You Don’t Have to Go It Alone. Go with PartnerLINK.

PartnerLINK represents the best of peer networking paired with easy access to large-scale enablement programs through TD SYNNEX. That’s according to Anthony J. D’Ambrosi, PartnerLINK Advisory Council member and Chief Executive Officer of Abacus Group, a trusted MSP. In this episode, hear how TD SYNNEX PartnerLINK gives IT providers the greatest tool for growth: community. Going it alone is no longer an option. As end-customer needs grow more complex, a community that understands the market and your business can help turn uncertainty into direction. Listen to learn how.

What is Channel Mic Check?

Channel Mic Check — where distributor DNA meets digital swagger.

Hosted by Calhoun McKinney — Vice President, Go to Market — and Jessica McDowell — Sr. Vice President, North America Marketing and Digital Customer Success — this podcast brings fresh energy to the B2B tech channel. From market updates and TD SYNNEX insights to candid interviews with vendors, partners, and innovators, Channel Mic Check cuts through the noise with real talk and real impact.

This is where connection meets conversation. Each episode tests the mic and turns up the volume on what actually matters—growth, innovation, and the stories shaping today’s channel ecosystem.

Forget the corporate jargon. Expect insights with edge, stories with substance, and voices that lead with purpose. Whether you’re a partner, vendor, or industry insider, this is your all-access pass to the conversations driving the channel forward.

Tune in. Turn it up. Channel Mic Check: it’s not just talk, it’s a movement.

All right, welcome back to Channel Mic Check. I'm Calhoun McKinney, and I am here with an incredible leader in the channel, Anthony D'Ambrosio. He's been a longtime voice within the channel ecosystem, and he is a champion for MSPs.

And he really specializes not just in growing businesses, but also in helping partners navigate their own transformation in real time. So with that, Anthony, welcome. Hello, Calhoun.

It's great to be here. I'm honored to be part of the podcast today. Well, and if you can't tell by Anthony's accent, he is in New York.

And Anthony, you are a longtime Knicks fan. What has New York's been going through lately? What is it like in New York right now? It has been some special magic from the moments the playoff began. I had the privilege of being at game four, the greatest comeback in NBA playoff history.

And the entire city is awash in Knicks fever. And it remains. Several weeks later, we are still celebrating the New York Knicks.

I love it. And you got a little bit of Knicks blue on today. I like it.

Nice touch. Nice touch. I try to represent the blue and the orange whenever I can, yes.

It also happens to be our corporate colors are blue and orange. There you go. Was that on purpose or are you that hardcore? I'd like to say yes to that, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

It was an amalgamation of our merger with Medicus into Abacus and Abacus was blue and Medicus was orange. So we brought the two companies together. So kind of kismet there.

That's kind of nice. A little branding kismet. That's correct.

Yes. We love when that happens. So we are here today to talk about PartnerLink, which is the TD Cenex ecosystem for partners overall who are really trying to tap into expanding their high growth practice, more digital adoption, growing their services business.

And for people who might not fully know what PartnerLink is, how would you describe it today, Anthony? PartnerLink is a very interesting evolution of what TD Cenex had originally defined as communities. But I would now argue that PartnerLink is kind of a community on steroids. We've put, we've turbocharged PartnerLink to become not only a community at large for ecosystem partners that opt into PartnerLink, but we've created this sort of structure that helps aggregate and personify partners a certain way so we can get partners who have common interests together so that we can really drill down on meaty topics to help partners grow and succeed while maintaining a broad perspective on the macro market.

So I'd like to say PartnerLink really represents the best of peer networking combined with incredible large scale enablement programs. And what you're describing, like a lot of that has existed in quarters and pockets throughout the channel. What do you, what would you say about the way that it exists today that makes it even more important for partners to take part in? Sure.

You know, in the channel, one of the challenges most ecosystem partners have, whether you're dealing with solutions, aggregators and distributors or with the vendors themselves, most of the channel partners are much smaller than the larger vendor community and the larger distribution community. What I'm seeing now is our ability to engage in a more holistic way with a very large organization like TD Cynics, the ability to unpack what is the best of TD Cynics that I require in our individual business model and how to get the best access, most efficient access to that. I look at PartnerLink as almost like a ecosystem success aggregator of the best of TD Cynics being brought to you in a way that's digestible as a smaller organization trying to leverage a very large organization.

I love that. And we have so many partnerships and teaming opportunities that have been born out of this community where you have NMSP who an opportunity comes to them for something that really isn't in their arena. And they reach across the community and they say, hey, who has this certification, who has this skill set or whatever, who can tap in? I can handle all these parts of it, but I need somebody to help me over here.

And the way that that has gone, not just from local opportunities, regional, national, but global opportunities in the millions of dollars is, I think, a good testament that going it alone is not feasible for the very tall order that is coming from end users these days or just technology itself. It's the complexity you hear about a lot, all-time high, not only continuing to grow in that. And so this is a way to tackle that if you don't have the opportunity to build that for yourself from a teaming standpoint.

