Pax8, which has its own platform for software distribution, has now teamed up with German infrastructure-as-a-service vendor ProfitBricks, and some vendors, including these new ones, are now available on this new platform.
Ryan Walsh, Pax8’s SVP of Partner Solutions
Lone Tree Colorado-based cloud distributor Pax8 has expanded its vendor ranks with two new vendors, First, they signed Workspace-as-a-Service [WaaS] platform provider Cloudjumper, which was recently spun out of nGenx. Now they have added disaster recovery vendor Vision Solutions, which makes the Double-Take DR solution.
SMB-focused Pax8 was created in 2012 by the leadership team who had formed and led cloud-based email and web security vendor MX Logic, which was acquired by McAfee in 2009, and drew on their own experience as a vendor in the cloud marketplace.
“We formed Pax8 because we had worked through distribution, and our experience is that traditional distribution wasn’t built for managing cloud distribution,” said Ryan Walsh, Pax8’s SVP of Partner Solutions.
That may come as news to the traditional broadline distributors in North America, all of whom have invested significantly in their cloud practices in recent years. Walsh, however, said that being a pure play cloud distributor has certain advantages.
“We have cloud management in our DNA,” he said. “We aren’t encumbered by a legacy process and can build from the ground up.”
Walsh identified three specific pillars in Pax8’s value proposition.
“One is our cloud marketplace technology platform,” he said. “We didn’t originally think we would have to build this, but there wasn’t anything that was perfectly tailored for the channel. We are glad now that we built it, because it is a differentiator for us – and one that is brandable by partners.”
The second pillar is valuing customer acquisition.
“We learned this by committing to it at MX Logic,” Walsh said. “We weren’t always that way. Our channel partners may not have their own processes built for the volumes that come with the cloud, so this is something that we have to provide for them.”
The third pillar is a commitment to the SMB market
“Pax8 was built for the SMB channel,” Walsh said. “Not all our partners are SMB, but they are mainly SMB, and we are really built around that model. Many of our vendors focus more on the enterprise, but we bring them into the SMB market.”
Discussing Pax8’s business model, Walsh said that when they came out of the gate, they focused on working with a single vendor in each category and building them up successfully before expanding and broadening out – what might be described as a traditional boutique distributor model.
“For example, our security provider is Symantec, our backup vendor is Infrascale, and for mobile management, we have IBM’s MaaS 360. We have around a couple dozen vendors now, and are expanding at about one a month, attracting vendors by being cloud-first and cloud-focused.” Pax8 is focused on the North American market, and typically acquires global distribution rights for almost all products, getting access to Canada as well as the U.S.
Their model has been modified somewhat since Pax8 signed on German Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform provider ProfitBricks.
“ProfitBricks has a software-defined infrastructure, and has got a great interface,” Walsh said. ProfitBricks makes it easier for Pax8’s partners to design, provision, and manage virtual environments, by letting them customize solutions more effectively, and at a very low price.
“We are now taking on vendors who are well positioned to have their products bundled with ProfitBricks,” Walsh said. “This is not all our new business, but we do monitor what the market wants.”
Walsh indicated that both Cloudjumper and Vision wanted to bundle their products with ProfitBricks.
“We had been tracking nGenx for a while, but we weren’t ready then for Desktops-as-a-Service,” he said. “With CloudJumper spinning out of nGenx, we connected with them on their interest in ProfitBricks. We introduced them and there was a nice union.” The upshot of it all is that Pax8 will offer CloudJumper’s nWorkSpace WaaS platform for the delivery of cloud desktops, applications, and complete IT workspaces.
CloudJumper is going to market with a concurrent user licensing model option it believes will be popular in larger enterprise accounts, because rather than a license for each named user, it requires only licenses for the maximum number using the offering at the same time. Walsh thinks that the WaaS product itself will also be popular among their SMB partners.
“Irrespective of their pricing model, they do have a rep for market-leading price performance benefits, including a very competitive price,” he said. “We just launched with a webinar and got a lot of interest from mainly SMB partners.”
The agreement with Vision Solutions will see Pax8 offer their full suite of migration services, as well as their Double-Take solutions that let solution providers offer a disaster recovery strategy across physical, virtual, and cloud-based resources. Like Cloudjumper, Pax8 is making it available on the ProfitBricks IaaS platform.
“Vision was vetted by the ProfitBricks folks, and their Double-Take solution in particular is very highly regarded,” Walsh said. “They are also a very channel-centric company.”
