In addition to a seamless new integration with ConnectWise’s PSA product, Pax8 also announced some key channel promotions, and dropped a hint about an expanded presence for Symantec in Canada.
Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8
At the ConnectWise IT Nation event in Orlando, cloud distributor Pax8 has announced the expansion of its integration with ConnectWise, to provide the full availability of their services through the ConnectWise Manage interface.
“We were integrated with ConnectWise Manage before, but in that first iteration, while you could sync between Manage and our application, you would be required to be in both separately,” said Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8. “You would only have to hit a button to sync. But then you would have to swivel-chair back into ConnectWise and make sure everything you synced was there.”
The new integration allows MSPs to utilize ConnectWise as the single pane of glass between the two apps.
“Instead of a swivel-chair integration, this provides a seamless way they can take advantage of our cloud marketplace,” Walsh said. “They can order products and make changes to subscriptions, and have all that flow through ConnectWise.”
Walsh explained that the way this works is to have Pax8 integrated into the ConnectWise application as a tab, so that the partner will see a screen that looks like it’s built within ConnectWise.
“The old way was a pop-up window, and stuffing another application into it,” he said. “It was kludgy. You also couldn’t use the navigation of the main application. With the new integration, you access something that looks like it was built within ConnectWise natively. Ease of business is what the MSPs are looking for.”
In addition, Pax8 has added support for billing and provisioning of consumption-based Infrastructure as a Service [IaaS] products like Azure and ProfitBricks, including threshold management capabilities.
“Consumption based transacting is difficult, and extra steps really need to be taken,” Walsh said. “Before, we provided support for SaaS-based products, and now our integration will include consumption-based usage data as well.”
The plus of consumption-based billing is that you are billed only for what you use, but the minus is that costs are not predictable and can lead to end-of-the-month surprises.
“Adding threshold management, and alerts that partners can set when they are close to threshold gives them more control,” Walsh said. “They can also do this from within ConnectWise.”
Walsh noted that there is no charge to partners for these additional capabilities.
Walsh also provided some additional Pax8 updates. First, he noted that two of their executives, Don Jeter, and Jennifer Bodell have been promoted. Bodell is now Vice President of Channel and Jeter is now Vice President of Marketing. Both will continue reporting to Nick Heddy, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
“We are excited about these promotions,” Walsh said. “Pax8 has been driving very strong growth and both of them have been having a huge impact on the channel, so we are expanding their role.”
“Marketing is often thought of as external messaging, but we do more listening than anything,” Jeter said. “Our value proposition back to the channel is based on what they tell us, and we are agile and able to make changes on the fly. Pax8’s growth thus reflects our approach to distribution, not just from a technology standpoint but through our unique focus on partner support, which creates trust in the partner community. Having the same people out at all of these industry events is important, because it reinforces the fact they see the same messaging from us at each event.”
Bodell noted the strong reception Pax8 is getting in IT communities.
“HTG [Heartland Technology Group] just named us their Rookie of the Year,” she said.
Pax8 is also increasing their presence in the Canadian market.
“You will see more activity from us in Canada with some select vendors, notably Symantec,” Walsh indicated. “They recognize that we can help them get back their presence back in Canada in the way that the market wants.”
