Is Pax8 a distributor?
Judging by its recent New York Times advert, the cloud marketplace doesn’t like being called one.
Almost two-thirds of those who voted in our (deeply unscientific, not to mention soulless) LinkedIn poll said they think it’s a fair label.
IT Channel Oxygen ran the poll in the wake of the cloud marketplace’s latest marketing stunt, in which it goaded the world’s two largest IT distributors TD Synnex and Ingram Micro.
Entitled “They Were Wrong”, the advert – attributed to CEO Scott Chasin – argued that commentators had been wrong to position Pax8 as a distributor in its early days.
The move fuelled debate among other distributors, some of whom are also eager to reposition their businesses as platform or marketplace players (with Giacom Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Marke weighing in below).
It also drew praise for its boldness, with one go-to-market expert branding it a “mic drop” moment.
We put it out to the market in the only way we know how – via a profoundly unscientific LinkedIn poll. With less than an hour to go, and with 374 votes cast, the ‘Yesses’ (or ‘Yexxes’ to be more precise), had it by a margin of almost two-to-one.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
