Pax8 Snags Intelisys' Andrew Pryfogle

MICROSOFT INSPIRE — Distributor Pax8 on Monday announced that Andrew Pryfogle, IT industry veteran and former Intelisys senior vice president, cloud transformation, has joined the company as its chief market development officer, a new role at Pax8.

Pax8’s Andrew Pryfogle

As six-year old Pax8 strives to establish a leadership position in modernizing IT distribution, the cloud distributor recently directed its focus on the yet to be realized convergence of the managed service provider (MSP) and telco agent channels, which is right up Pryfogle’s alley.

“Intelisys and our agents continue to be on the leading edge in advising customers on the best solutions for their businesses. We have a strong leadership team of cloud and technology visionaries that are committed to helping our partners grow their business. In keeping with that, we will be filling Andrew’s position. We appreciate his contributions during his time at Intelisys,” Melissa Andrews, manager, worldwide public relations, ScanSource, Intelisys’ parent company, told us, when we asked if there are plans to replace Pryfogle.

Channel Partners caught up with Pryfogle and Nick Heddy, chief revenue officer at Pax8, to learn more about the newly created position at the company and how Pryfogle is positioned to help Pax8 realize its vision.

Channel Futures: Before I ask Andrew why he joined Pax8 to take on the chief market development officer position, we need to understand why Pax8 created this new position in the first place.

Nick Heddy: [CEO] John Street, myself and others among our executive team have a telco background – John started Telephone Express, one of his first successful companies – and when we started the company six years ago, we always thought that this would be a good path to go down.

John Street has been watching this convergence very closely with a lot of interest and we think that the time is now. We’re seeing new cloud products come to market that are crossing the barrier – agents can sell them and MSPs can sell them – so we believe that the time is now and that convergence is here, and we want to be the company that’s able to unify this ecosystem. We want to stop talking about MSPs and agents and treating them differently, and refer to everyone as a partner and unify this complex ecosystem.

CF: And what about this new role at the company?

NH: Pax8 now has over 7,000 partners in our ecosystem and 99% of those are MSPs. If we want to continue on this growth path that we’re on, we need someone with the expertise and track record like Andrew in a new position, to help us develop this new channel, which is agents.

Pax8’s Nick Heddy

We think that this is going to open the door and allow us to grow at double the rate we are today. We’re bringing on about 400 MSPs monthly and we think that with this new offering, where we’re bringing our all of our stack categories through the MSP channel, we think that we can add new categories. Networking devices and UCaaS are some that we’re evaluating right now.

Andrew Pryfogle: I’m super excited about this opportunity. I think that it’s spot-on; this convergence of the channel is really starting to accelerate. Going forward, there’s not going to be a pure-play MSP or pure-play agent or VAR or integrator or whatever kind of title you want to use for that. I think that end user customers will dictate to partners – this is how I want to consume, this is how I want to buy – and partners of all stripes will have to be prepared to address those needs through a variety of business models.

Customers don’t wake up and say, “I have this technology problem; maybe I should call and MSP or VAR or agent.” Instead they’re asking, “I’ve got this technology problem, and who do I trust to help me solve it?” Partners have to get good across a much broader breadth of services to be able to address that. That’s where Pax8 has some advantage.

Agents have a tremendous opportunity to …

… expand their capabilities and to leverage the intelligent platform that Pax8 has developed, which is phenomenal. And MSPs are going to open up new revenue opportunities with the categories just mentioned [networking and UCaaS]. There are a lot of MSPs that haven’t yet gone into the areas of UCaaS, cloud contact centers, and SD-WAN. That’s all money on the table that they can grab and garner a greater share of wallet with their customers.

We want to be the leading cloud distributor to make that process super easy and enable partners to grow their customer relationships.

CF: Talk a bit more about the acceleration of this MSP-agent channel convergence.

AP: IDC has come out with research that the digitization of the channel represents a $7 trillion opportunity by 2022 and if you’re not evolving as either an agent or an MSP, you stand to lose two-thirds of your addressable market. I think it’s not going to be an easy evolution for us to make, but we have a strategy called Wingman Express, partner-to-partner services that are connected through our platform.

NH: Wingman Express is currently a concept that will enable partner to partner interaction and exchange of services. We’re in early discussions about it and hope to have a broader announcement about it later in the year.

CF: Why did you leave Intelisys, Andrew?

AP: I’ve always been a fan of disruption in the industry and change in the industry, and I’ve been watching what Pax8 has been doing over the past few years and it’s been incredibly impressive. I believe that the industry is ripe for disruption and I think traditional distribution is absolutely ripe for disruption. I don’t know anyone else out there that is close to doing that other than Pax8. It’s fun and exciting to be a part of that.

I’ve had a great run at Intelisys – seven years. We’ve accomplished a ton, but I’m ready for the next challenge and I’m super excited about Pax8. I would not have left Intelisys for any other opportunity. This is a chance for us to change the industry, disrupt traditional distribution and redefine what product distribution is all about.