“Your.Cloud has taken an important step towards our goal in 2024; #1 MSP of Europe”

What was your most surprising insight or lesson in 2024, both business and personal?

For me, it’s the AI paradox. As AI becomes more commonplace, the value of trusted personal relationships will increase. The AI paradox predicts that as more information is communicated, there will be an increasing need for information from trusted sources. Who can you trust? information can be distrusted when people suspect it was generated by AI.

People will become more aware of AI’s ability to provide persuasive but invalid information.

People will become more aware of AI’s ability to provide persuasive but invalid information. Valid information can also be used for negative purposes. The result will be an increase in skepticism about what is written and portrayed on screens and increase the importance of trustworthy personal relationships.

What decision or strategy in your organization has had the biggest impact this year and why?

Your.Cloud took a very important step in accomplishing our goal of becoming the #1 MSP in Europe in 2024 by reaching the #1 position in the Netherlands and making the first foreign acquisition. Internationalization has a big impact on a company because all the decisions you make have to be translatable to local situations or sometimes in some places might not work at all. We work and think according to a decentralized model, which means that we leave a lot of autonomy with our companies and therefore also locally within the countries in question. It is then sometimes a balancing act between what you want to do or project as a group and how you implement or show that at the local level.

What technological innovation or trend within the IT/Telecom sector do you think is currently underexposed, but will be big in the future?

Automation and AI – Everyone is talking about it, but it’s not being translated into enough concrete applications that lead to a better customer or employee experience and productivity improvements. When we take over a company, we often see that a lot of work in, for example, service desks or other departments is done manually, while there are very nice supporting automation solutions there, for example using AI.

The Dutch economy is running towards a flatliner in terms of labor productivity and talent is scarce

The Dutch economy is running towards a flatliner, so we really need to be open to all innovations and technologies to discover how we can have more time for the customer and spend less time on administration and repetitive work.

If you could choose one company within the industry that really made a difference in 2024, which would it be?

Microsoft, its partnership with OpenAI and the introduction of Copilot really democratized the accessibility of AI. The various Copilots throughout the Microsoft suite make work so much easier, and because of that, we also sometimes find out that of some applications in the broad Microsoft portfolio, we were perhaps only using the tip of the iceberg because we just simply didn’t know what could be done with them. What I found particularly impressive is the speed with which they did this. To embed such a big change so quickly in your main services is simply extremely clever.

What is the biggest challenge or opportunity you see for the industry in 2025, and how will you as an organization deal with it?

Increasing compliance, cybercrime and labor market pressures remain hot topics for many MSPs. Especially the small and medium-sized MSPs will have to start investing a lot to stay relevant for their clients and employees. For entrepreneurial MSPs, that often means while keeping their existing clients and business running, they need to think through and invest for the next step.

Entrepreneurial MSPs need to think through and invest for the next step while keeping their existing clients and business running.

This is a complicated balance and we see that MSPs who join Your.Cloud feel supported to meet this challenge, by the larger family they become part of. For example, with knowledge, mutual collaborations, economies of scale or simply growth capital.

What is your personal mantra or guiding principle for the coming year, business and personal?

My mission remains unchanged to make the impossible possible by empowering people, teams and organizations to realize their full potential. Underlying this, quotes from Ghandi and Muhammad Ali are a source of inspiration “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever” and ”Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.”

What unexpected advice would you give readers to help themselves or their businesses continue to grow in 2025?

Dare to experiment and make mistakes. If you keep doing what you were doing then in IT you won’t get what you got, but a little less every day. Talk to other trusted entrepreneurs about what they have tried and learn from each other, but above all make sure you keep moving forward and don’t wait and see. Keep the initiative yourself and don’t lean back.

Thanks to TBM