Pax8 and Veeam also align strongly in the Office 365 space, and the new North American agreement should help grow Veeam’s business there.
Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8
MIAMI – Cloud distributor Pax8 has entered into a new distribution deal with Veeam Software, which makes Veeam Availability solutions available to Pax8’s MSPs in North America. These solutions include Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam ONE, Veeam Cloud Connect, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, and Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows. The announcement was made during VeeamON 2019 here, where Pax8 is a Silver sponsor.
Pax8 is a boutique distributor, with a limited line card of vendors with whom they work closely. A year ago, they introduced Pax8 Stax, a BI tool that automates the process of identifying gaps in MSP customer solution stacks, and recommends offerings to fill those holes. That has led them to increase slightly the number of vendors whom they carry, to provide a more differentiated range of solutions appropriate to particular MSP solution stacks.
“At events, particularly when we were introducing new MSPs to Pax8, we would ask them who was missing from our line card and consistently, Veeam has been the number one vendor identified,” said Ryan Walsh, chief channel officer at Pax8.
Given that both Veeam and Pax8’s primary audiences are in the SMB space, and that Veeam works with a broad range of distributors, a relationship here would intuitively seem like it should have developed before now, but Walsh said that there were complications.
“We heard the need from MSPs to connect with Veeam for years, but when we reached out to them earlier, they were undergoing some changes,” Walsh said. “Even though they were increasingly focused on cloud, so we were where they wanted to go, and they were also focused on an Office 365 backup option, and we have a strong Office 365 sales play, it took a while to bring this about. In the shift to the cloud there were experiences with what they term aggregators – distributors – that they wanted to fully understand before they brought in another one. Pax8 has a very proactive model which is different from traditional distribution. They decided that they wanted a proactive sales enablement partner to help grow this business.”
Veeam has been aggressively attempting to grow its enterprise business as well as its cloud business over the last several years, and Walsh said that working with Pax8 makes it easier for Veeam to develop that enterprise presence.
“We align with three types of vendors,” he indicated. “One is providers who are going after the SMB market. Another is makers of an innovative new product who pick us to come into the channel. And the third is strong brands who want to cover everything from SMB to the enterprise. That one is where Veeam fits. Having a partner like Pax8 who lives in the long tail of the SMB lets them move upmarket while we cover the SMB and the midmarket. It allows them to pursue their enterprise strategy, without compromising their SMB strategy.”
“We think that this is an exciting opportunity with Pax8,” James Mundle, Vice President of Worldwide Channels at Veeam, told ChannelBuzz. “They do very well in the Office 365 market, and we have a tremendous Office 365 offering. We expect they will generate additional value, and they will bring us into additional markets. I think it’s a great addition.”
While Veeam adds yet another vendor in the business continuity space to Pax8’s line card, Walsh said that the distributor remains consistent with its select partnering strategy.
“Our model hasn’t changed,” he said. “Business continuity and security are both areas where, when you peel back the onion, vendors have different flavours. I don’t have incentives to have too many options in a subcategory. But this is different. This is software which lets you identify your own primary/secondary cloud storage option, so it provides another focus, which is consistent with what we said we would do. Our other vendors in this space also have a distinct focus, such as an emphasis on disaster recovery. This fits perfectly with our strategy because our console lets us do that, so it aligns well with the Pax8 Stax concept.”
