Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been maybe the biggest news story on earth the past year or so. The emergence of ChatGPT kicked off a proverbial arms race between the big tech companies — all of a sudden, you had large language model AIs all over the place. Microsoft gobbled up OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Google dropped Bard, etc. etc. It’s everywhere right now (we have consortiums out here saying it’s going to maybe end humanity… it’s nothing if not a polarizing topic). But one question we get asked by our clients is, “how can this actually help my business?”

Now, the answer to that question varies by company, industry, etc. But, one thing we can say with certainty is that AI is changing how we do business (and subsequently, how our clients operate considering how much of their tech stack is managed by us).

So, here’s how AI is impacting the Managed Service Provider space… and in turn, our clients’ operations:

1. Predictive Maintenance:

• What it is: AI-driven predictive maintenance tools can analyze data from network devices, servers, and other infrastructure components to predict when they might fail.
• Benefits: This allows us to carry out maintenance activities before an actual failure occurs, preventing unexpected downtimes and ensuring uninterrupted business operations for their clients.

2. Enhanced Security:

• What it is: AI-driven security solutions can identify patterns in vast datasets to detect potential threats, including those that traditional security tools might overlook.
• Benefits: This proactive approach means that we can detect and neutralize threats more rapidly, offering our clients better protection against sophisticated cyber-attacks, such as zero-day exploits.

3. Optimized Network Performance:

• What it is: AI can be used to monitor network performance in real-time, identifying bottlenecks or inefficiencies.
• Benefits: With these insights, we can optimize network configurations, balance loads, and ensure peak performance, leading to improved efficiency and user experience.

4. Semi-Automated Incident Response:

• What it is: AI can automatically categorize, prioritize, and even resolve specific incidents based on learned patterns with minimal oversight from our technicians.
• Benefits: Faster incident resolution means reduced downtime or productivity loss. Additionally, if you have an incident or outage that can’t be tackled with AI tools, we have more technician bandwidth to devote to your more unique issue.

5. Capacity Planning and Resource Optimization:

• What it is: By analyzing trends, usage patterns, and growth rates, AI can provide insights into future infrastructure needs.
• Benefits: We can make informed decisions about scaling resources, ensuring clients neither overpay for unused capacity nor suffer from a lack of necessary resources.

6. Advanced Data Analytics:

• What it is: AI can analyze vast amounts of data to extract business insights, track KPIs, or even predict market trends.
• Benefits: Clients can leverage these insights for strategic decision-making, gaining an edge over competitors.

7. Self-Healing Systems:

• What it is: Systems that use AI to detect issues and automatically apply fixes without human intervention.
• Benefits: Dramatically reduces downtime and ensures systems are always running at optimal levels.

Yes, AI is here to stay. It can and will upend industries… but not in the ways a lot of people are doom-and-gloom’ing about right now. In our field, we’re leveraging AI tools to help our clients enjoy: more uninterrupted up time, better cyber defense, and improved incidence response. We think this is just the tip of the iceberg in how our clients can benefit from these new technologies, which is why we stay abreast of all the newest tech coming online so we can pass on these improvements to all our clients, large and small.

If this sounds like something that might benefit your business, drop us a line — we’d love to chat solutions to whatever issues are ailing you and your business!