Business continuity and disaster recovery platform company Slide has secured $25 million in Series A funding to support its growth and innovations aimed at managed service providers. The funding round, led by Base10 Partners with participation from Outsiders Fund and Top Down Ventures, reflects investor confidence in Slide’s approach tailored for the managed service provider market. Slide, co-founded by former Datto executives Austin McChord and Michael Fass, has rapidly expanded since its launch in February 2025. The company has introduced a backup and disaster recovery appliance built on a cloud-first foundation, featuring flash-based storage and native data encryption. With this new funding, Slide plans to enhance its platform development and operations to meet the increasing demand for its modern solutions, while also announcing the launch of a Canadian Data Center to cater to local data residency requirements.
Ninth Wave has launched a new division, Ninth Wave Managed Services, aimed at accelerating the adoption of open finance capabilities among financial institutions. This initiative is designed to help banks deploy essential services like embedded payments and wealth data connectivity in less than 90 days. Steve Schick, a former executive at Amazon Web Services, has been appointed as the head of this new business unit. Schick brings extensive experience in financial services cloud technology, having previously led initiatives focused on cloud security for regulated institutions. Ninth Wave’s Managed Services will utilize a methodology that combines technical execution with compliance and user adoption strategies, emphasizing secure and efficient API connectivity across various enterprise resource planning platforms. The company serves over 2,000 institutions and is a partner to seven of the top 10 U.S. banks.
Integris, a national leader in future-ready managed services, has announced its acquisition of TechMD, a premier managed service provider, along with its security division, 1nteger Security. This strategic acquisition marks Integris’ largest to date and is aimed at expanding the company’s service offerings and enhancing customer experiences. Founded in 1986, TechMD has been instrumental in providing technology solutions to small and midsize businesses for over 20 years. Integris, backed by OMERS Private Equity, is focused on driving digital maturity in the industry.
NinjaOne has enhanced its endpoint management capabilities by introducing mobile device management support for macOS. The new features include automating patching, enforcing device configurations, and remote support, which aim to simplify compliance and boost team productivity. With this integration, NinjaOne positions itself as a comprehensive solution for managing diverse device environments in the growing landscape of remote and hybrid work.
1Password has announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services to enhance security tools for artificial intelligence and cloud-native environments, addressing the growing demand from enterprises for comprehensive access management solutions. This partnership marks a significant milestone for 1Password, which has transformed from a consumer-focused password manager to an enterprise security platform, serving one-third of Fortune 100 companies. In the past 18 months, the collaboration has led to contracts sold through Amazon Web Services averaging four times larger than typical deals, with win rates exceeding 50 percent across all customer segments.
Why do we care?
We care because these developments show the continued bifurcation of the IT services landscape: on one side, deep specialization and investment in the MSP channel (Slide, Integris), and on the other, strategic vertical moves and platform consolidation (Ninth Wave, NinjaOne, 1Password). For IT service providers, this represents both a competitive pressure and a set of new tools and partner options—but only if adopted with clarity and purpose.
We’re seeing the next phase of stack redefinition: purpose-built, compliance-aware, and automation-driven platforms that reflect today’s hybrid, remote, and regulated IT environments.
The market rewards specialization:
- Slide leans into MSP-native BDR evolution.
- Ninth Wave shows what true vertical alignment looks like.
- Integris accelerates PE-backed scale with deeper security layers.
- NinjaOne and 1Password reinforce endpoint and identity consolidation.
For MSPs, this is both enablement and warning: stack design is strategy. Those who pick tools based on cost or familiarity risk falling behind. Those who architect around customer business outcomes—security, resilience, compliance—will lead the next wave of growth.