Pax8 Expands Euro Reach, Acquires Microsoft Cloud Distributor Resello

‘Our partners serving customers with managed Microsoft accounts often have accounts with satellites in other countries. Now they will have the opportunity to work with such clients much easier. Partners will now have a bigger global reach than they previously had,’ says Nick Heddy, Pax8’s chief revenue officer.

MSP-focused, born-in-the-cloud distributor Pax8 Thursday unveiled the acquisition of Resello, a Netherlands-based cloud services distributor, and said Resello will enable Pax8 to greatly expand its reach in the European market.

The acquisition will also bring advantages to Pax8’s U.S.-based MSP partner base, including giving them the chance to better work with multinational customers, said Nick Heddy, chief revenue officer for the Greenwood Village, Colo.-based and MSP-focused cloud distributor.

“Our partners serving customers with managed Microsoft accounts often have accounts with satellites in other countries,” Heddy told CRN. “Now they will have the opportunity to work with such clients much easier. Partners will now have a bigger global reach than they previously had.”

[Related: Pax8 Looks To Automation For Post-Pandemic Partner ‘Hypergrowth’]

Pax8, which is privately owned, declined to discuss the terms of the acquisition, which closed June 30.

For Pax8, Resello represented an opportunity to expand its European business in a big way, Heddy said.

Prior to the acquisition, Pax8 in January launched its U.K.-based office, and that month acquired Wirehive, a U.K.-based consultancy, Heddy told CRN. That gave Pax8 a total of 83 employees and over 600 channel partners, primarily focused on the U.K. market.

Resello is Pax8’s third acquisition of 2021. The company in May acquired Sea-Level Operations in a move aimed at enabling it to help its channel partners with coaching and education to improve their operations.

Resello is a cloud services distributor and a Microsoft CSP (Cloud Solution Provider), said Harald Nuij, managing director for the company.

“We offer services to ISPs and VARs, and support IT resellers looking to buy IT services in close to 40 European countries,” Nuij told CRN. “We felt there was room for more scale and growth, and so we entered discussions with Pax8.”

Resello is a cloud-born, cloud-native business, and the Pax8 platform will make it easier for Resello to serve the Azure market, Nuij said.

“Pax8 over time has made its platform easy to take services to customers, and provide support and training,” he said. “All these experiences will help us expand.”

For Pax8, it was hard to pass up the opportunity to expand its European base and perhaps bring a few new experiences back to its North American partner base, Heddy said.

“They do a lot of things that are complementary to what we do, including consulting, training, and workshops,” he said. “They don’t match one-to-one with what we do. But we will look at their offerings to see what we can bring to North America.”

Resello will be looking to on-board new incoming partners to the Pax8 platform, and plans to transition existing partners to Pax8 over the next couple months, Nuij said.

“Our current platform still functions fine,” he said. “We’re in no hurry. We want to make this transition as clean as possible.”

Resello was not originally looking to get acquire, but was looking for a third-party platform-as-a-service partner, Nuij said. It had a 172-point checklist, and Pax8 stood out,” he said.

“They were looking for a third party, but ended up joining the party,” Heddy said.