Pax8 Roadshow Special - Scott Sacket

In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Scott Sacket, Senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AvePoint. With 19 years at AvePoint and a background as a former managed service provider, Scott brings a rare blend of vendor and channel perspectives on how partnership programs and data governance are evolving in the AI era.

Scott opens with the story of AvePoint's shift from direct-first to a channel-driven business, one that now sees 100% growth in partner-sourced bookings for multiple quarters. He then explains how AvePoint has redesigned its partner program, moving away from the traditional revenue-tiered model to a points-based system that recognizes the many ways partners create value. Certifications, product mix, team training breadth, co-marketing, pre-sales, technical support, and renewal rates all count alongside revenue. It's a program built around the idea that partners come in all shapes and sizes, and every large partner today started as a small one worth investing in.

From there, the conversation turns to what's happening now in the market. Scott makes the case that AI has kicked off a governance gold rush for managed service providers. AvePoint has been doing data governance for 25 years, well before the term was popular, and the current AI moment is bringing new relevance to that expertise. He shares a striking gap: 75% of companies have already built or tested AI agents, and 70% have no governance plan in place. Every agent needs an owner and a governance framework, and the partners delivering that will be in the strongest position ahead.

Scott closes with a mantra that fits the pace of the AI era: fail forward. Move fast, try things, focus on the partners and customers you serve, and remember that what's important today probably won't be in twelve months.

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Transcript

Welcome From PAX8 Beyond

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel. Coming to you from PAXA Beyond 2026 in Salt Lake City, I'm really happy to sit down with Scott Sackett from Avpoint. Scott, how are you? I am great. Thank you. That's fantastic. Hey, before we get into it, um, I'd like to know a little bit about you, your background, a little bit about Av Point.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Yeah, I've been at AvPoint now 19 years. Oh wow, right? So um it's been an unbelievable journey through uh you know being a startup to now, you know, global publicly traded company. Um and prior to AvPoint, I worked at an MSP. So of course, channel is rooted in my DNA. And um, yeah, I mean, we've lived from the the server world and SharePoint to the cloud. And now, of course, we're in this incredible new AI journey, right? And through all of that, you know, Avpoint is now 25 years old. Yeah. Uh this July is our our 25th anniversary. And we've been, you know, we've been able to be part of that journey, you know, really focusing on unstructured data, governance, resilience. And that's been sort of a continuous thread throughout.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah. Must be fascinating to be at a company for 19 years and actually uh experience in person every single one of those revolutions, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

It's been an unbelievable experience. Um, you know, people often ask why you stay so long at one place. You know, that's not that common nowadays. And I say, well, truthfully, it feels like I've been at three or four different companies over that time. Um, we're very agile, we're we're very quick to you know, listen to the market and pivot and and and really, you know, think about how we ultimately solve really hard problems.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, I think that's so valuable. And I I've experienced not not not through all the revolutions, but I went through the SAS revolution and of course not in the AI revolution, and it really does feel like the the world almost resets from a technology perspective, like okay, this is the starting point of an entirely new era. And it brings so much, I mean, obviously it does bring some challenges, but it also brings so much excitement to see where we're going next.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

For us, it's you know, a focus on solving hard problems for our partners, solving hard problems for their customers. And typically, if that's your North Star, you you turn out okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, you know, exactly. I love that. So it's super simple, but really valuable.

From Direct Sales To Channel

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah. Um, speaking of, so AvPoint went from direct sales first to 100% growth in partners worth booking for multiple quarters in a row. What was the shift in how you approached the channel that made that possible that growth?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah, I mean, we always had channel relationships in our early days. We worked with a lot of consultants, we worked with some GSIs, um, and our roots were in SharePoint. So, you know, enterprise complex. Um, we weren't going for scale, we weren't really, you know, going for sort of this, you know, uh channel levered motion. It was much more tactical in that go-to-market. But as like we talked about these shifts in in the world changed, you know, technology, we really did need channel to help us evolve our business and and that go to market. And um, you know, the the channel motion comes in so many different ways. I mean, you know, a partner like TaxAid and a two-tier model is one way, right? Helps you recruit folks like managed service providers. But yeah, we still leverage, of course, resellers and and other um, you know, other partner vehicles, right, that have, you know, tremendous amounts of influence on the customer decision. Um, what we realized is that, you know, customers ultimately, the end customer, um, there are a lot of points of influence. And we want to make sure that we have that sort of relationship throughout, you know, before they've even thought about a vendor. Yeah. Right. We want to make sure that people know who we are and what we do and the hard problems we solve.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah, I find that an interesting perspective because sometimes you think like, oh, my solution is going to be probably e-packaged in a consolidated solution that an MSP offers, and the end customer might not even know at all. But I think that's um that's not a reason to forget about end customer branding and marketing and positional as well. Because if they have heard of you and they understand your reputation, it's so much easier for them to actually come back to their MSP and say, look, I'm looking for this AvPoint Smith and as compared to anything else.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah, no question. Um, I mean, managed services is a really, really valuable part of that partner ecosystem. Um, and as a matter of fact, we see more and more of these other partner types starting to transition or or sound really similar to what you would think is a traditional MSP, right? So you could be a LAR, and all of a sudden you have this massive managed services practice that sort of seemed to have come out of nowhere, right? But actually, there's been a lot of investment over the years. So um, you know, of course, we build four different personas. The managed service provider is a very, very important one for us.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, no, that that makes total sense. I'm just wondering, seeing as obviously your MSP time was a while ago, you went with F Point for 19 years, but it did that experience help you kind of shape how you approach MSPs today?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I hope so. Yeah. Um, you know, not just from a technology perspective, which is everything we build, we want to make sure it integrates and fits into the way the MSP goes to market and how their technology stack works, yeah, but also culturally, right? I mean, MSPs have a very specific culture and how they think about their business and the types of vendors that they work with. Um, you know, they want to make sure that the vendor is most importantly focused on them and how they work, right? And and we spend a lot of time making sure that our partners and our MSPs are not just getting great technology from us, but they're getting the sort of go-to-market support that helps them be successful because it's not just about solving the technical problem, it's about helping them build a much bigger business, which as an MSP really resonated with me when vendors treated us that way.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah, that that's fascinating. I think especially for SMB MSPs, that's like, oh, they don't have the resources or capacity to do certain go-to-market motions, and having that support from a vendor in how they got to market is is invaluable. That's right.

Points Based Partner Program

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Um, speaking of um, most pro uh partner programs obviously still hand out tiers um based on revenue, um, but you have a totally different system. You have a points-based system. Can you talk a little bit about that? Why that works? What made you made that make that shift?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone um traditionally had the metallic revenue-based program. And while there's value to it, you know, obviously, you know, something that's been around a long time, there had to have been some value somewhere. We really wanted to modernize the program and really think more about well, partners come in all shapes and sizes. And if your program is primarily indexed on revenue, you're really excluding most of the market. Yeah. Right. And most of our ecosystem. So we wanted to refactor that to think much more about their investment into Av point and our investment back to them. So, you know, revenue is still a component, it has to be, sure, right? But also things like certifications, really important. How many people do you have certified? Um, product mix, right? When you're selling, not just how much, but what you're selling, right? Um, how many people are actually trained, not just, you know, one person has done a million certifications, but how much of your team, co-marketing, and so on. So we want to look at from everything from pre-sales to technical support to ultimately sales, and then even things like renewal rate, right? You know, GRR and NRR. And and we really want to look at them just as we look at our own sales team, right? We don't just value the guy who is at the top of the leaderboard. We value our sales reps for a variety of different reasons. Yeah. And our MSPs, of course, are in many ways an extension, right, to our business organization, right? So we we try to have a much more comprehensive, robust program that factors in way more than just how much do I sell.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

I think that really touches on that we sometimes try to put things in boxes that are just that we already do in real life in the real world, and and we somehow don't apply that to something like a partner program where I'm thinking of direct sales, where like I used to have colleagues um in like enterprise sales, strategic sales, and then commodity sales. And the commodity sales guys, they would have massive numbers, right? But they would still be like, Yeah, yeah, but you're just selling boxes. Like, yeah, but what difference does that make? And if in a partner program you're only focused on revenue, that's crazy. It's all relative, right? That they're serving different markets, different types of partners. So you're you're indeed you're shooting yourself in the foot by um doing like a one-size-fits-all program.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

