The 10 trends that will redefine IT MSPs in the age of AI 

Is client IT spend only covering basic IT service and overhead, or is it driving business advantage? This is the question that premium IT MSPs will be asking themselves in 2026, as we juggle the promise of bigger IT budgets and the pressure for higher performance. In fact, the latest IT spending report from Gartner predicts global businesses will spend $5.75 trillion on IT in the coming year. Budget spend for the managed IT services sector alone is poised for double digit growth, barreling toward a $642 billion market cap by 2030. 

Clearly, companies are ready to invest in IT, driven by the promise of AI, BI, quantum computing, and a whole lot more. In the age of AI and advanced threats, they’re looking to us to automate drudgery, govern data, and mitigate increasingly sophisticated risks. And they’re looking for us to do it all while providing a higher level of monitoring and transparency, all customized to their unique business KPI’s.  

It’s a tall order, but MSPs are poised to deliver more value with better tools than ever before. Here’s where I think the smart money will be going in the MSP market in the next couple of years and the trends that you can expect.  

Ten trends driving IT MSPs now 

Tech development is proceeding at breakneck speed, and now even the smallest businesses are feeling the shift. We’re at the top of the hype cycle for a lot of these innovations, and an enormous amount of work has to be done to lay the groundwork to make the most of these new innovations.  

The trends that I’m going to bring out here are all in varying stages of development. Some will have tidy, well defined product and service packages available now. Still others will be a year or two from being affordable and scalable for many small and medium-sized businesses. But make no mistake about it—MSPs everywhere will be scrambling to find ways to responsibly execute on the promise of this new tech. 

Trend no. 1: The rise of agentic AI, and the horizon beyond large language models 

2025 was, arguably, the year of the large language model. Companies everywhere were installing Microsoft 365 with Copilot, implementing AI fair use policies, buying into SaaS tools with AI chatbots, and shoring up their data governance. Now, companies on the leading edge will be graduating to agentic AI—autonomous agents capable of not just answering questions but executing tasks, as well.  

Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will feature task specific AI agents, up from just 5% in 2025. Now is the time to start thinking about processes at your company, and how AI agents can remove repetitive or time-intensive tasks from your workload. You’ll need your IT partners to help you evaluate the growing field of plug-and-play AI agent tools, of course. To make these tools successful, your MSP must be able to help you prepare the right processes, human review cycles, and data sets to let these agents run on your systems successfully. 

Trend no. 2:  Chore automation lowering IT workloads 

For years, IT teams have been bogged down by triage—sorting through repetitive, low-level documentation, monitoring, and remediations. Chore automation is making all that a thing of the past. In fact, Forester’s tech trends report predicts 40% to 60% of IT triage and repetitive fixes will be automated in 2026. 

This innovation will save IT service time and help your MSP upgrade to more high-value consulting services. In this era, your MSP should help you with governance and guidance to implement new technologies, rather than just fixing broken ones. 

Trend no. 3: Customer portals building a self-service revolution 

The rise of AI has changed client expectations, creating a market for instant access to up-to-the-minute, customizable data. So, it should be no surprise that in Gartner’s customer experience report for 2025, approximately 95% of businesses report a rising demand for portals. The businesses that use them see a massive 63% reduction in workload and higher customer satisfaction scores, overall. 

In 2026, expect your MSP to offer portals that provide custom visibility into your IT ecosystem. This should include real-time ticket status, granular asset views, live-license usage data, and AI-driven chat for instantaneous transparency. It’s a great opportunity to customize your IT reporting around metrics that matter for your organization and provides a great opportunity for collaboration. 

Trend no. 4: Increased demand for IT compliance inspiring a wave of MSP verticalization 

It’s no longer businesses in highly regulated industries such as health care or banking that have to worry about their IT compliance structures. California has recently instituted cybersecurity transparency requirements for all businesses over $50M valuation. Thanks to the complicated threats coming from AI fakes, compliance standards are going up in every industry. Generalized IT support is struggling to keep up.  

The MSP industry is responding with verticalization. Expect to see fully customized service units dedicated to the specific operational needs of regulated industries. At Integris we have already pivoted to this model for health care, law, manufacturing, and financial services. We expect the broader market to follow suit. 

Trend no. 5:  Advanced data governance services laying the groundwork for AI/BI 

Everyone wants the advanced information gathering capabilities of AI, but few companies have the data hygiene necessary to get good results. IDC estimates that 71% of organizations now run formal governance programs to help combat that issue. As AI adoption forces a rethink of how organizations flow data through their work, MSPs are responding by bundling governance operations—gating data catalogs, enforcing policies, and handling active monitoring—so SMBs can pursue AI innovation safely. 

