May 29, 2019

Ryan Walsh: What’s so different about Cloud Distribution?

46 minutes

Pax8’s mission to redefine cloud distribution

What is the role of distributors in this age of Cloud and SaaS? That’s the question we answer in this episode with Ryan Walsh, Chief Channel Officer and co-founder of Pax8. Ryan and his fellow co-founders took a different approach in building Pax8 to support every piece of the partner journey in buying and selling Cloud products.

We talk about the role of the channel, channel incentive models, and the unique challenges of Cloud distribution that Pax8 is solving. Ryan shares what he looks for in a cloud vendor and the profile of the most successful managed service providers (MSPs).

KEY TAKEAWAYS

What makes Cloud distribution so different?

Cloud partners need a cloud marketplace with automated provisioning and integration with their PSA (Professional Services Automation) system. They also need marketing, pre and post-sales, and billing support, solution stack guidance, and other tools to help them grow their cloud service business.

Many MSPs (Managed Service Providers) don’t have the ability to support monthly subscription billing. Their cloud distributor’s billing system should be able to handle it for them.

Vendors need help supporting the billing motion of thousands of partners getting monthly invoices. Using a cloud distributor allows the vendor to just send one invoice per month.

Ryan and his co-founders launched Pax8 as a born-in-the-cloud distributor to find a better way to aggregate and offer cloud offerings to MSPs. They now serve over 6500 MSPs through their cloud marketplace.

Most Successful Partners

The most successful MSPs are shedding their old model and have gone all-in on cloud-based products. Those with more than 50% of their revenue from cloud offerings are growing faster and are more profitable.

What Pax8 looks for in a Vendor

Commitment to the channel

A high-quality proven solution with great support

Great margin for the partners (in the 20% to 30% range)

Automated provisioning and an API to billing data

A commitment to the Pax8 mission to redefine how distribution works in the cloud.