The Little Things Add Up on AI at N-able
The business resilience vendor prefers evolution to revolution when it comes to equipping its portfolio with artificial intelligence.
N-able’s AI ambitions are a little less lofty than Lexful’s.
“We’re not trying to make an AI revolution,” says Mike Adler, the vendor’s EVP and chief technical and product officer. “We’re trying to use AI to deliver capabilities that speak to the individual needs of our customers.”
Which is why you rarely hear about AI updates from the company, despite the fact that it’s been making them for a while.
“It’s not about AI the keyword, the big bang, the press release,” Adler (pictured) says. “It’s really about how are organizations able to use AI? How are we able to deliver features that use AI to make them more resilient and make the technicians more effective and efficient?”
That said, N-able did issue a press release last week listing a number of AI-related enhancements to its suite, some of which it introduced before without fanfare (but that you’ve read about here anyway). Individually, Adler notes, none of that is earth-shattering.
“Brought together, it talks,” he says.
And what it says very much by design, according to Adler, is that in N-able’s view the best way to embrace AI is incrementally.
“AI’s going to have these little influences that are going to grow to have larger impacts on a mid-market IT firm or an MSP as we move forward, because it’ll start showing up in all these little ways that make you more efficient and make you more resilient,” he says.
Two of the little efficiency boosters in that recent press release, both newly launched, are an AI-powered developer portal designed to ease integration of N-able’s unified endpoint management solutions with third-party tools and an AI-assisted scripting and automation tool for UEM users.
“There’s a bunch of even more interesting stuff coming down the line,” Adler says, hinting that “coworking type capabilities” will be among them.
Sounds Anthropic-esque. Is it? We’ll all have to attend N-able’s 2026 Empower conference in Fort Lauderdale two months from now to find out. If the company stays true to the AI MO it’s following so far, though, I can safely predict the unveiling won’t be flashy.
Hey, podcast fans
Did you know that Mike Adler has been a guest of MSP Chat, the podcast I co-host, in the past along with his boss, N-able CEO John Pagliuca? Or that this week’s interview guest is Abraham Garver of FOCUS Investment Banking, the M&A guru I quoted extensively in last week’s post? Or that Pinar Ormeci of Lexful will be on the show in a few weeks?
OK, no way you could have known that last one unless you’re clairvoyant, but it’s true. More great material for you to enjoy right here.
