Channel veteran and former local Datto boss James Bergl has joined US-based distributor and cloud commerce marketplace provider Pax8.
Bergl is one of three local Pax8 executives to lead the company’s expansion into Asia, which will initially start in Australia and New Zealand. He joins as vice president of business development for Asia.
In his new role, Bergl will lead the company’s pre-sales teams, consulting teams and education programs.
Also joining Bergl at Pax8 are former rhipe chief strategy officer Chris Sharp as Asia senior vice president, who will lead the ANZ team and manage the wider Asia business, and Pax8 veteran Tracy Lacewell as vice president of sales for Asia.
“After a wonderful few months, I'm extremely excited to share that I have just joined the most exciting and fastest-growing companies in the MSP channel, to launch and help build out their ANZ and Asia business,” Bergl said in a LinkedIn post.
“Pax8 is disrupting traditional distribution with their 'born in the cloud' e-commerce marketplace. Channel partners (MSPs) can simply buy, sell & manage cloud applications without the headaches and revenue leakage that often exist today.”
Bergl departed MSP software company Datto in October 2021 after more than six years as its regional vice president for Australia and New Zealand. He helped launch the company’s Australia business in 2015.
Prior to Datto, Bergl was regional sales manager for Asia-Pacific for N-Able Technologies (formerly Solarwinds MSP) from 2013 to 2015. Before that, he was at the company’s United Kingdom office as an account executive. Other stints include SaaS vendor Eloqua (now part of Oracle), Autotask (now part of Datto) and SAP.
Pax8 bills itself as a cloud commerce marketplace with a presence in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Some of its local vendor partners include Acronis, Check Point (email security), Bitdefender, CyberCNS, Dropsuite, Proofpoint and SentinelOne.
Speaking on Pax8’s expansion, global chief revenue officer Nick Heddy said, “As we continue to look for new ways to broaden our geographical reach, we are thrilled to announce that MSPs in Australia and New Zealand can now sign up to be a Pax8 partner.”
“Pax8 makes it easy for partners to cloud-enable businesses and efficiently capitalize on the growth opportunities. We are thrilled to introduce our leadership team in Australia and New Zealand and empower our expansion into the new regions with best of breed vendors.”
Incoming Pax8 Asia boss Chris Sharp said, “Pax8 is bringing something special and unique to our market, and I am excited to lead our expansion into the Asian markets starting in the Australia and New Zealand markets.”
“Our focus is on enabling our partners to create value-based offerings for their clients, and we look forward to helping our partners to increase their opportunity in the market.”
Based in Singapore, Sharp was most recently chief strategy officer at rhipe from 2014 to 2021, managing new markets, new geographies and new revenue streams for the distributor.
Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft’s Singapore office from 2003 to 2013 in various sales and management roles, and at Red Hat as APAC managing director from 2000 to 2003.
Tracy Lacewell joins Pax8 Asia after working at its US business since 2017, working up to vice president of sales for US in 2021. Her previous stints include IQ Wired, CoreSite, Dimension Data US, Cbeyond, Arrow Electronics and more.
