Pioneering MSP Standards: Charles Weaver of MSP Alliance

Chris Massey sits down with Charles Weaver, co-founder and CEO of MSP Alliance—the world's largest industry association and certification body for cloud computing and managed service professionals. They delve into the early days of the managed services industry, discussing its evolution from the 90s dot-com era to today. Learn about the challenges and triumphs of pioneering MSP executives, the creation of industry standards, and the ongoing need for compliance and regulation. 

Charles also reflects on the profound community impact, the essential role of MSPs in today’s cybersecurity landscape, and the continuous need for innovation. 

A must-listen for both owners and aspiring leaders of Managed Service Providers looking to understand the past, present, and future of the industry.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

One, two, three, four. It was hot off of the 90s, the dot-com era, application service providers were all the rage and MSPs were the next evolution, and that was the genesis of MSP. Alliance is a handful of MSP executives who said nobody gets us. We need to band together, and the rest is history. We need to band together and the rest is history. We are laser focused on rapidly accelerating the path for everyday MSPs to be able to achieve compliance and then, once they get their house in order, they will be able to start doing some really fantastic cutting edge work that nobody else is qualified to do.

Speaker 3: 1:05

Welcome to Now that's it stories of MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Charles Weaver, founder and CEO of MSP Alliance, the world's largest industry association and certification body for cloud computing and managed service professionals. Charlesing and Managed Service Professionals. Charles, welcome to the Now that's it. Podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Thank you, good to be here, chris.

Speaker 2: 1:29

It is quite an honor to have you here, charles. You've been an advocate for the MSB industry for over 25 years, and everything your team's done it's just truly amazing to help MSB's growth. So thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1: 1:43

My pleasure and slight correction. Co-founder. Co-founder that's right, celia is equally to blame for everything that has happened for the last 24 years, excellent.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Well, she is an amazing woman as well, and we'll talk a little bit about her. So you were part of the early days of the MSP industry, weren't you?

Speaker 1: 1:59

That's a fair statement. Yeah, it's a fair statement. What?

Speaker 2: 2:02

was the industry, like when you and Celia started MSP Alliance.

Speaker 1: 2:07

The best way to quickly summarize is it was hot off of the 90s, the dot-com era. Application service providers were all the rage and MSPs were the next evolution. Despite what the dot-com bust did, it didn't shake the core group of MSPs, of which there were San Francisco, New York, Boston, a few in London, all where the money centers were. These were all enterprise-focused MSPs, but they had the same problems that all the MSPs here at Empower and all over the world have, which is they were disconnected from each other. They didn't know it. Well, they knew it, but they didn't know how to get to the next level. They didn't know who else was out there dealing with things. They were in the weeds. There were no forerunners that they could turn to and say, oh well, this issue has been already figured out. They had to figure it out and that was the genesis of MSP. Alliance is a handful of MSP executives who said nobody gets us, we need to band together and the rest is history. That's great.

Speaker 2: 3:13

So MSP Alliance today is quite a bit more evolved than MSP in the early days. Talk about some of the things that you and Celia were doing to help MSPs when you guys started MSP Alliance.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I mean, one great story is in 2002, several analysts were basically saying hey, charles, when are you going to give this MSP thing up? We'd only been in it in two years or so. They said this is all going away, no one's going to care about managed services, it's all the next thing, and business process outsourcing or some crazy term and that kind of steeled our resolve. It definitely fortified it. The MSPs were more of a. We had developed early relationships and we saw what they were doing. To answer your question, we were just getting together in small groups talking about issues and from there it evolved into maybe we should have standards, maybe we should have our own conference, maybe we should have our own code of ethics, bill of rights for customers. And it just evolved very quickly but organically. The early days were fun. We were making the rules up as we went along. I love it.

Speaker 2: 4:21

MSP Alliance started out with five founding members, I think you told me, and you're well over 30,000 today, and I know you're a very humble guy. But what is it about MSP Alliance that just continues to stay in the hearts and minds of MSPs today?

