Tim Guim Speaks, At Last, on MCP
His leading-edge experiments with the AI data access protocol at PCH Technologies, his MSP, have been showing up in the margins here for weeks. Let’s hear from him directly for a change.
Have I been stalking Tim Guim or has he been stalking me?
Honestly, it’s a little hard to tell at this point. He first arrived on my radar in July, when Elliott Hyman, CEO of MSP rollup Lyra Technology Group, told me how Guim, CEO of Lyra member PCH Technologies, was using MCP, Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, and his RMM tool in ways that had interesting implications for the future of managed services software.
Days later, I found myself discussing the MCP interface that data protection vendor Slide now offers its partners with Carlson Choi, the company’s head of GTM and operations, only to learn that Guim was one of the earliest adopters.
And mere days after that I found myself in the expo hall at a conference in N.J., saw someone I know speaking with someone I didn’t know, and quickly discovered that the someone I didn’t know was … Tim Guim.
We spoke briefly, but I didn’t get a chance to explore his thoughts on MCP at length until the MSP Summit in Orlando last month, and I haven’t had a chance to share those thoughts with you until now. Turns out Slide’s MCP server isn’t the only one he’s using. Cork, which you’ve read about here before, has one too. Guim (pictured above) expects to see a lot more.
“All the different products will have MCP servers in place in the future, and then we could have hopefully one interface that we could talk to these different products with,” he says.
Wait, one interface for many products from multiple vendors? You mean MCP could bring the much discussed, never fully realized “single pane of glass” to life?
“It could,” Guim says.
It’s worth emphasizing, though, that as intrigued and enthusiastic as he is about MCP, Guim is progressing toward using it in production cautiously.
“Everything we’re doing right now at MCP is in a sandbox environment,” he says. “We need to be sure that this is going to work.”
And work both consistently and securely, he adds. “We’re SOC 2 certified,” Guim notes. “We’ve got to vet everything. We have to have the proper training in place.”
And that takes time
That’s the thing about AI, though, in contexts extending way beyond MCP. Doing it properly takes time.
Hence findings in TD SYNNEX’s recently published 2025 Direction of Technology report showing that nearly three years after the launch of ChatGPT ushered in the generative AI era, just 38.9% of IT providers offer one or more AI solutions, even though 75% see AI as critical or very important. It’s also why Tracy Holtz (pictured), TD SYNNEX’s vice president of cloud, estimates that maybe 15% of partners are doing something as simple as reselling Microsoft Copilot at present.
“I would tell you that percentage isn’t really the right indicator, because the conversations we’re having and the skilling and the enablement we’re doing around our partner ecosystem to get them enabled around data and security to then be able to sell Copilot efficiently and be able to have their plan, that’s where the percentage goes incredibly high,” says Holtz during the latest episode of the podcast I co-host. “The pipeline is there. The opportunity is there. It’s a longer term.”
Which is why that same podcast episode features a rant monologue by yours truly about the MIT study so many people have referenced in recent weeks. Set aside for the moment that its much-cited finding that 95% of AI pilots fail is based on just 52 qualitative interviews. The bigger issue is that the study defines success for a project as having a “marked and sustained productivity and/or P&L impact” within six months.
You’re giving pilot deployments six months to produce a substantial, enduring financial impact? By that standard, it’s impressive that 5% of them don’t fail.
Look, I hear the AI hype too. I’m fully aware that we’re quite possibly in the middle of an expanding AI bubble right now, and that the effect on my retirement savings if/when it pops will be unpleasant. Just don’t tell me AI’s a bust because it has yet to move P&Ls.
As long as I’m plugging the podcast…
Why not be more explicit about it? My co-host and I rant about all sorts of things on MSP Chat every week. Check it out here.
