Pax8 Launches Wingman Professional Services Around Microsoft Azure

Pax8 has unveiled Wingman Professional Services, a new program to give partners help when they need a hand on demanding jobs that could be beyond their capabilities as well as a path to recurring revenue through cloud subscriptions.

Wingman Professional Services is geared toward MSPs that are adopting Microsoft Azure and need a technical ally, which Pax8 delivers in the form of cloud architects and engineers who assist with planning, assessing, designing, migrating, customizing and optimizing cloud solutions.

’A lot of these guys have the experience in general,’ said Aaron Garza, vice president of business development at the Greenwood Village, Colo.-based cloud distributor. ’It’s just introducing a vendor-specific product, or ecosphere like Microsoft, it’s a little bit intimidating, it’s a little bit daunting. So having access to that Pax8 Wingman for more advanced technical services is a really big value-add for our guys.’

The Wingman Professional Services Program is also integrated with ConnectWise, Autotask, Tigerpaw and Kaseya so MSPs can customize billing, automate provisioning and import data.

Brandon Vuu, a technician at Business Data Links, Pomona, Calif., said his company is one of the early adopters of Wingman Professional Services and he’s a fan of the program.

’We’ve used their Wingman services, mostly to provide products such as Microsoft Office and disaster recover yoptions to our customers and so far they’ve been a great help,’ he said. ’It’s made the ordering process from Point A to Point B super simple and super quick. Billing also has been easy.’

Simplicity is key to the new program, and it's something smaller MSPs need.

’Anybody can go and open up an Azure account and set up a machine or two,’ he said. ’Now setting up the networking component and getting data from maybe an office off-site, and moving it into the cloud, making sure everything works and securing it, that’s a big task for a lot of those smaller MSPs,’ he said. ’They’ve been doing this for years on-prem. You introduce something like Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft in general, and they feel completely out of their realm. It's really uncomfortable.’

Garza said Pax8 anticipates high demand for the program among MSPs working with SMBs. The program was created after Pax8 ’looked across the industry’ at similar programs.

’We noticed there was a large gap,’ Garza said. ’These programs have been built to cater to very large engagements. At the core of cloud adoption, it’s not the bigger guys that are making the biggest shifts. It’s the smaller guys. So the idea of spending time with them, helping facilitate that transition when push comes to shove -- it’s a big value-add for them.

’The one thing I hear consistently on the road is, you guys just fix things,’ Garza said. ’At the end of the day, that’s what partners want. They’re looking for a reliable entity to help them with things that do not go right. … It really helps them, from a confidence level, to know that they’ve got a squad.’