Speaker 1: 4:37

It belongs to the members. I talked to one of your partners just the other day at breakfast and he came up to me and I recognized the gentleman and his company. He said I'm an MSP because of the MSP Alliance. I said get out of here. And he said no, I was a struggling break-fix company. I was losing deals and I couldn't figure out how to do it successfully and I came to the MSP Alliance and I went to a couple of conferences and I listened to other MSPs and I figured out a path and three years later I'm an MSP and he said thank you. And I said I was kind of awestruck. But that's the level of interaction that the members have, which is it's their community and they get a lot out of it and they value it.

Speaker 2: 5:24

Very good. So when we were preparing for this interview, I know you reasonably well. We've done a couple podcasts together. I hear your name all over the channel, so I knew you were kind of a big deal when we started our MSP and the fact that we didn't know what we were doing. There wasn't really a book. You wrote the book. You wrote this book, in fact, the Art of Managed Services back in 2007.

Speaker 1: 5:54

What was the inspiration for writing that book? I got tired of giving the same answer over and over again.

Speaker 1: 5:57

So I said I might as well just write a book and get it down on paper. Honestly, at that point paper honestly, I mean at that point we were, you know, since 2004 to the time I wrote that one man that's been through a couple of the libraries. It looks like, yeah, there's no library code on there, so I think someone owned that and used that to Well, hopefully they got some good use out of it. But at that middle 2000s we were really in the standards and documentation phase of the profession. Right, we were trying to figure out how to mass communicate the obvious lessons that we were all learning.

Speaker 1: 6:35

But you talk to 10, 20, 30 MSPs and you hear the same thing. You now know it can be reasonably assumed that's a standard or that's a trend or that's a phenomenon and you have to share it because it does no good to stay in the original 20 or 30 people who talked about it. There are thousands others who need to hear it. And so that was the drive to document a little bit of our history. And that was a little arrogant on my part to think that seven years in we had history. But we did. We were probably over a 10-year-old profession at that time. You know MSPs as early as the early 90s. So it was just a chance to say to the existing emerging MSPs there's a path you can follow and you're not alone, and I thought that that was a good message.

Speaker 2: 7:22

What I was the most impressed with, as I was reading through this over the last couple of days on my flight out, was, even though this was written 20 some years ago, there are still some really foundational elements that still hold true. I mean, I think, like some of the prognostications and some of the things you had in there, we definitely went that direction, went in a different direction, but it's just so amazing that you sort of had this foresight back then to say this is what we need to be doing and that's what MSPs are doing today.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Yeah, I probably missed some things in there. I'll have to reread it.

Speaker 2: 7:56

I figured you haven't read it in a while.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Yeah well, I had to read it for the second edition.

Speaker 2: 8:00

Yeah, that's right, which is true, you realize. Just last year, right, you launched a second edition. It is much more on point. You added the art of managed services and cloud computing, which we cannot forget, because that's a it's one of the things that makes the MSP so important.

Speaker 1: 8:25

That's right, and that's what I love about this industry is that there's always change going on and it keeps it fresh and exciting.

Speaker 2: 8:31

That's great. So those early days of MSP were tough sledding for some businesses, right? I mean this idea of moving from a time and material project based sale to fixed fee billing. You're going to pay this much a month, whether you need it or not. Do you remember any stories from the early days that happened that might have given you or others in the industry some sort of an intriguing or optimism about you know what this idea of paying for services like I would. Nowadays it's an Amazon subscription or a Hulu subscription or whatever. You remember any in the earlier days like? Was there any stories that were just like ah, I get it, you know?

Speaker 1: 9:13

Yeah, two stories One general story, one specific story. The general story was in the early days I followed around the great Mike Cullen and everywhere that we had new members, and Mike and his team were out there spreading the message about this thing called managed services. And so were we Different right, different purposes, different organizations, but we were all going in the same direction and so we were all talking to the same people and trying to convince them not only why you should be buying products like enable to equip yourself for this journey, but also how do you put this together and what are the underlying non-technical elements, like the business, the sales, the marketing, the legal, the risk, even such as it was back then. So that informed a lot of my early thinking is how are these tools being acquired by MSPs, break-fix companies, and how are they being utilized to transition into the managed services profession?

