Pax8 President and Chief Commerce Officer Nick Heddy was warned last year at the inaugural Pax8 Beyond conference that anything he did would become a tradition. Well, he certainly took that to heart as he enthusiastically greeted the audience with, "Welcome to the [freaking] show!"
Rob Rae, Pax8's corporate VP of community and ecosystems kicked things off with a recap of how much the event has grown since last year -- this year, around 1,600 partners from 17 different countries are in attendance at the event, held June 9-11 in Denver, Colorado.
"My quota this year was 1,500, so I earned my bonus," Rae joked. He added that 350 of Pax8's employees and 130 vendor sponsors were also in attendance and teased a few upcoming product announcements before introducing Heddy.
Heddy walked through Pax8's history, starting with its original disruption of the cloud solutions space, its community building phase and its introduction last year of the Pax8 Marketplace. He mentioned that the Marketplace supports 138 million SMBs worldwide with 15 million users supporting 60+ million customers. That translates, he said, to one transaction every minute of every day.
Heddy hinted that updates to the Pax8 marketplace would be a "game-changer," and that the company was building a data-driven intelligence platform that would serve as "the marketplace of the future." He cited the company's Pax8 Academy, which provides support and enablement for MSPs, adding that for partners who gain skills and knowledge through the academy, their customers consume 2.5 times more cloud.
"Think about that," he said. "What would your business look like if your customers consumed two-and-a-half times more?"
He touted the benefits of partnering with Pax8 and its Results Selling Framework to help MSPs become experts on various solutions. The company's billing automation solution saves companies two days labor per month, two weeks of labor on consumption-based licenses and helps them gain $25,000 in revenue and 29% increased sales over three years, he said.
Speaking of revenue, Heddy announced that the company recently surpassed $2 billion in annual recurring revenue, and that, when taking into account Pax8 partner pull-through, the total economic impact is $12 billion.
Of course, he said, it wouldn't be a technology industry conference without mentioning AI, and Heddy said Pax8 was the first marketplace to bring Microsoft Copilot to general availability to MSPs and their customers (though he added that fact should be confirmed with Microsoft). Following a few video case studies of Pax8 partners and their experience delivering Copilot-based solutions, Heddy turned the stage over to Canalys's Jay McBain to address their channel research and cybersecurity before he returned with more on the AI opportunity for Pax8 partners. I'll have more on McBain's keynote soon.
AI, Heddy said, is projected to contribute a staggering $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, and Pax8 is ready to help partners take advantage of that.
"This is a doorway to a new business landscape that is ripe for innovation and growth, and this is just the beginning," he said. "As we peel back the layers of AI and what it can do for you, we're setting the stage for even more innovative solutinos that keep you at the forefront of the technology curve."
