Sergio Ajani, Services & Solutions Design Director at Innovaway, explains why 2026 represents a turning point, what the implications for businesses might be, and the role IT partners will play in this context.
The Managed Service Provider market is undergoing a silent but radical transformation. While media attention focuses on artificial intelligence and quantum computing, a more pragmatic evolution is emerging in the managed services sector: compliance governance.
The central importance of this activity is already clear: today, no IT project launches without a thorough risk assessment—ranging from cybersecurity to data protection—and operational continuity has become an absolute sine qua non. This evidence confirms a shift in perspective regarding compliance: it is moving from a regulatory constraint to be managed occasionally to a continuous service. This shift, by altering business needs, presents new opportunities for MSPs.
2026 will represent a turning point in compliance management for several reasons, starting with the regulatory pressure that is growing exponentially even in Italy. The NIS2 Directive has introduced stringent obligations for numerous categories of essential and important entities, with audit and reporting deadlines that many organizations prefer to outsource rather than manage internally. For the financial sector, DORA requires operational resilience capabilities and continuous monitoring of ICT third-party providers that few organizations can sustain independently.
GDPR also remains highly relevant due to the ongoing pressure of its associated sanctions. Meanwhile, the Data Act (applicable from September 2025) and the AI Act—which will become fully operational in August 2026—are introducing additional requirements that intertwine with existing obligations. This is creating a regulatory landscape that many players are still struggling to interpret and implement effectively on an operational level.
Essentially, what current legislation demands is no longer simply to be compliant, but to demonstrate continuous resilience. Organizations must prove not only that they have implemented adequate controls, but that they are constantly monitoring them, updating them in line with evolving threats, and documenting the entire process in a traceable and verifiable manner. This is a complex undertaking even for large enterprises equipped with internal compliance teams.
The growth of cyber insurance in our country is further accelerating this dynamic. As the cost of cybercrime rises month by month, the number of large companies taking out these policies is increasing; however, in response, insurance providers are drastically tightening their requirements—particularly regarding compliance—as a condition for granting coverage.
In this context, the transition to 'Compliance as a Service' is not so much about the 'what' as it is about the 'how'—namely, transforming the approach to compliance from an episodic event into a continuous process, and from a one-off project into a continuous, structured service.
The growing centrality of compliance impacts organizations differently depending on their size and maturity. For large enterprises—such as banks, insurance companies, and retail chains—the shift to continuous monitoring intensifies existing challenges, pushing them to an even higher level of complexity.
The first challenge undoubtedly concerns the governance of IT ecosystem complexity: these companies operate with dozens of ICT providers, multiple infrastructures, repositories, and applications, all within overlapping regulatory frameworks. For companies with international operations, such as those in the retail sector, this also implies managing diverse local regulations
The second challenge is the integration of compliance and business continuity. The transition from periodic audits to real-time monitoring requires control systems that operate without impacting activities or their performance. This is no simple feat when managing millions of daily transactions: it requires an architecture that ensures complete visibility while maintaining seamless operational continuity.
Finally, there is the matter of personal liability. NIS2 introduces direct sanctions for managers, transforming compliance from a technical issue into a significant reputational and legal risk for top management. The combination of these challenges is pushing large enterprises toward a hybrid model: they retain strategic governance internally while relying on external partners for the most high-impact and complex operational components.
For Italian PMI, the impact of compliance is of a different nature and potentially more disruptive. Most of these businesses lack dedicated internal teams; consequently, the growing burden of compliance requires not only financial investment and the acquisition of new skills, but also a fundamental rethinking of established processes with a view toward continuous traceability and documentation.
However, the true critical point for these businesses is competitiveness. Large corporations are beginning to require compliance certifications from their suppliers as a contractual prerequisite. For SMEs, compliance will increasingly become a condition for market access, as failing to meet these standards means risking exclusion from major tenders and supply chains.
In this context, MSPs have the opportunity to establish themselves as key partners in the ongoing management of compliance. Specifically, large companies find in MSPs the capability to manage the complexity of their IT ecosystems through integrated platforms. These platforms centralize the monitoring of third-party vendors, automate the collection of evidence for audits, and provide real-time dashboards on the compliance status of the entire ecosystem. In this regard, the MSP does not replace internal compliance teams but rather empowers them by taking on the operational responsibility for continuous monitoring.
For PMI, on the other hand, MSPs can play a role in the democratization of compliance, making services accessible that would otherwise require prohibitive investments and the hiring of specialized personnel. By positioning themselves as 'outsourced compliance officers' and managing everything from initial assessments to periodic checks, and from documentation to regulatory updates, this model allows small and medium-sized enterprises not only to meet their obligations but also to acquire the necessary certifications to access specific markets.
This evolution confirms once again the shift from a traditional approach—based on reactive interventions after problems have emerged—to a proactive model that prioritizes continuous monitoring and the preemptive management of critical issues. MSPs that embrace this change can transform compliance from a regulatory burden into a driver of service innovation. In doing so, they build stronger, ongoing relationships with clients, create new business opportunities, and, above all, position themselves as strategic partners rather than occasional suppliers.
The continuous pressure imposed by regulatory requirements and compliance obligations also offers a perspective of development and new opportunities for all companies, both large and small. A careful analysis of one's own security posture, combined with the implementation of organizational and technological tools to remediate any gaps, can make companies more virtuous. Indeed, the obligation to review oneself with a critical eye brings to light numerous and significant opportunities for improvement across various aspects of the business.
From the streamlining of processes to the securing of infrastructures, there also emerges a potential for cost optimization and a resulting increase in market competitiveness—achieving, in essence, greater efficiency for the same cost. In this area as well, the support of MSPs is central to achieving these optimization and growth objectives, alongside the governance of regulatory requirements.
https://www.rivista.ai/2025/12/30/compliance-as-a-service-il-trend-che-si-fara-strada-nel-2026/