Speaker 1: 10:15

The specific story is one CEO of an MSP said he had a client who came in and gave him an obscenely large check for a break-fix project. Him an obscenely large check for a break-fix project and the CEO of this wannabe MSP he became an MSP at the end of that day. He said no, I'm not going to do this. We're a managed service provider and this is the path we're going. And he said that was a very hard lesson for him to learn because it was turning down money which no entrepreneur wants to do. Turning down money which no entrepreneur wants to do, but that was a testament to the resolve of that MSP. Also, the Enable partner that I met at breakfast, who said I was losing deals and I knew I had to get out and become this thing called managed service provider. Those stories are all over the world and they're amazing stories.

Speaker 2: 11:04

That's what makes it. It's not easy, but that's why you write books like that too to be able to share some of those stories.

Speaker 1: 11:10

I probably wish I'd been more sentimental in my tone and writing that. But yeah, there's probably a volume four of just stories of MSPs who had tough times but came through it.

Speaker 2: 11:20

Yeah, let's talk a minute about Mike. I had the privilege of getting to know Mike, just like so many others, early in my MSP career. He had made an impact in me. The reason I am here today is solely because of a phone call he made to me and said I heard you're available, you've worked in the MSP space, come work here. And I said what do you want me to do? He goes, it doesn't matter, you have tons of MSP experience and we need people like you here to enable. Talk to me a little bit, charles, about what it was like to work alongside Mike, and just Mike, as a human being.

Speaker 1: 11:57

So as I was here in Frisco, texas, at Empower 2024, I was reminded of the very first Enable partner conference in Quebec I don't know, 2002, 2003, in a casino, and Mike and Gavin and Mark and Derek and all the usual suspects were all there spreading the message. And that was one of the very first MSP partner conferences, if I can recall. I mean it may not have been the first, but it was probably among the very first MSP partner conferences, if I can recall. I mean it may not have been the first, but it was probably among the first. And I remember Mike's role in that room and the relationships, even as early as then, was formidable.

Speaker 1: 12:38

He was making the rounds and he was an ambassador of the profession. He was a sales guy, but that's not how I looked at him because I was doing different types of work, but following him meaning going into MSP organizations who had already been equipped with enabled tools by Mike, and I realized how important he was because he had to convince people not to buy technology but why managed services was the future. And that was the same message that we were about at MSP Alliance. There was just an affinity, a closeness to his goal at Enable and our goal at MSP Alliance and they were very much aligned and there was never an unkind word. I've never heard anyone speak ill of him. He was just a very positive guy. He never got involved in any of the underside of the channel politics with any industry. I suppose.

Speaker 1: 13:32

But he was just a good guy. He was always. Everyone spoke very highly of him and it was sad to hear about his passing. But this industry would not be where it is without Mike Cullen.

Speaker 2: 13:45

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Charles. He definitely meant so much to so many people and I saw David Weeks and some of his really close friends get really choked up because this is the first Empower without Mike and it's just, it was a special Empower. We had such an amazing week but, man, we miss our friend.

Speaker 1: 14:03

This industry, this conference, these people here, it would be very different without Mike having been in the world. And that's not a that's not a overstatement at all.

Speaker 2: 14:13

That's great. So let's talk a little bit about the evolution of the managed services industry. So it's evolved over the years, absolutely Right, and and part and do part and like, in part because of information technology has become so much more important to businesses. Now, right, I think early days IT was I don't really care and so much of businesses rely on IT. How different is the modern MSP than the early MSPs?

Speaker 1: 14:41

I'd be lying if I said that I saw the role that the MSP plays today. Back then, I knew that what first attracted me to managed services was the economic model and the efficiency of it, and it was just pure genius in my opinion. So I got the economics of it, I got the, and this was all told to me by MSP CEOs who said this is why we're doing it. It's the recurring revenue, yes, but you can predict the budget, you can predict the outcome of the IT performance and all great stuff.

