Bam Boom! Pax8 Buys Cloud Company to Enable MSPs with Microsoft Dynamics
The purchase will help partners automate clients’ business processes. Rob Rae will play a role, too.
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Perhaps more than ever, organizations are understanding the need to automate more business processes. After all, manual intervention and manipulation means more room for error — and a lot more time drained.
Business process automation takes aim at both of those problems, and frees experts within an organization to focus on more strategic, revenue-generating projects. On that note, research firm Forrester forecasts that demand for Microsoft business applications services will hit $10.3 billion in 2025. Plus, even though the predicted recession might not hit as hard as originally predicted, organizations are focused on becoming more efficient.
Put all those facts together and it’s easy to see why Pax8 targeted Bam Boom Cloud for acquisition.
“We have been looking for a long time … [for] a way to add that Dynamics practice,” Pax8 CRO Nick Heddy said.
Pax8 doesn’t just provide access to various brands on its cloud marketplace — it also helps MSPs deliver through professional services. With that in mind, the company sees Microsoft as the foundation of many an MSP’s practice. And it’s getting deeper into the data and machine-learning side of things. Both domains call for skill and knowledge, and often, MSPs need help bulking up those areas. With Bam Boom Cloud, Pax8 will offer Dynamics-centric professional services with the intent to enable MSPs to eventually provision Dynamics on their own.
“Dynamics is incredibly hard to hire for,” Heddy said. Bam Boom Cloud “has 135 employees who live and breathe Dynamics.”
So, for starters, this team will help Pax8 MSPs to identify Dynamics opportunities within existing customer bases, and guide the resulting initiatives.
“Dynamics is one of those things, it can do so much but it’s hard to figure out where to start, especially in a small-to-midsize business,” Heddy said.
Bam Boom Cloud specifically focuses on automating processes within SMBs.
Pax8 was looking for a business process automation firm that believed, like itself, in enabling partners, not just doing the work for them into perpetuity.
“A lot of people want to be enabled,” Heddy said.
As such, given Bam Boom Cloud’s automation capabilities and guidance around assessments and deployments, and its culture, everything came as a fit. The numbers, teams and capabilities all made sense, Heddy said. And, perhaps most of all, partners will get access to “new revenue streams they have not had before,” he said.
While Heddy wouldn’t go into specifics, he did indicate that Pax8 could take on more acquisitions in 2023. In 2022, the cloud marketplace distributor purchased TVG, Sea-Level Operations APAC (after buying Sea-Level Operations in 2021) and Umbrellar.
The company also attained a $1.7 billion valuation, raised $185 million and crossed the $1 billion annual run rate threshold. Those factors combined point to more M&A activity on Pax8’s part. Heddy said the company looks for three main areas when assessing potential purchases: geography, for expansion purposes; additional services it can offer to partners; and features and functions it can add to its platform instead of having to build them.
Well-known channel influencer Rob Rae just joined Pax8’s ranks as corporate vice president of community and ecosystem this week. Channel Futures was curious to understand how the Bam Boom Cloud deal and Rae’s hiring might both play into Pax8’s aim to attract more MSPs. Here’s what Heddy told us:
“They do work together nicely. I’ve always been a big Rob Rae fan. … He has always been humble in saying, ‘Microsoft is something I want to learn more about.’ … Partners don’t know everything we offer. … So Rob is absolutely going to help us amplify Pax8 globally. … This is another arrow in our quiver on how we can help our partners.”
Bam Boom Cloud’s employees work from the U.S., the UK, Germany, India and Canada, Pax8 noted in its press release, giving Pax8 more reach into those areas. Bam Boom offers fixed monthly pricing and fixed-scope technology solutions for SMBs.
Bam Boom Cloud’s employees work from the U.S., the UK, Germany, India and Canada, Pax8 noted in its press release, giving Pax8 more reach into those areas. Bam Boom offers fixed monthly pricing and fixed-scope technology solutions for SMBs.
Pax8 managed service providers (MSPs) seeking to help their customers automate more business processes have a new champion in Bam Boom Cloud.
On Thursday, cloud marketplace distributor Pax8 announced its latest acquisition — that of U.S.- and U.K.-based Bam Boom Cloud. The company specializes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central services. In fact, 2022 marked Bam Boom Cloud’s fourth time in a row it earned Microsoft’s Partner of the Year recognition.
Pax8 remains privately held so it did not disclose terms of the deal, its fourth purchase since January 2022. (The cloud marketplace distributor is a pre-IPO, private equity-backed firm. Many industry insiders believe it could go public soon if the IPO market rebounds in 2023; that, or sell to a larger entity in tech distribution.) However, Pax8’s Nick Heddy, chief commerce officer, did tell Channel Futures the company is bringing on Bam Boom’s 135 employees “who live and breathe Dynamics.”
Keep up with the latest channel-impacting mergers and acquisitions in our M&A roundup. |
Learning ‘to Fish’
These experts will work directly with Pax8 MSPs, teaching them “to fish,” as it were. Microsoft Dynamics does not have a reputation for being an easy platform to learn or deploy. Pax8 intends to address that obstacle by bringing together Bam Boom Cloud staff with MSPs. We get more on that strategy from Heddy in the slideshow above.
Meanwhile, here’s what Pax8 CEO John Street had to say about why the company bought Bam Boom Cloud:
“Business process automation is on the rise, and the Bam Boom acquisition will enable us to create new simple go-to-market strategies and services for partners to build on their Microsoft Dynamics technology offerings. Together, our people, cloud marketplace, programs, services and resources will enable MSPs to capitalize on the market opportunities with business applications solutions and add new revenue streams to their organizations,” said Street.
For more details on the Pax8-Bam Boom Cloud combination (including where the newly hired Rob Rae fits into the strategy), see the slideshow above.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Kelly Teal or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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