Across three days of keynotes, sessions, workshops, and conversations, one theme continued to surface during IT Nation Connect™ ANZ 2026: transformation is already underway.
Technology and the business of managed services are changing quickly. AI is changing how work gets done, customer expectations continue to rise, and MSPs face growing pressure to scale service delivery while protecting margins and maintaining service quality.
The conversations in Sydney focused on ConnectWise investments in APAC, product innovation and what MSPs can do next. See how technology and community are coming together to help partners prepare for the next phase of managed services.
Jamie Hunter, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer at ConnectWise, and Rob D’Amico, SVP, APAC GTM ConnectWise, opened the event by putting the focus on the community itself.
This year’s event welcomed 750 registered attendees representing 233 companies, with roughly one-third attending IT Nation Connect for the first time. Collectively, attendees represented more than 2,300 years of ConnectWise experience, demonstrating the depth, loyalty, and continued growth of the community.
The opening keynote also highlighted how ConnectWise has listened to and acted on partner feedback with continued investment in the region.
Among the updates was the launch of new in-region data center infrastructure supporting local data sovereignty needs, alongside regional availability for CW Agentic™. ConnectWise has also increased its APAC workforce by 30% and established a team in New Zealand.
Those investments reflect a message ConnectWise leaders emphasized throughout the event: transformation must be based on the needs and goals of the partners doing the work every day.
For MSPs, the question posed during the opening keynote was simple: “What does my MSP need to become?”
The Innovation Keynote picked up from there, examining how AI, connected technology, and new approaches to service delivery are changing the answer.
ConnectWise leadership focused on where managed services are headed and what MSPs can do now, including the changing economics of the MSP business, how ConnectWise technology is evolving to support the economic shift, and how ConnectWise partners can put that innovative technology to work.
ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo opened with the shift from reactive IT to Predictive IT. AI has made intelligence easier to activate and scale, giving businesses a new way to manage capacity, growth, and how work gets done.
For MSPs, this challenges a long-standing equation. More customers and endpoints have traditionally meant more alerts, tickets, and more people to manage the additional work. Agentic AI creates an opportunity to change that relationship by automating repeatable workflows and applying intelligence across the business.
That does not mean every MSP needs to become an AI software company.
MSPs must start distinguishing between what is core to their businesses and what provides supporting context. Customer relationships, industry expertise, proprietary operational knowledge, and differentiated services remain central to an MSP’s value. AI is simply another way to apply and scale that expertise.
This thinking underpins the ConnectWise vision for Predictive IT, meaning the shift from systems that primarily record information toward systems that act on it. By bringing data, workflows, applications, and AI together, MSPs gain a path toward more autonomous service delivery while maintaining appropriate human oversight.
The goal is not autonomy overnight. Trust, learning, and refinement are built over time as AI progresses from assisting technicians, to completing individual tasks, to coordinating broader workflows, and eventually managing more work autonomously.
ConnectWise CTPO David Raissipour brought that the Predictive IT vision into the technology itself, showing how the ConnectWise Platform™ is designed to connect applications, operational data, automation, and AI around business outcomes.
ConnectWise Agentic™, ConnectWise RMM™, ScreenConnect®, ConnectWise PSA™, and built-in monitoring work together as one integrated environment rather than a series of disconnected tools. The distinction matters because AI needs context across tickets. devices, historical activity, documentation, and workflows to make informed decisions and take appropriate action.
And integrated environment approach also applies to cybersecurity and business continuity.
In one scenario shared via demo, ConnectWise showed how security response and BCDR work together in a connected workflow:
Rather than treating security, backup, endpoint management, and service management as separate conversations, the scenario demonstrated what becomes possible when those capabilities share context and workflows.
In the final part of the Innovation Keynote, ConnectWise CCO Mari-Frances Bentvelzen brought the conversation back to execution.
AI is already accessible. ConnectWise provides white-glove support to partners, helping them overcome the challenge of operationalizing AI with the security, governance, observability, auditing, and controls required for business use over time.
ConnectWise has been applying the same principles internally. Within its SOC, automation has helped shift work away from repetitive Tier 1 and Tier 2 tasks while increasing investment in higher-level expertise and partner-facing work. The result shared on stage was a move from a one-hour service-level objective to a 15-minute SLA while processing a significantly higher volume of alerts.
For partners, the larger lesson was about where efficiency gains go next. Lowering the effort required for repetitive work creates room to reinvest capacity in better service, stronger customer relationships, and new opportunities for growth.
ConnectWise partners in APAC have a new competitive advantage with the launch of the Axcient x360Recover data center:
Dr. Jason Fox, author, leadership advisor, and self-described wizard-philosopher, challenged attendees to rethink how they approach uncertainty, ambition, and progress.
His message connected naturally with many of the themes discussed throughout IT Nation Connect ANZ. Technology is moving quickly, but the choices leaders make about how they respond will shape what happens next.
Rather than trying to eliminate uncertainty, Jason encouraged leaders to become more comfortable working within it. Progress does not always come from having a perfect long-term plan. Sometimes it comes from creating enough direction to take the next meaningful step, learn from the result, and adjust.
That mindset matters as MSPs work through AI adoption. The technology and business models will continue changing and evolving, so leaders will need to decide where to experiment, where to invest, what standards they want to maintain, and what kind of organization they want to build.
Jason closed with a reminder that captured the larger theme of the event: the decisions leaders make now matter.
As he told the audience, MSP leaders have significant influence over the future they help create. Success is part of the equation, but so are the values, quality, relationships, and sense of purpose leaders bring to their decisions.
IT Nation Connect ANZ 2026 showed an industry moving beyond the question of whether AI will change managed services.
The more useful question: how will MSPs respond?
The answers came back consistently across the Welcome Keynote, Innovation Keynote, partner conversations, and closing keynote:
ConnectWise is investing in our partners by continuously evolving and expanding the ConnectWise Platform, ConnectWise Agentic, cybersecurity and data protection capabilities.
The next phase of managed services will take leaders willing to rethink how their businesses operate and make deliberate choices about what they want those businesses to become.
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