'We want to be the best localised support for MSPs in every corner of Europe' - Pax8 EMEA CEO dreams big

CRN spoke to Harald Nuij about continued expansion plans and turning economic challenges into opportunities

Born-in-the-cloud distributor Pax8 is raising the bar for 2023 to further aliment last year's explosive growth.

In 2022, the company reached a total valuation of $1.7bn, a burst fuelled by raising $185m in a funding round led by SoftBank.

It also made two global acquisitions - Microsoft Gold Cloud Solutions Partner Umbrellar and Baltics cloud services distributor TVG, while having its revenue run-rate exceed the $900m mark.

"We currently have 11 offices around Europe, and we are getting to the 400 mark of total colleagues, we also provide sales and support in 26 different European languages," said Harald Nuij, CEO of Pax8 EMEA.

"Our plans are to support our MSPs and become the best localised support in every corner in Europe for MSPs."

Nuij explained his strategy for achieving this has three "dimensions".

"One is through supporting MSPs to accelerate growth, then there's reducing risks for them. And thirdly, to make them more operationally efficient," he said.

"These are the three value drivers that we recognise across the business. And everything we do is pointed at those value props."

To carry this out, Nuij said the company works with solution consultants and solution engineers, to talk to partners and understand their needs and concerns.

"We try to identify where they find themselves, what their ambitions are for the near future and longer future, how we need to train their sales force, if their tech stack is equipped for the end customer verticals that they are addressing etc."

Furthering business

A veteran of almost 20 years in the channel, Nuij came to work for Pax8 through one of their acquisitions. He was one of three owners of Microsoft distributor Resello, which Pax8 acquired in July 2021.

And as part of this continued expansion, the Bristol-based distributor recently partnered with Adobe to bring digital media MSP services to its EMEA marketplace.

And the acquisition of Baltics cloud services distributor TVG played a key role in the development of this relationship, he said.

"TVG was already a market leader on Adobe in the Baltic states, and were talking high-double digit market shares.

"And they developed a very serious and deep understanding on the portfolio on and how to bring this to the MSP channel.

"For us this was the first time that we actually worked with Adobe, or a vendor of the same magnitude."

Nuij pointed out that their expansion plans are aimed at growing the business as well as reducing risk and becoming more operationally efficient.

"So, every non-autonomous acquisition that we made or growth that we have achieved was based on one of those layers."

He also opened up to CRN about the opportunity that the cloud marketplace has become.

"Seven or eight years ago MSPs and IT resellers signed up with their existing hardware provider in most cases, and they joined their cloud marketplace. But nobody really knew what cloud services was all about.

"However, what we've seen over the last seven or eight years, is that these early steps into cloud services have now evolved into a significant piece of the MSPs business.

"At the same time, they haven't really seen a tremendous uptake in the technology of their provider of the knowledge or accessibility of their provider.

"So, with that in mind, many of them out there now feel that it is time to rethink about who their preferred provider and support is or should be for the cloud services.

"And you can really see that with the way we position ourselves, and the track record that we have, that we are able to attract a lot of MSPs to come work with Pax8. So I expect that we will be able to continue that growth, because the market is huge and we've only just started really in Europe."

And as for further acquisitions, Nuji said: "International expansion is very high on the agenda that fits into this accelerated growth bucket.

"But we're also really looking at more technological acquisitions, which would benefit Pax8 in terms of reducing the risk and increasing the operational efficiency. So that could be more from a technology perspective."

He added: "The channel is broken, it's still a bit old fashioned and needs a bit of a refresh. And we're trying to bring this to the channel, by the things that we do and the way we do it."