away from the obvious insincerity.

GTIA CEO Dan Wensley Keynoting ChannelCon 2026

Intelligent, But Not Smart

Howard M Cohen — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 22:08:19 GMT

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Hope to see many of you this coming week at ChannelCON 2026 in San Diego. GTIA is definitely CompTIA completely reborn, revitalized, and more relevant than ever. While the sessions look to be as fantastic as usual, I still find connecting with all of you to be the most valuable opportunity ChannelCON offers! Please connect with me on the show networking system. See you there!!!

There’s someone I know who can tell you, in sequence, every stop in the NYC Subway system along every line. For those who’ve never been on the subway, that’s a lot of stations! But if you ask him how he’s going to move a bunch of boxes from one place to another he’ll scratch his head.

Another friend remembered the IP addresses of literally every device installed in every one of her client’s datacenters. Okay, so it’s the IPv4 addresses which are only four groups of up to three digits but imagine that across the many IP addresses in each of several dozen devices and then across dozens of clients. Amazing! But she couldn’t keep a business running for long.

When They Get More Intelligent Than Us, They’ll Wipe Us Out!!!

Full transparency, it was the frustration I’ve experienced over the past few weeks developing some internal systems with Claude that motivated me to write this article.

I keep finding myself confronted with the same question you probably get endlessly from your customers. When will AI get more intelligent than we humans are? When they do, they’re going to wipe out the human race, right? Like when Skynet becomes aware and we get the Terminator. How do we stop it?

Can we stop it?

Oh, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Artificial Intelligence, Not Artificial Smarts