Governance & compliance block MSP AI adoption, report says
AvePoint has published research with Omdia showing that governance and compliance are the main barriers to AI adoption among managed service providers. In the study, 51% of MSPs identified them as the biggest obstacle.
The findings highlight a gap between investment in AI readiness services and the ability to deliver them. While 94% of MSPs said they are investing in automation for AI data readiness and compliance, only 43% said they had reached high maturity in delivering AI-ready data environments to customers.
The research was based on a survey of 333 MSPs across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific, along with interviews with MSP executives and operations leaders. It suggests that operational demands, rather than technical limitations, are slowing customer adoption of AI tools.
Data and security management, value realisation, and skills shortages ranked well behind governance and compliance as customer challenges. Among respondents, 14% pointed to data and security management, 14% to value realisation, and 13% to technical expertise gaps.
Integration Demand
The report also points to a shift in buying preferences as service providers try to simplify oversight across customer environments. Nearly half of MSPs said they wanted a complete platform integrated with other core tools, while 91% said backup and disaster recovery should be integrated rather than offered separately.
This reflects growing pressure on MSPs to manage customer data, policy controls, and recovery processes through fewer systems. Multi-tenant operations remain particularly difficult: among MSPs that have not fully automated customer data protection and compliance services, 40% said customer operational complexity is the main barrier to full automation.
One executive interviewed for the research described the burden of tailoring automation across large client estates: "We could build automations for every single one of our clients, but we'd have to do it 700 times."
Market Opportunity
Omdia forecasts that the global partner opportunity linked to AI services will reach $276 billion by 2030. The research also projects 21% growth in compliance services for MSPs in 2026, driven by regulation, audits, and customer demand for continuous compliance monitoring.
That backdrop helps explain why providers continue to invest despite the operational strain. The report suggests many MSPs have started packaging governance as a recurring service but have not yet built the processes needed to deliver it consistently at scale.
Robin Ody, Practise Leader, MSP Analysis at Omdia, said the operational burden is now central to the AI debate for service providers. "The message from this research is clear: one of the bottlenecks for end-customer AI adoption today is the operational burden of data governance and compliance, which has become more complex and essential as AI continues to spread," he said.
Ody added: "With the global managed security services market projected to reach $106 billion this year, MSPs are increasingly involved in breaking these bottlenecks. This report shows there is still a lot of untapped opportunity in this section of the market. MSPs that adopt business solution and vertical-specific approaches to governance and compliance are going to excel at capturing this demand."
AvePoint's executive team framed governance as the main dividing line in the MSP market. Scott Sacket, SVP, Global Partner Strategy at AvePoint, said providers that can standardise governance across multiple customer environments stand to gain as demand for AI-related services grows.
"Governance has become the primary barrier preventing customer AI adoption," Sacket said. "MSPs need unified data protection platforms that standardize governance across multi-tenant environments, transforming manual work into automated, repeatable services. Those who operationalize governance will capture significant market opportunity."