To a degree more. If you think about it, we are all operating in the $6 trillion plus macro market that is IT and technology. There is no reason to go it alone.

There's plenty of shoulder room. Even amongst competitors, you can create a community of interest that fosters healthy competition while still leveraging best practices in the macro market. And then when you find that trusted peer network, especially as a CEO, one of the challenges of being a founder, a CEO, a top executive, very often you have difficulty garnering an outside opinion from a peer group that's candid and actionable.

That balances the specificity of what I may need with a macro market perspective. I feel like we get that within the partner link community. I agree.

And that's a really nice segue talking about that $6 trillion opportunity. You know, that number just continues to grow really out of the way AI is reshaping nearly every conversation happening across the channel right now. One of the things that came up in a conversation with a partner last week is, hey, you've got the AI opportunity and then you have AI overload.

They've really described their role as helping their customers navigate that gap between the two and making opportunities a reality and not tipping into AI overload. What would you say about that statement? Would you agree? I would agree. And I would say we have, I think, a fortunate perspective on this.

We're a large vertical industry focused MSP and having the holistic business model of IT operations, cybersecurity, as well as multi-cloud management, that's great, along with DevOps, a great perspective on a holistic MSP model. But when you see the disruption and the opportunity that is AI, it's fundamental. Separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, how do I separate the noise and the hype from that which is actionable to my business model to not only adopt AI internally to make your company more efficient and more effective, how do I take it to market in a way where I can do so in a manner of which I can be differentiated and effective and not become overwhelmed? Because the reality is right now, there's a lot more hype and noise than there is true monetization, but monetization is coming at us very quickly.

So we are in this moment. One of our core values, as we say, we turn disruption into direction. I think about that every day when I think about AI.

How do we turn this unprecedented disruption into a direction of success for our business and for our customers? I love that, disruption into direction. I think that we reflect that as well here at TD Sachs from the standpoint of we see ourselves as an AI orchestrator. We operate not just with the entire solution ecosystem, the entire services ecosystem, but we also service multiple partner types operating in just about every vertical.

That's what gets me excited is when you look at the complexity of navigating all those different pillars and how they interact with one another, it can get very complicated. That's really where I see what we are doing in the distribution space as an AI orchestrator is adding value to partners. It's really helping them orchestrate that complexity into direction.

I mentioned partner types, and I know which partner type is near and dear to your heart. What are MSPs dealing with the most right now? As an MSP, not only AI, but the market movements themselves represent, I think, one of the biggest opportunities we've seen. First of all, there's been a macro recognition that the MSP business model is so well positioned to be that orchestrator for a client.

We've been orchestrating things for decades as MSPs, operations, technology stacks, vendor management, more recently, cloud computing and cybersecurity. We've been charged and trusted by the market to be the orchestrator through the entire journey of those adoptions and the optimization. Now here comes AI, which touches, to your point, Calhoun, every layer of the stack, from the business model and process right through the tech stack.

The MSP is very well positioned right now to be the trusted orchestrator of that client journey, but it does require us to change as well. It requires us to be more consultative, more innovative, and to adopt AI ourselves and our own business models, not only to be that trusted advisor to a client, but to also make sure we continue to optimize outcomes, leveraging AI internally. I agree with all of that, and I'll add to it.

One of the things that MSPs almost always, I think the great ones, right? Almost always put as a top priority is, hey, whatever I am deploying, whatever I'm launching from an offering standpoint, is it scalable? They're very in tune with scale. And so, you can bring solutions to market and place to market around AI all day long, but if you can't scale it within your customer base, you're only going to go so far. And so, I think that's where MSPs have an advantage, is scale is their strength.

I agree. And the other thing I would add to that, it's an adjacent point. If you think about it, when I recommend a technology, help a client adopt and govern any technology, I'm also on the hook.

I'm contractually responsible to make sure not only does it scale, is it available? Is it affordable? Can I manage, operate, refresh, and upgrade it along the way? So, my interests as an MSP are so tightly aligned with my client's interests. We're not here to just advise. We have to operate.

And for me, yes, we have to operate at scale because I'm operating across a very large customer base. So, we have as much skin in the game as anybody in the ecosystem when it comes to any technology adoption, let alone AI. And that adoption piece, kind of zooming back out, right? Looking at all partner types, the entire ecosystem, that adoption piece, I think is what interests me most as a PartnerLink leader when we're sitting at the table with our members to really understand what's getting in your way.

And I love the things that has led to from the feedback that we get. So, from an influence standpoint with kind of this partner community piece, what are some of the highlights for you that you've seen come out over the years from PartnerLink in terms of just the way feedback has shaped what we're doing here? Sure, sure. Well, look, I think, you know, earlier on, this sort of obsession with growing the business through a go-to-market motion, sales and marketing, making sure we can be price competitive and acquire a new customer or sell something new to an existing customer was sort of the order of the day for a long time.

But more recently, we've all come together. And again, I'll argue that the MSP community was at the forefront of this. And we started looking at the customer more holistically, a lifecycle journey, a journey of adoption that's driven through success.

