#113 - The End of MSP Middleware: Build It Yourself? | FROM THE TRENCHES

The connector economy is under real pressure for the first time, and the numbers behind that are uncomfortable. Josh Peterson has spent about $12,000 over twenty years on one piece of middleware. Rob Miller rebuilt a $20,000 website in an afternoon for roughly $2,000 in tokens. This conversation sits in the gap between those two facts. Rob Miller is the founder of VIP IT, Inc., a Los Angeles managed IT services and cybersecurity provider, and one of the most AI-forward operators in the MSP channel. We explore what MSP owners should actually build, what they should keep buying, and where the production line has to be drawn. ---------- What We Cover in This Episode - Separate the subscription price from the cost of not owning the roadmap - Distinguish automation from AI, and build accordingly - Budget for consumption pricing instead of counting seats - Draw an explicit production line before the first build, not after the first incident - Assess vendor risk through the lens of security debt they cannot fund - Treat every third-party document as untrusted input - Stand up an AI practice with one hire and a client time study - Price against hours returned rather than technology delivered - Map AI adoption appetite vertical by vertical across your base - Weight API quality over a vendor's in-product AI agent ---------- Guest Links Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmiller73/ Company Website: https://vipitinc.com ---------- Subscribe & Follow BMK Vision YouTube (Video Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@beringmckinleyvision?sub_confirmation=1 Learn More About the Vision Platform: https://beringmckinley.com/vision Apply to Be a Guest: https://beringmckinley.com/blog#speaker-form ---------- SEO Keywords - MSP middleware - Build vs buy for MSPs - MSP integrations - AI for MSPs - MSP automation - AI practice for MSPs - ConnectWise API - MSP vendor risk - AI security for MSPs - Managed service provider strategy ---------- Credits Host: Josh Peterson Producer: Bering McKinley Episode: #113 - The End of MSP Middleware: Build It Yourself?