Pia

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James Allen IT Nation EMEA 2025 Export
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Rich: [00:00:00] Rich Freeman at ConnectWise IT Nation emea. I am joined by James Allen. He is the SVP of Sales at Pia. James, good to talk with you. Always good to talk to you, rich. You guys at PIA are about as plugged into the topic of the hour, the month, the year in managed services as anyone, AI and managed services.

That’s what ConnectWise talks about. It’s what everybody is talking about. Yep. And specifically, the really hot topic in AI right now is AG agentic ai. What is your thinking at PIA about the current and future potential of agentic AI for MSPs?

James: It’s a great question, and it’s definitely topical, like you said.

Look, for us, it’s been a part of our DNA since the start. I don’t know if everyone knows out there, but PIA actually stands for predictive intelligent agent. So, agentic AI is, like I said, it’s the topic of the month. For us, it’s been all about that interaction between the brain of the body, so that artificial intelligence, understanding what’s happening and the purpose in our case is what’s happening within the ticket, and then the body of the robot, the arms, legs, really interacting with that AI to go and then do the tasks.

Where it’s agentic that’s where they can have agency over the different applications or devices to go and carry out certain tasks and resolve them.

Rich: Now, it it varies. It depends a little bit on who you talk to, but often, typically, one of the fundamental defining characteristics of agentic AI is autonomy, which is a very controversial topic with MSP, setting an agent loose in an end user environment.

What is your thinking about about how safe or unsafe that is now in the future?

James: It’s a great question, Rich. And, when we first came out with the platform we had it was always intended to be, autonomous end to end executions. We very quickly learned from our MSP partners that maybe we need to pump the brakes a little there and put in some approval processes, some steps where, pardon me the technicians that are working with PR.

Can verify what’s happening. So that whole step by step follow the bouncing more process to really get our partners and the community comfortable with the concept that the I am the automation is going to go and do these tasks. So we’ve put a lot of work without a lot of feedback with our partner base and very carefully and methodically rolling it down.

So a really good example where we’ve got that agency over the workload is Our AI autostart function in the platform. So that’s where Pia will understand the ticket that comes in to the helpdesk. The AI uncovers what’s going on and then will take it through the journey and stamp it, type, subtype an item, dispatch it, and then trigger a workflow based on what was in that ticket.

So a good example is my PC is running slow. Pia picks it up and then takes it through that journey and kicks off like a PC troubleshooting for report. Very low impact to the help desk, but quite helpful by get capturing that event in real time and surfacing the report for the technician or suggesting next steps in that scenario there.

Rich: And it sounds like there will be more and more autonomy introduced in, in, is the issue that determines the timing of that the confidence level of the MSP or the capability of the technology or both?

James: I would I’d more lean towards the former there. So the confidence of the MSP we had actually one of our partners here yesterday, zip tech, pretty good pay user here in the UK.

They’re doing about 2 percent of their tickets now or autonomously with the AI auto start and the agency. So they’re building out their own automations on top of the PA platform to, to cover off on that. So it’s that whole. confidence level. Like I said, we took some baby steps there and bringing it out with our partner base and getting a lot of feedback.

But now we’re seeing more and more the adoption and the utilization of that whole autonomous workflow. A really, another really good use case that I had some feedback on actually last week at a conference. One of our partners Divergent, they had, they’re using our SmartForms portal. And that’s where The end user can go in and basically type, fill in details for a form and hit submit.

And one of the problems that they had was being an East Coast MSP, working with West Coast clients, the whole terminate this user at 6 o’clock on a Friday, which is 9 o’clock on the East Coast. So now with the smart form capability and the scheduler, Pia can go and execute on those tasks at the right time without the people in that MSP even needing to worry about it.

So they’re confident now that’s going to happen, so they just let fear go and do its thing in that scenario, which is great.

Rich: So we’re talking about emerging capabilities. We’re looking down the road a little bit. I would be remiss if I didn’t give you a chance to tell folks a little bit about what’s happening at PIA [00:05:00] now.

So what’s the latest and greatest from you folks?

James: I appreciate that, Rich. I’ll be a little bit boring to be honest. Our mission is inch wide, mile deep on that help desk. And that’s been what we’ve been trying to solve for from the start. And more and more we see there’s more value that we can uncover, more value that we can provide to our partners by still focusing on that, that one problem.

Now, are we not going to move into other areas? Sure, eventually. But, I was on stage yesterday with Ramsec. We currently do 25 percent of their tickets with automation. I want to be doing 40, 50, 60 percent of those tickets. Because I know if we can solve that help desk even more, that means that MSP becomes more profitable, more scalable and everything else closed off the back of that.

Rich: Fantastic. James Allen, thanks for taking a little time out from this busy show floor to speak with me. I appreciate it.

James: Always a pleasure, Rich. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks.