Don’t Be Waiting for the Vendors – MSP Enable Thyself!
When IBM launched its PC distributors and resellers were their GTM strategy. When IBM introduced WatsonX, their early AI, they didn’t see things the same way. Neither does anyone else… yet.
Please Note: Once again this is a particularly long post, so subscribers will find the emailed version of this issue cut off at the end. Please go to the web version for the complete version.
If You Find AgenticMSP Valuable: Please recommend AgenticMSP to your friends and colleagues. Also, please offer up your comments, observations, questions, or any other responses in the chat below. Let’s get a hearty conversation going!Their messaging has just not been the best. Most of the people who are working at the frontier model-makers are engineers and developers. Only Anthropic has launched a channel partner program and none of them has distinguished themselves with awesome advertising.
Don’t Be Waiting for the Vendors
MSP Enable Thyself!
Let’s start with the good news!
Claude Partner Network
Just launched in March 2026 with an initial $100 million investment to support consulting firms and integrators deploying Claude AI in enterprise environments, Anthropic’s partner program is called the Claude Partner Network,
Key features of the Claude Partner Network:
Early partners include:
Major consultancies: Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, Slalom
AI specialists: Tribe AI, Turing
Accenture alone is training 30,000 professionals on Claude as part of their partnership.
Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s Head of Global Business Development and Partnerships, stated: “Anthropic is the most committed AI company in the world to the partner ecosystem—and we’re putting $100 million behind that this year to prove it”.
Google has tried to launch a channel program, but it has done little more than sputter. OpenAI can’t pronounce “channel partner.”
Not Like Last Time
When IBM first introduced the IBM PC in August 1981 it immediately announced it would be selling through “aggregators” who would later become known as distributors, and that these aggregators would be reselling the products to resellers who would resell them to customers. They called this process “the reseller channel.”
From the start, IBM created a channel to sell through.
IBM unveiled Watson in 2004, but it was introduced to the public in February 2011 when it competed on Jeopardy! and won against champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Far earlier than you may have thought. But no talk of channel partners being involved with Watson.
OpenAI released GPT-1 in June 2018. Google introduced BERT in October 2018, the precursor of Gemini which it became in December 2023. Anthropic gave us Claude 1 in March 2023. Meta introduced LLaMA in February 2023. None of them were clamoring for the attention of the IT channel.
Most still not even acknowledging the existence of the MSP channel.
MSPs Need Enablement
When the primary purpose of your business was to sell products, enablement from the vendors of those products was critical. You needed someone to inform you about the competitive advantages of those products, the strategic positioning of those products. You benefitted from the experience of their salespeople who could tell you which approaches were more effective. From the start, technology products were meant to be conveyed through a channel from manufacturer to customer, so the reseller in-between was considered an extension of the manufacturer’s sales engine.
Not so much with AI makers.
If you’re looking for enablement for your MSP, you can’t yet look to OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI Grok, Cursor, Lovable, or all the rest. Perhaps soon Anthropic will introduce enablement as part of their brand new partner program.
Traditional Vendors
You also can’t turn to the large manufacturers you’ve turned to traditionally. Microsoft and Apple, for example, are engaged in a race to the bottom to capture last place in the AI provider race. Cisco has barely whispered AI.
Misinformation from Marketers
For some reason, many marketers in the channel have decided they are the experts you can turn to. For the most part, with few exceptions, they are not. I originally had the idea for AgenticMSP at a conference where many “channel marketers” were getting up on the stage and pontificating about AI. I was horrified, especially when I looked back at the audience and saw them all paying enraptured attention to the shallow misinformation that was being fed to them.
You’d never take networking advice from a GTM “expert.” Why would you give credence to what they have to say about AI, which is much more comples?
The Frontier is Still in the Distance
While I anticipate that Anthropic will indeed lead the charge to provide meaningful support to channel partners, even if they aren’t there yet. The others will follow Anthropic’s lead, but that will take even longer.
Put simply, you cannot wait for some vendor to offer you the enablement you need to become a successful seller of AI solutions.
Right Now, It’s All on You
To be clear, it’s all on you to find, evaluate, and decide which of the thousands of resources are the right ones to provide you with what you need to know to build your AI business. Since it’s all still relatively new there won’t be much data for you to examine to help you identify preferred resources. That will get better over time.
For now, you need to do what successful tech sellers have done forever. Read. Watch. Listen. Find the better sources of written information about how to build your AI practice. Read them voraciously. Absorb as much good information from the sources you find most reliable.
This is exactly what I did when the IBM PC created a brand new burgeoning market back in 1981 and I was a young saleguy who had just joined the “reseller channel.” Pored over everything I could find. Made clippings. Kept them in file folders. Pulled the right ones out and reviewed them when I was going to sell a particular solution.
It’s much easier today. No more clippings. Just websites. And I’ve gone beyond search in my quest for knowledge. I asked Claude to build me an engine that would find all the best resources and present them so I could study them.
This is what I’m sharing with you here in AgenticMSP.
Share my Homework
Each issue contains what I felt were the most relevant and important AI stories for MSPs today. My 35 years running MSPs and precursors of MSP companies validates my ability to evaluate the most worthwhile reads. If you agree, please subscribe. If not, please tell me how you’re finding material worth reading.
Thanks!