So something like this makes so much you're telling the market that they're not important if they don't sell a lot. Yeah, right. And that may not be true. Maybe for some vendors it is, but for us, there's a lot of different partners serving a lot of different really important areas in the market, and we want to make sure there's a place for them in our ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, and it makes sense also from a loyalty perspective, almost if if I'm a partner and I'm doing what I what for me feels like great business, and I get like a like a cardboard partner status, even though I feel like I'm doing great, uh, and I'm really uh aligned with with the values of the vendor, um, that's gonna make me feel worse about what I'm doing, right? And yeah, yeah, I I think it's such a such great L.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Remember, every small partner or every big partner, should I say, started as a small partner. Yeah, right. So you have to develop those relationships early and build that loyalty.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah.

AI Governance Becomes Urgent

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Um, you know what's interesting? Uh I think if you're looking at Microsoft's 365 right now, MSPs are really kind of sitting on a gold mine, if if that's the way I could say it. Copilot adoption, uh, data governance as a boardroom topic, expanding security requirements. So, how are you and Avcoin now leveraging that momentum in this new AI?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah, it's so funny. Um, I think it was maybe a week or two ago, CRN had Judson uh like front and center, Judson Altoff, and he quite literally said, you know, AI is now the gold rush for MSPs. Yeah. And specifically the ability to deliver security and governance services is going to be massively important over the next two years. So it's been um, you know, for us sort of uh reaffirming because we've been doing governance for 25 years, right? Before the topic was even or the term was even really popularized. Vault was cool. Yeah, exactly. Um, most people didn't know what governance meant. Yes, right. And so we have really um, it's almost re-energized us in many ways. Um, not that we weren't doing well before, we we've always had a great business, but now people actually understand, you know, right off the bat what we're doing, and they're actually starting to seek us out because they know in order to frankly support their customers in their needs to get to this sort of AI era, they need to have a plan, they need to have a services portfolio. And so we've done a tremendous amount of work packaging that for them to make it really, really easy.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, and especially now, right? It it seems for me, like we were just talking about RSA before this recording started, and and that's an incredible environment to be in, but it's also overwhelming. And at one point you're thinking, like, okay, but you say you do that, but that company also says they do that, and that company also says they do that, and everybody seems to be focused on the same thing. Like, how do you differentiate? And you can say, like, oh, you know, uh, a brand then is no longer important, it's really about the outcome. But I I disagree. Maybe it's because I'm a marketeer, right? I feel like if that's the case and and things almost become commoditized and it's outcome focused, then you can make that difference if you have a strong ground, uh, where your end customer says, that those are the guys that I that I want to work with because I've heard of them here and I know them here, and that works, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, no, I mean, we've like I said, we've been doing this 25 years, and um, you know, we've always focused on, you know, one, the partner, right? Making sure they're they're successful. But but also, you know, something that maybe isn't focused as much on as the governance is the data. Yeah, right. And the underlying data, frankly, is what makes all of this AI stuff work. Yes, right. And if your data estate is not in the right place, you're in trouble. And that is really sort of once again, through all these different eras of server to cloud to now AI, that's always where we've lived. Yeah. And so understanding data, making sure it's in a governed, secure, resilient state is going to make the difference for your customers ultimately on their success. Yeah. Right. And how we enable our partners to do that right is key. So, you know, brand is important, the technology and the product is obviously important and the marketing is important, but it's it's really that hyper focus on you know your core competency and what you're great at that helps deliver value.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Well, and especially now it's so easy to create their own applications. Um, and I recently had a fantastic conversation with with our CTO where I built a messaging hub with Claude and I said, I want to launch it. Like, put it behind a gated like password, whatever on a website. And he said, Oh yeah, do you want to be responsible for the data that's on there? And I was like, Oh wow, I I hadn't really thought about that. I was like, I made a great app. We want to use it. Um, and I think for a lot of companies, um, they might be a bit further along than I am, but they're still going to see that kind of stuff happen. People just coding something in cloud and just throwing it into the ether and not thinking about what that means for the beta security. So yeah, it becomes more critical now than ever to have a strong focus on yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

