Following his recent appointment as VP of Channel and Community Engagement at cloud marketplace creator Pax8, Eric Torres told Channel Insider why he was drawn to Pax8, where opportunities lie for Pax8 partners, his view on the channel broadly, and more.
Longtime fan of Pax8 now reunited with Rob Rae
For Torres, his new role at Pax8 is a perfect blend of new opportunity and existing camaraderie at a company he has followed the success of for years.
“I’ve always been a fan of all the things Pax8 is doing,” Torres said. “Rob Rae is kind of where I learned everything from, in a sense, and so this role is a perfect scenario.”
Torres and Rae previously worked together at Datto. In addition to his time there, Torres served as Channel Chief at ScalePad. He began his career at a managed services provider before jumping into his vendor roles.
“I can give a viewpoint of having been in the partners’ shoes on their side of the table,” Torres said of his time at an MSP. “I’ve done everything other than being an engineer, really, so I can speak to business operations, and building a sales team, plus vendor strategy, customer profiling, and more. I bring that to every conversation I have with an MSP.”
Marketplaces: the new channel frontier
Pax8 unveiled its new cloud marketplace experience in June at its Beyond conference in Denver. Now, Torres is focused on helping partners realize the benefits of utilizing that marketplace.
“When I saw it at Beyond, I was just blown away, and conversations around me coming over in this role started shortly after that,” Torres said. “I just thought, ‘wow, this is going to streamline operations for partners and just really make business so much easier.”
Torres said he is excited to develop Pax8 partners’ understanding of opportunity within the marketplace and how they can grow through it with Pax8 resources.
“There is a tremendous amount of furthering existing partners to deepen their journey with Pax8 through things like our Academy and security program.”
AI the new challenge and opportunity for channel partners
As MSPs and other channel organizations prepare for 2025, AI is of course a predominant theme for many. Torres said he sees AI adoption as yet another new technology for the channel to embrace.
“If I look back through history, MSPs’ worlds change every few years, and always have,” Torres said. “Moving to the cloud, and what that entailed, was a huge shift, and so was business continuity and disaster recovery becoming a true managed service. AI is the next change, and partners are going to have to learn it and embrace it.”
Torres said he sees his role as an opportunity to help MSPs embrace the challenges and use them to discover new opportunity and growth potential. Along the way, he highlights peer-to-peer connection as another enabler for channel success.
Education and peer insights are key to success
“Everybody in the channel is in this together” is Torres’ outlook on how relationships between MSPs should form for the sake of collective success. He highlighted peer groups, vendor enablement resources, and personal networking as key activities for MSPs of all shapes and sizes to take advantage of.
“Some larger MSPs don’t always see the value, especially of talking with smaller operations they maybe don’t think they can learn from, but I think every partner can learn something from someone else, and we shouldn’t be afraid of sharing information.”
Now that he has started his Pax8 role officially, Torres is focused on working closely with Rae and other leaders to grow the partner base utilizing the marketplace and deepening the relationship between Pax8 and its existing partners. He has identified security, especially within compliance and cyber insurance, alongside AI and other emerging technologies, as potential priority areas for partners.
He will shape the company’s channel events strategy and work closely to bring Pax8 Academy and other programming to more partners as well.
September was a busy month for leadership changes throughout the channel. Read our recap of moves and additions to learn more about which companies have welcomed new executives.