Cloud distributor Pax8 continues to expand and grow its vendor roster, adding Acronis and Dropsuite in the business continuity space, and IRONSCALES, Passportal and Proofpoint for different things within security.
Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8
ORLANDO – Cloud distributor Pax8 has announced that five new vendors have been added to their line card: Acronis, Dropsuite, IRONSCALES, Passportal, and Proofpoint. The announcement was made at the IT Nation Connect event here.
Pax8 continues to broaden out their line card, evolving the model from their 2012 launch. Initially they focused on the common boutique distribution strategy of concentrating on a single vendor in each category and dedicating their energies to building them up. They then began to add additional vendors in category areas, responding to MSP requests for more choice, and have accelerated that process since they introduced Pax8 Stax last spring. Stax is a BI tool that automates the process of identifying gaps in MSP customer solution stacks, and recommends offerings to fill those holes. While Pax8 has no intention of having anything resembling the line card of larger distributors , Stax by its nature is built on the availability of more choice in offerings.
“These five new vendors are a blend between newer innovative MSP-oriented products like IRONSCALE, Passportal, and Dropsuite, and established vendors,” said Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8. “These are great products to address the upsell and cross-sell capabilities that Pax8 Stax was built to address.”
Walsh said that the roadmap will see them continue to add one to two additional vendors a month.
“That is the plan for 2019,” Walsh said. “It will also continue to be a blend of existing vendors who launch new products of interest to our MSP audience, and new vendors that we hear about, investigate, and find are a good fit for us. We place a strong emphasis on sub-categories, to build out the options there.”
Walsh noted that while Pax8 has an apparent surfeit of backup and continuity vendors, which include Infrascale, Axcient, Datto, Dropsuite, and Acronis, their strengths in subcategories are different.
“We don’t see it as too many options,” he said. “There is a broad category of business continuity and within it, each of them shines in a unique way, and we have a differentiator for each. Stax lets the MSP utilize that to build the specific stack that they want.”
Pax8 first announced the Dropsuite partnership separately last week.
“They have a unique combination of email archiving and Office 365 backup that we like,” Walsh said.
Acronis, as a much more mature vendor, provides the same value in business continuity that Symantec does for Pax8 in security.
“They have a comprehensive suite of products, and a very robust line card, including things like DR-as-a-service that provide more choice in many areas,” Walsh said.
Passportal, which started in password management for MSPs and has moved into document management as well, addresses a couple of areas for Pax8.
“We were responding to two trends,” Walsh indicated. “One was general air cover over the concern around security and password management, which has become a perceived vulnerability for MSPs. They needed a way to tame this area of password management and protect information on behalf of their customers. Their moving into document management made sense, and adds a second capability.
Proofpoint is a cybersecurity vendor that has ramped up its focus on the channel.
“They have an enterprise grade threat intelligence focus, and have committed to the channel,” Walsh said. “They’ve been in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for a while. For them to see Pax8 as a conduit to the channel is a great fit, and adds an additional option for our email security. Like all our other vendors, they also have multitenancy, which is very important for us.”
IRONSCALES has developed an anti-phishing offering with a unique twist – the ability to analyze, detect, and remove malicious emails after they land in the inbox as well as before.
“We think they are really exciting,” Walsh said. “They have gotten coverage by publications like Forbes as being a really innovative product. They are able to supplement other anti-phishing products because they are focused on the inbox. They use both AI and human intelligence to identify a phishing attack, and once it has been reported, it can then be clawed back from the inbox. This is the only anti-phishing product that can take action to remove mail that has gotten through from the inbox once it has been delivered.”
Walsh said that Pax8 is now up to about 4500 MSP partners.
“To date, partner recruitment has been a huge focus for us, and we don’t want to slow that down,” he said. “However, we are also now putting a bigger spotlight on helping our partners grow their cloud practices, and the ability to upsell, cross-sell and build new stacks is a good way to do that.”