So, it's not just the purchase or the acquisition of the technology, how pervasive has it become and are you getting your expected outcome? So, I think now the whole community at large is so focused on, yes, we need to sell new things to new customers and existing customers, but we all need to make darn sure that what we promised has been realized through adoption. And that when there is an issue, we remediate it. And when there's an opportunity, we're helping the client absorb what they've bought and get the most out of it.

And again, our business model speaks to that. It truly is customer lifecycle management and customer success management matters as much as the point of transaction. And that is such a testament to, hey, just as we've got more artificial intelligence and automation, humans are still involved.

Yeah, you have human in the loop in terms of AI being deployed, but you also just have the humanity of, hey, if humans don't actually adopt what you, the partner, are deploying and you're not also helping that organization, yes, with the governments, but also with the change management, then your solution is only going to be leveraged so far within that environment. So, I think that's a great, great call out. I'll transition as AI gets a lot of the headlines and an offshoot of that is, of course, endpoint.

And an endpoint strategy will always be important because you can't interact with anything without it. And so, it has to still be a part of the conversation. So, I want to shift us a little bit to talk about, I used to say the other side of the portfolio, but now I feel like it's really all woven together.

So, I'll just say the other parts of the portfolio. So, at the end of the day, endpoint is still the primary point of engagement for a user. Are you seeing organizations keep devices longer right now or are people really leaning into the upgrade cycle? Yeah.

What I'm seeing is it's a little bit of a mixed bag, but the lean is definitely more toward the upgrade and enhanced environment. And I think a few things. First of all, we're also hyper-focused on the end users having a great experience.

You're not going to drive adoption without a great end user experience. Most end users are multiple endpoint users these days. You travel, you're mobile, you're desktop, you're AI PC, if you will.

That environment is expanding in terms of optionality to provide a great end user experience. Then there's the notion of just the performance in a world of intense business processes, AI coming in with co-work, co-pilot environments, having the need to get real-time multimedia performance to the end user. I think the endpoint market is poised for another growth cycle.

And I look at some of my early adopters, my more innovative end users that we serve, they look at the endpoint. I won't say spare no expense. There's always a cost benefit, but they look at the endpoint as the window into the business.

And if the end user doesn't have a great endpoint experience, including the total management of that end, then you're going to debilitate the business, not just the experience, but the actual outcome. So I think the endpoint, once again, help being driven by the environment we're in, more driver coming out of the AI needs. Endpoint's having a heyday right now in terms of the importance because the end user, ironically, in a world of AI, we're focused on that human-in-the-loop component, and the endpoint is the window to that utilization.

So what I hear you saying is deprioritize endpoint at your own peril, really. Couldn't agree more. Look, here's the other reality that we live in.

The reality is there's a lot of technology now to power an endpoint, whether you're doing a full-thick client, an AI PC, whether you're leveraging desktop as a service, it's a hybrid world. These hybrid models require state-of-the-art tooling and machinery in order to get the best output, not to mention the world of multimedia, use of voice, use of video. These things are now common.

Remote work, common. You need to have a great endpoint infrastructure to have a digitally-enabled enterprise. We truly believe that.

Well put, and I think that that goes back to kind of something I said at the top of this, which is that's really where we see AI orchestration. It goes the full stack. It goes all the way from the core to the edge.

They're not two separate conversations. They are one conversation, and that's our strength is helping partners navigate that and make those decisions where somebody has strength in one, we can help supplement the other, and a lot of that strength comes from what we put together with the partnering community. I couldn't agree more.

Even if I map it back to computing at the edge, as more and more hybrid large and small language models come together to power agents, the performance of the endpoint will matter more and more. Agreed, agreed. To close us out today, Anthony, we have a little tradition here on Channel Mic Check, which is we always end with a mic drop moment.

This is just kind of your parting words, your final statement to our listeners out there that you'd kind of do a mic drop on. So, what do you got for us? My mic drop is, first of all, it's a great time to be in the technology industry. Think about where we've come, how we've enabled the world at large, with more to come now with the current wave of opportunity and embracing that disruption.

I would also say it's part of our jobs to make sense of all this on behalf of our clients. So, part of what we do is great IT ecosystem partners. We provide technology therapy sessions.

We provide clarity amongst the confusion. We are just in such a great position to help drive society forward. And I think partnering with the right companies to do so, partnering with companies that truly understand your needs, understand the market, and can help power your business in a collaborative way with trust and efficacy.

That's what I always look for. And that's why I'm really proud to be the chairperson of the TD Cinex PartnerLink Advisory Council. Very, very well put.

And my mic drop would probably be just a little bit of a mirror to what you said, which would be don't go it alone. And that's really the mission behind PartnerLink is we don't think that greatness in the channel happens alone. It happens in teaming.

It happens in conversation. It happens in collaboration. So, that would be my mic drop is don't go it alone.

And with that, I would just encourage our listeners and viewers to subscribe, download, watch future episodes. And as always, stay on the lookout for more exciting things coming out of PartnerLink. And Anthony, of course, thank you, as always, for the very candid conversation.