Speaker 1: 15:10

To say back then that MSPs in 2024 would be beyond IT, that they would actually be sitting in the CISO or CIO seat for many of their customers, influencing and contributing to risk, corporate risk, cyber risk, cyber protection, data privacy issues I don't think I saw that coming, but the MSPs have earned it. It doesn't mean that we're in the clear. We have to protect that position and it's under attack, but the MSPs have earned that position of trust and that is the next evolution that we're all witnessing. Right, you're developing tools and technologies that will allow the partners to be able to do what they need to do to fulfill that role, but they're at the crossroads of everything. How can you not be proud to be in a profession where an MSP holds that position of influence, trust and power?

Speaker 2: 16:08

That's great Charles. Something else that I've seen really take off and explode over the last couple of years is compliance and regulation and accreditation. I read that Celia had a big part of creating the MSP Alliance certification program and I'm just wondering why is she so passionate and how have you both developed the offering to help MSPs with their regulatory compliance?

Speaker 1: 16:33

All right, I'll tell a Celia story right now.

Speaker 1: 16:35

So, 2004, at one of the last mega conferences in Vegas, feeling rather ragged, not unlike this fine morning a group of MSPs were hanging around having coffee, just chatting, before they were all going back to their own hometowns, and someone said we need a standard. And I think I said that's a dumb idea. Why would you want to do that? There's ISO, there's ITSM, there's lots of stuff out there. Why do you need your own standard? And then the conversation progressed and they said no, no, we really need our own standard, not for individuals, but for the organization. And I said okay, do you know what you're asking for?

Speaker 1: 17:19

And by this time it was like a handful of MSPs had joined in and said yeah, we need this. And Celia said fine, you, you, you and you are on the committee. That was the basis. And she went out and recruited about 18 individuals from different sized MSPs all over the world large enterprise, mid-market, smb so everyone was represented and it took about 12 months to create what is today the CyberVerify standard. I mean, she really rallied and got the group together and without them it wouldn't have happened. In many ways, she is to blame and she is the cause of the certification movement as we see it today.

Speaker 2: 17:59

Well, it's an amazing certification.

Speaker 2: 18:01

It's an amazing piece of assistance that you give you, and I have done a couple of webinars on compliance and I've actually had a couple of webinars on compliance and I've actually had a couple of business transformation programs around compliance and security, and MSPs are starting to realize, okay, we've got to follow a certification, but we don't know which one to go to, and what you guys have put together is just, it's a great. This is where you go to get a like, this is where you start, and then you can go a couple of different directions, but it's the foundation for what you can be building your service practice around. And so I've heard nothing but praise and I've actually had the opportunity, I think when I was over in Australia, they were talking about compliance and I said have you guys you know anything about the MSB Alliance team? And a couple of people no, no, no. And I said you got to check these guys out. They've got this huge community and they have this program, and so I'm hoping you get some new Australians in the MSB Alliance community.

Speaker 1: 18:59

I know we're certifying a handful over there and look, it's a global effort, it's advancing at different levels throughout the world, to be sure, but our mantra and our belief, going back to the very beginning, was a no licensure approach to managed services.

Speaker 1: 19:17

We felt, and still feel today, the entrepreneurial spirit of this thing called managed services must be left intact, and licensure by any government official just my personal beliefs will kill that. But that doesn't mean that we have no responsibility for standards, for trust, transparency and to demonstrate that we are all doing things the way we should. So that's why I was sold back in 2004 with this idea that, look, if we're not going to be licensed, we had better do something to show that we are worth the trust, that we are trustworthy. And I think that that's still a large part of what we are pushing out there.

Speaker 2: 19:59

Put your sales hat on for a minute. Msps that are maybe still trying to figure out. Why is this important. Why should I care about compliance with respect to my service offerings? Why do I care.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Why should I care? The short answer is if you're an MSP, you lower risk or you should be lowering risk. If you're raising risk, you're probably not an MSP and maybe you should think about not calling yourself an MSP. There is an obligation at the base level. Even if you're not in a regulated market, you have no regulated customers, which is a that I don't agree with anymore right. Every state in the United States has a data breach notification rule that would have some level of compliance and some level of responsibility of the MSP to make sure their clients are not breached and don't have to go out and do that walk of shame and say I had a bad thing happen.