Trend no. 6: Hybrid cloud architecture lowering costs and increasing flexibility 

The all-in-one public cloud fever has officially broken. Most organizations have realized the limits and costs of putting every bite of their data into the public cloud. Gartner now estimates that 90% of organizations will operate hybrid cloud solutions by 2027. This is an approach we recommend at Integris, as well. Companies can generally do better with the combination of edge computing, private cloud, and secondary private cloud backups. 

A premium MSP now should play the role of an orchestrator, binding sovereign, edge, and public cloud environments into one operating model with unified security and financial operations. This is the only way for SMBs to balance strict compliance requirements with sustainable costs. 

Trend no. 7: Security awareness training preparing employees for mind their data 

Cheap, effective AI has significantly worsened the cybersecurity threat profile for companies in every industry. Hackers can now create highly customized, professional grade phishing campaigns using deep faked video calls and spoof QR codes. 

As a result, companies will be looking for ways to productized human risk management. This means moving beyond a yearly video seminar and implementing continuous phishing simulations, metric tracking for click rates, and behavioral reporting. Security awareness training will become standard for every company and feature advanced lessons to teach employees how to recognize AI-generated threats and highly customized social engineering attempts. 

The good news is—these programs are affordable and highly effective. According to reporting from KnowB4, security awareness training around these modern risks reduces phishing success by up to 86% and cuts security incidents by 50%—60%. 

Trend no. 8:  Security and governance paving the way for quantum readiness 

For years, quantum computing has been discussed as part of a distant, almost science- fiction like future for business. The future, however, will be here far faster than we think. In fact, many data scientists believe that quantum computers will be able to crack all standard encryption techniques as early as 2027 to 2030. So, even if your business has no plans to incorporate quantum computing into your own systems, your security operations will have to deal with the scammers who do. 

The urgency isn’t about a quantum computer breaking your encryption tomorrow. It’s about the “harvest now, decrypt later” attack strategies that many deep pocketed scammers, especially enemy governments, are using. Cybercriminals are currently stealing encrypted data they cannot yet read, storing it, and waiting for quantum computers to mature enough to shatter that encryption. This has deep and frightening implications for banks, healthcare organizations, and any business handling client financial data. 

To help organizations stay ahead of the threat, NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) has finalized its first set of post quantum cryptography (PQC) standards. In 2026, expect your MSP to run audits not just on where your data is but on how it is encrypted. You can’t upgrade what you haven’t documented. The race to secure data for the quantum era is officially on. 

Trend no. 9: Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) upgrading the way we think about access and verification 

In today’s more sophisticated threat landscape, hackers no longer break in. They log in. Attackers steal valid credentials to bypass your firewalls entirely. Because of this, MSPs will encourage their clients to think more holistically about their access and identity verification procedures.  

Companies of all sizes should be upgrading to identity threat detection and response (ITDR) tools. Unlike standard identity management (IAM) that’s simply manages user permissions, ITDR actively hunts for attacks targeting your identity infrastructure. These tools detect credential theft, privilege escalation, and risky lateral movement inside your network. If your admin user suddenly logs in from a country they have never visited, ITDR is the system that automatically locks the account before the damage is done. This advanced, behavior-based security is what every company needs to prevent credential theft. Your MSP will be making that recommendation and looking for ways to add it to your annual budget. 

Trend no. 10: Customized metrics tracking to your organization’s key performance indicators 

For decades, MSP service-level agreements measured success by flat metrics, such as system uptime or minutes-to-IT-ticket response. Yet, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. For instance, a server can be up 100% of the time, but if it’s so slow that your employees can’t work, the service has failed. 

In 2026 forward-thinking MSPs are shifting to experience level agreements (XLAs) and digital employee experience (DEX) scoring. This new kind of index is tracked against key performance indicators that matter to your company, such as time to productivity for new hires, digital frictions scores, and employee sentiment. MSPs will be asking their clients the hard questions about their business so they can create IT offerings and service programs that will truly move the needle for your company. 

The bottom line: Now is the time to ask more from your IT MSP

This is a pivotal era for companies of every type, especially those who are working with the managed service provider for their IT. Break /fix MSP providers will be a thing of the past as we move into an era MSPs predict and prevent. Now is the time to audit your strategy. Are you financing your IT overhead, or are you using it to build a true competitive advantage? 

If you’re looking for a new IT partner, Integris would love to help. Contact us today for a free consultation.