{"id":140252,"date":"2026-08-14T17:39:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/140252\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T17:39:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:39:19","slug":"n-able-looks-to-ai-agents-to-help-msps-automate-more-of-their-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/140252\/","title":{"rendered":"N-able Looks To AI Agents to Help MSPs Automate More Of Their Operations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018We\u2019ve not yet, as an industry, moved to AI as a service. So how do you move from AI as a project-based form of monetization to AI as a recurring revenue source? There are opportunities to move from no longer just selling IT,\u2019 says Laura Dubois, group vice president, product management at N-able.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

N-able is positioning AI agents as a way for MSPs to move past using AI for isolated tasks and toward more autonomous IT operations.<\/p>\n

The Burlington, Mass-based vendor\u2019s<\/a> vision centers around helping MSPs automate work while maintaining the human oversight and controls needed for security, compliance and business-critical processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the very early stages of leveraging AI for autonomous operations,\u201d said Laura Dubois, group vice president, product management at N-able, who spoke at CRN parent company The Channel Company\u2019s XChange August 2026 event in National Harbor, Md.<\/p>\n

For MSPs, AI creates opportunities on both sides of the business, driving internal efficiency while opening the door to new customer-facing services, she added.<\/p>\n

[Related: N-able Names New CRO To Drive \u2018Business Resilience\u2019 Strategy: Exclusive<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Today, many MSPs are using AI for customer education, policy development and one-off projects involving tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, she said. The bigger opportunity is turning those capabilities into recurring services that help MSPs move from project-based AI work to ongoing revenue streams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve not yet, as an industry, moved to AI as a service,\u201d she said. \u201cSo how do you move from AI as a project-based form of monetization to AI as a recurring revenue source? There are opportunities to move from no longer just selling IT. You can become a line-of-business provider, selling into HR, legal, marketing or other functions and offering value that goes beyond traditional IT services.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, N-able is developing technology to help MSPs orchestrate AI agents across different systems. Its approach centers on an \u201cautonomous control plane\u201d that combines AI agents with procedures, integrations and governance.<\/p>\n

The company is also working on AI agents that can handle specific MSP workflows, Dubois said, including root-cause analysis, alert suppression, ticket triage and quarterly business review preparation. For example, an AI agent could analyze information across multiple systems and produce a QBR summary in minutes.<\/p>\n

And N-able is incorporating AI detection into its products, giving MSPs visibility into how customers are using AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I say we\u2019re going to standardize on Microsoft Copilot, and someone at my customer is using ChatGPT and putting sensitive data into a public instance of ChatGPT, well, that\u2019s a problem for you and it\u2019s a problem for the customer,\u201d she said. \u201cUnderstanding what\u2019s visible and what\u2019s in use, whether that\u2019s in policy or outside of expected patterns, is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The broader goal, she said, is to give MSPs a path from AI experimentation toward controlled automation, and eventually new recurring services built around AI-driven business outcomes.<\/p>\n

Chelsea Skinner said the growing focus on agentic AI could create new opportunities for MSPs, particularly as vendors build marketplaces where MSPs can discover and deploy agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully that encourages more MSPs to start building out their agents and moving forward in agentic AI,\u201d Skinner, president and CEO of Lewisville, Texas-based Oversee My IT, told CRN.<\/p>\n

For Skinner, her team has already experimented internally, developing agents for operational tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been building agents internally for internal use for things like dispatch, ticket triage, email review and an executive-assistant style agent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019ve not yet, as an industry, moved to AI as a service. So how do you move from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,7537,66720,66759],"class_list":["post-140252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-xchange","tag-xchange-august-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}