Speaker 1: 20:54

The trust that the MSP has, the position of influence they occupy today in our global economy, demands transparency. It demands proof of their trustworthiness. Every other profession out there that has longevity has gone through this, and that's how I approached it, even back in 2000. I said, if this is going to last, we have to take on the many trappings of other professions in order to be viewed as a profession rather than just a ragtag group of technical people who got into business. So that is my general selling point for why you should get started, even if you're not in a regulated market. It is incumbent upon you, as an MSP, to show that you are trustworthy.

Speaker 2: 21:42

Sure, that's good. All right, it's a chance for you to be a little opinionated here. I know you are a very positive, optimistic person, but I'm curious over your years of listening to MSPs and hearing about how they've grown their business. What do you think one of the biggest mistakes that MSPs are possibly making today would be?

Speaker 1: 22:03

Well, that's a really good question. That's deep. I know One of the mistakes they're making is that they don't have the risk and the responsibility their customers do. Big mistake. That's a misread right To think that, oh, it's my customer, the regulated customer, that is impacted. It's not me customer, the regulated customer that is impacted. It's not me, the position of trust, you know?

Speaker 1: 22:30

Whatever metaphor you want to call it, the position at the top of the mountain that the MSPs have is under attack, and it's under attack by a global community of bad actors who want to hack, steal, extort, ransom and other things nation states, private sector cartels, gangs, whatever. And the only industry standing in the way of that, other than nation state governments and intel agencies, are these little things called managed service providers, and God love them. Without them, this would be a very different conversation we're having. The MSPs have to own that position. It is a good position to be in, but they cannot say, oh, we're not in the supply chain. They very much are, and so that's why we're pushing awareness, policies, procedures, best practices, compliance, trust. The trust and the transparency are integral together, because it's the MSP saying I can accept this responsibility and do this work that you need done because no one else is going to do it for you. Your internal IT is not going to do it. That would be the biggest risk if the MSPs ignore that position of power and responsibility.

Speaker 2: 23:36

We talked a lot about Mike being an influence in the channel, but I'd love again. You're a walking MSP historian. You've seen a lot of changes and influencers and people in the channel and I just loved to know from you maybe some other folks outside of Mike obviously we know Mike was one of the early guys that just sort of laid that foundation, but maybe who are, who are some of the other folks that you've come across over the years that have just been major influencers to the MSP space?

Speaker 1: 24:09

So I grew up with and seeing the Enable team in the early days right. So in addition to Mike right, mark Scott.

Speaker 1: 24:16

So I saw Mark just the week and Marco right and the old crowd Mark and Gavin and Mike Collin were like the founding core of Enable, but also the founding core of a leg of this three-legged stool, if you want to call it that, in managed services that without them we wouldn't be where we are. I think other people who have done very good work people like Rob Scott from Scott Scott right here in Texas. Very early on we were pushing out the need for things like you probably should have a contract if you're an MSP. You probably shouldn't be doing things on word of mouth, verbal agreements and things like that, and so that was part of the legal modernization of MSPs back in the day to start acting like a grown-up organization. But there are so many, a lot of MSPs who are, so there's too many to count If I say one. I'm going to leave like a thousand out.

Speaker 1: 25:12

There are so many different MSPs all around the world who have all done critical work in their own field and I'm talking hyper-specific fields of maybe database management or server management in a certain field of maybe banking, gaming, hospitality or medical I mean weird siloed, hyper-specific vertical markets and there's two or three MSPs who are doing work in that one sector and nobody knows who they are. They're pioneers, they're trailblazers. But, generically speaking, the MSPs who, early on in the early to mid 2000s, who saw that this path of managed services was where it was at and followed the Mike Collins and said, yes, this is not just a sales pitch, this is a business model, this is a profession, they're the heroes, they're the legends, in my opinion.

Speaker 2: 26:06

What are some of the things that you are most excited about, about the future of the MSP industry?