75% of companies have already built agents or been, you know, testing AI. Yeah. But 70% of them don't have a governance plan in place yet. So it tells you that that gap is massive. Yeah. And um, you know, we obviously always want them to think about that before they've done this, but it's shadow IT. It's no different than when teams rolled out and got really hot during COVID, and all of a sudden there were, you know, tons and thousands and you know, of teams, you know, out there and there was no actual ownership. Yeah. We talk a lot about shared accountability in how you build a governance service, yeah, right. Because every team or every agent or every SharePoint site, which we've been doing forever, needs an owner because it needs to be recertified, it needs to be, you know, managed. Yep. So it that's a really key part of actual governance. Um, and our technology enables a lot of that, right? So it's just part of the framework that we've been delivering for a long time. So agents are no different than you know what what we've been experiencing for the last two decades.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, no, exactly. So I've really appreciated having this conversation, also on a bit more of a technical level, because uh obviously like having abstract conversations is uh interesting in its own right, but but to me, like as a tech mode, I I love this. Uh,

Multi Cloud And Cost Optimization

SPEAKER_00 14:13

I do want to ask you about what's next. So you've built an ecosystem of 6,000 partners across 100 plus marketplaces, with channel now driving 50% of the reality. Looking from here, PAX 8 stage, what's next? What uh what's what's your channel first vision look like?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah, I mean, I think um what we've done really well over the last few years and what will continue to accelerate is building technology for this specific user, right? So um, you know, whether it's more investment, which there will be in things like IaaS and PaaS, right? And making sure we govern that better, there's going to be a big, big opportunity in cost optimization, right? I mean, think about you know tokens and they're I mean, AI is now more expensive than a human, right? I mean, that wasn't the the buzzword.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Well I hadn't heard that yet.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

You know, the tokens um are our runaway cost right now. No one really understands, right, how expensive it is to build these agents and the consumption of those agents. So, you know, the the cost piece is just like Azure and AWS and GCP, right? Yeah. Um, and and the other piece that I think we're gonna spend a lot of time on is multi-cloud. Yep. Um, you know, we spent a lot of time at Google Next a few weeks ago, um, and we had a great uh a great event there. Um we're seeing more and more partners think less and less about hyperscaler um commitment and more and more about hyperscaler agnostic, right? I'm building agents where I need to, whether it's with, you know, uh, you know, ChatGPT or you know, anthropic and clawed or whatever it may be, right? Or Copilot Studio. Um, and where my data sits is also in many ways, whether it's Google Workspace or whether it's M365. All that matters is that the data is governed, right? And that you can access that data in a place where you can now pull on those agents, right? And so that that sort of multi-cloud play for us, you know, we already support Microsoft, we support Google, we support Salesforce, we support AWS, right? It becomes more and more critical as AI starts really, really spinning up. And because we're in the early innings, right? There's a lot more that we're expecting to come.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah. No, that's fascinating. I love that. Hey, um, before we wind down, any final thoughts, words of wisdom for me, for the audience, anybody in this night?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, I mean,

Final Advice And Fail Forward

SPEAKER_01 16:29

look, we're in a really exciting time. I mean, um, you know, they say this is like a 20-year sort of event, right? You know, server was 20, cloud is 20, and we're in like year two of AI, right? So this is every everyone involved in AI right now. I mean, we're we're sort of all the early adopters and we're the we're the test dummies, yeah. Right. And and we're we're figuring it out and we're breaking stuff and we're experimenting. And, you know, two years ago, people didn't even know what agents were, right? And so, you know, my my thought process is, you know, we all need to move fast, you know, we need to try stuff. What's really important today and what we're really excited about is probably not going to be that important in 12 months, right? That's okay. Um, you know, but but what's really ultimately, once again, back to the uh most important thing, focus on the partner, focus on the customer, solve really hard problems and you know, today. And I I think that always, you know, pays itself forward. So, you know, sort of fail forward is a is a great mantra.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I love that so much. Hey Scott, thank you so much. And uh dear listeners, see you in the next episode.