20 01732 759725 automation, because people started scaling and wanted endpoint efficiency. The next generation is our AI-first platform. As we have done in the past, we have completely rebuilt our core Cyber Protection platform from scratch to facilitate an AI-first approach. We’re not trying to bolt on something with a new service and later put AI on top of it. We’re trying to tackle it from the beginning. It took a little bit longer to get there, but we believe that having an AI-first foundation is the best way to make sure you have an AI platform that can scale with whatever you would like to do in the future. TR: Having created an AI-first platform, you have now launched Cyber Studio and Cyber Intelligence. What is their value to your partners? JJ: Cyber Studio is a no-code AI platform on top of our core platform that creates the automation needed for whatever you would like AI to do. Let’s say you would like to develop an AI agent to optimise a recurring workload or recurring task. You need to learn how to create an agent, then figure out which code you would like to use or which kind of program. You need to make sure it’s implemented in your daily operations. You need to make sure it’s compliant, secure, backed up – all those key things that are going to be incredibly important to ensure you don’t create an agent that goes rogue. Cyber Studio does that in a very simple way. It helps you to create the agent that will then be able to serve as a productivity enhancement in your company. More than that, as an MSP you can say ‘Dear customer, you have this particular process we can help you with; we can develop an agent for you very quickly based on your specific needs, and we will operate that for you as an MSP’. The MSP doesn’t have to think about how to integrate that with its core platform, how to provision it, how to build it, how to make it compliant and based on roles and departments. In Cyber Studio, you define the opportunity you see to improve your or your customer’s business and then make a very simple agent, completely integrated, to help with that. It also has a catalogue of predefined agents that MSPs can use both to market their own agents and to find agents developed by third parties. In the future, we won’t be speaking of ten or one hundred agents, but one thousand agents. Alt‑Tech in Canada, one of the most advanced AI MSPs that we have in our portfolio, has already created about how they are going to solve the fundamental problem that there will be thousands of agents that will all need to be orchestrated. That’s the biggest challenge we have: how are we going to help MSPs manage, orchestrate and control not tens, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of agents and workloads and different types of services. Right now, while not exactly in panic mode, everybody is desperate to get started. The risk is that they forget the foundational things that Acronis has always tried to do a little bit differently. In providing services like backup, MDR, XDR, ransomware protection and so on, we always come back to the fact that the key element that differentiates us is that everything is connected. We have one platform and, regardless of what you offer on the front end, all the orchestration, the automation, the security, the compliance is at the platform level. We’re very excited about the advantage this gives us at a time when things are moving so fast. TR: How else is Acronis adapting its offering to help MSP customers benefit from AI? JJ: Over the last two decades, we have been through multiple transformational shifts. We started as a backup company in 2003. Then we entered the cloud space. Then we went into the cyber protection space, because front-end protection to prevent something from happening was better than trying to recover after the fact. Then we added management and down the line. AI is coming with such velocity, how are you going to control it? Who’s going to keep you anchored to the ground when the AI tornado comes? Larger enterprises will have the capacity, the knowledge, the funding, the resources to take this on, but how are the small and medium-sized businesses and smaller enterprises served by our 20,000 partners going to cope? They won’t know how to do AI in the most effective way, because that’s not their core business. They’re not focused on IT. They’re focused on different things and will come to MSPs for help with AI. We see this as a huge opportunity. TR: SMEs are not the only ones challenged by AI. Many MSPs themselves don’t know how to maximise the opportunity. JJ: Today, everybody looks at AI and says how can I use it to optimise my operational efficiency? How can I reduce the number of engineers doing support from 10 to 7, or how can I get more from those 10 engineers and not hire another five? That’s very operationally focused. I think everybody’s missing this key point – the opportunity doesn’t lie in what you can do for yourself, but in what you can do for your customers. They need the most help. MSPs need to become trusted advisors on how to use AI and operate in an AI‑first world. That’s the incredible growth opportunity that people are still missing. In our industry everybody talks about what they are going to offer, what they are going to implement, what agent they are going to build. Nobody is talking Q&A ...continued Acronis receiving the TR Award for the Use of AI at the Technology Reseller Awards 2026
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