Speaker 1: 26:14

The large, massive community of organizations who have no concept of how at risk they are and they're waiting to meet their MSP to help them get protected. That is exciting. I mean as much progress as we've taken as a profession we are barely scratching the surface in terms of the market opportunity but also the defensive work of upgrading large, medium and small organizations alike. Right, no one's excused from that obligation to guard themselves and protect the data that they traffic in. So I think the opportunity is massive. We need more MSPs right, I've always said this. There's more demand for managed services than there are qualified MSPs. Right, I've always said this there's more demand for managed services than there are qualified MSPs to do the work. So we need more MSPs, we need better MSPs, and that's probably not going to change for decades.

Speaker 2: 27:13

Something that I'm the most excited about and I've been able to live it over the last couple of years is you started this right. Msp Alliance started this idea of a community getting MSPs together, talking about what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and there's tons of different organizations sort of across the MSB space. We started the business transformation programs about a year and a half ago and we've run a number of these where we've just brought 30 MSPs into a room together and we've had a topic and we'd allow them to talk to each other and they come in going. I've got some secret sauce I'm not going to share, and once they start to get to know each other, it's like it's not that secret. I definitely want to share it, and we brought that same idea here to Empower this week and I saw just amazing sharing and it's again. It's something that I give you quite a bit of the credit for, because you started this idea of getting similar sized businesses, types of businesses, together, sharing with each other, making each other better.

Speaker 1: 28:11

It was nice to be at a conference and not have to host it, so it was really relaxing for me to be a witness.

Speaker 1: 28:17

This reminded me of MSP World, the culture, the sharing. This had to happen. This could never have been just MSP Alliance and in our conference it had to get out there. It did. The peer groups got out there. They flourished. What you're doing here in your community is amazing. We have so many members who are Enable partners all over the world. You guys are doing a great job and this is the exact thing that our industry needs is this type of professional communication. When this stops, when the communication stops, bad things are going to happen. So this can't stop.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Excellent, thank you for saying that. So what's next for you?

Speaker 1: 28:54

We are laser focused on rapidly accelerating the path for everyday MSPs to be able to achieve compliance and then, once they get their house in order, then they are going to be really equipped to be able to deliver on compliance-related issues and services downstream to their customers. That is the next major frontier. So we first have to get our troops equipped, trained, ready to go, and then they will be able to start doing some really fantastic, cutting-edge work that nobody else is qualified to do. Reach that transparency level, that confidence that they're doing things internally the way they should, and then they can really go out there and start to. The compliance realm is going to change radically over the next five years, I'm pretty sure. But what I'm absolutely positive about is the MSPs are going to have a role, whether they like it or not. They may ignore that responsibility, they may say no, I don't want to do compliance, but they're going to be offered the chance.

Speaker 2: 29:58

And I hope that they accept it and say yes. With over 30,000 members worldwide, I'm betting that a lot of MSPs know about MSP Alliance. But if they don't, why should they look you guys up?

Speaker 1: 30:10

We care about this industry. We have been here for a very long time and we have a lot invested in the MSP movement. We don't want anything bad to happen. If you want and need resources and you need a community where you want to do things like achieve compliance, you want to achieve a level of, want you to become certified at some point, and it's a great community. It's a great community of MSPs, thought leaders, companies like Enable, who are doing fantastic work, and there's no reason not to join.

Speaker 2: 30:54

Exactly so. You've built an incredible career, Charles, over the last 24 years, but I have to ask you when did you know that's?

Speaker 1: 31:06

it? When did I know that? I think I knew when the analysts said this thing is dead, this thing is managed services is over in 2002. And I said you're wrong. You're so wrong you don't even know how wrong you are. This thing called managed services. It may be young, but this thing is going to go places. And maybe it was just stubborn resolve, I don't know, but it was at that moment. I said this is not going to be a flash in the pan.

Speaker 2: 31:40

That's amazing. I love it, man. Thank you so much, charles, for being with me today. You are an incredibly valuable resource to this community and for those of you. If anybody doesn't have a chance to get to know you, I encourage you to check out MSB Alliance and look you up, say hi at one of the conferences that you're at. Great human being, I love the fact that we've got to know each other better over the next couple of years. I'm looking forward to coming on your podcast at some point in time and talking about my background, and I wish you and the MSP Alliance community the absolute best of luck in the future.

Speaker 2: 32:12

Thank you so much Appreciate it.