Pax8 Roadshow Special - Phylip Morgan

Christina Tubb - The channel partner as your local bodyguard

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Christina Tubb, Americas Director of Regional Alliance Managers at Ping Identity. With a career spanning theoretical physics, private equity, consulting, and channel leadership across ten countries, Christina brings a wide-lens view of what it takes to build partnerships that connect vendors directly to end customers. Christina opens with a philosophy that runs counter to how many people think about channel: partnerships are a way to get closer to end users, not further from them. When partners handle the pieces they're built for, vendors get the room to focus on what customers actually need. That principle sharpens with a global lens. For a US multinational, the nuanced requirements of customers in every country and vertical are almost impossible to grasp without local partners who translate the market for you. Christina calls it thinking globally and acting locally, and nowhere does it land harder than in the channel. From there, the conversation moves into what Christina learned running channel in Asia. Markets without friction stop innovating, she says, and Asia's density and diversity is a crucible that forces builders to move faster. Bringing that lens to the Americas, she highlights just how much automation, adaptation, and intentionality matter even in a single large market. The conversation then turns to identity in the AI era. With deep fakes rising and traditional markers of recognition losing reliability, digital identity is heading toward verified trust, and channel partners are central to how that plays out on the ground. Christina closes on the mindset that has anchored her whole career: follow curiosity as your north star. It won't guarantee an illustrious career, but it will guarantee real enjoyment and growth, especially in a moment where the security industry is being redefined week by week. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/  Watch on YouTube  ►  https://www.youtube.com/@channext [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Phylip Morgan

In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Phylip Morgan, Senior Vice President of Marketplace and Channel Expansion at Pax8. A former managed service provider and 30-year channel veteran, Phylip is leading Pax8's work helping partners transform from managed service providers into managed intelligence providers. Phylip opens with the case for why the managed intelligence shift is a revolution, not an evolution. Borrowing Scott Chason's framing, he positions this as the same kind of cataclysmic change as steam, electricity, the PC, and the cloud, with AI delivering cognitive power the industry has never had before. The proof point is what's already happening: models are getting better, hallucinations are receding from the conversation, and practical use cases are stacking up. At the same time, Phylip is clear that partners have options, and there's still a real living to be made in break-fix and traditional managed services. From there, the conversation reframes the partner role as a trusted advisor evolving from technology advisor into business advisor, with managing intelligence risk and governance, risk, and compliance around digital agents as part of the new job description. Phylip shares a Welsh example of two managed service providers who decided their best play was to partner with a managed intelligence provider, which opens a discussion about partner ecosystems where everyone builds around their strengths. He also walks through two market shifts: the digital buyer who prefers apps to conversations, and the death of brand, where reputation and shared values matter more than the logo at the bottom of a website. Phylip closes with practical counsel for the partner community. Regret is a terrible thing, so take the time to look at the opportunity, do the research, and come to your own conclusions. As he puts it, lead with humanity and scale with AI. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/  Watch on YouTube  ►  https://www.youtube.com/@channext [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Gene Kim

In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Gene Kim, Vice President of Managed Service Providers at Absolute Security. With a career spent on both sides of the channel as a service provider and now leading Absolute's MSP motion, Gene brings a grounded view of what MSPs need to deliver real business continuity in an AI-driven world. Gene opens with the story of building Absolute's MSP motion from the ground up. The company has a long enterprise track record, with 40% of the Fortune 500, 80% of the top airlines, and nearly all of the largest state and local governments as customers, and its presence in the MSP community is now being built with the same intent. He walks through how Absolute's technology, embedded in the BIOS and firmware of more than 600 million devices from Dell, Lenovo, HP, and 25 other manufacturers, is already deployed in MSP fleets today. The opportunity is in activating that capability and showing MSPs how it strengthens their service delivery. From there, the conversation moves into where Absolute fits in the AI era and the shift toward managed intelligence providers. As MSPs add automation, orchestration, and chat layers across their stack, every one of those capabilities relies on the underlying tools being up and available. Absolute keeps the RMM, EDR, encryption, and backup tools resilient through automated self-healing, which Gene frames as a foundational layer for any MSP's AI strategy. He also reframes the customer conversation around business continuity, where the question is how quickly the business is back up. Gene closes on what he calls a winning formula for MSPs: pairing prevention with recovery and resilience to build differentiated, outcome-driven service offerings that capture new business and grow customer mind share. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/  Watch on YouTube  ►  https://www.youtube.com/@channext [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Pax8 Roadshow Special - Nihil Morjaria

In this special Pax8 Beyond '26 feature of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Nihil Morjaria, Chief Revenue Officer at usecure. With almost eight years at the company across nearly every sales role and a background in psychology, Nihil brings a thoughtful perspective on what it takes to build a channel-first cybersecurity business where the human element matters as much as the technology. Nihil starts with the story of usecure's pivot to channel-first after more than three years of selling direct. The biggest commercial challenge was getting internal reps to embrace what looked like a margin hit in the short term, in exchange for something much bigger: scale through partners acting as outsourced sales functions. He frames the channel as a force multiplier where commission grows alongside the partner network, and shares how doing the groundwork to align reps before the shift was what made it stick. The right partners, he says, are the ones with supplementary resources who become active extensions of the team. From there the conversation gets into how Nihil's psychology background shapes everything from go-to-market messaging to product. usecure's expertise helps MSPs translate the abstract topic of human risk into real, tangible conversations with their customers. That same lens sits behind the launch of uHealth, a new piece of usecure's human risk intelligence program. By integrating with Entra to pull real signals around services people sign up for, MFA setup, and password reuse, uHealth turns isolated training scores into a tailored view of how each person actually behaves, with clear remediation steps MSPs can deliver as outcome-driven service. Nihil closes on the value of the channel as a community, where honest conversations about real challenges are what help everyone grow. As he puts it, it takes a village. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/  Watch on YouTube  ►  https://www.youtube.com/@channext [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners

Thomas Christensen - Win-Win-Win

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Thomas Christensen, Vice President of Partner Ecosystem NCEE at IBM. Thomas has 30 years in the industry across all three layers of the channel, as a reseller, in distribution, and as a vendor, and now leads IBM's partner ecosystem across 35 countries in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. That breadth of experience gives him a perspective on ecosystems that is hard to replicate. Thomas opens with what he considers the most valuable thing about having worked all three sides of the channel: you already know what the person across the table needs before they tell you. Having been a reseller, briefly in distribution, and for most of his career in the vendor space, he arrives at every conversation with an understanding of the other side's daily life, goals, and constraints. That understanding is what makes it possible to build win-win-win partnerships: a win for the client, a win for the partner, and a win for IBM. That philosophy shapes how IBM approaches its Partner Plus program and how Thomas thinks about equality in the ecosystem. When a seller believes they did all the work and the partner should receive less margin, they are being binary. A partner who receives fair margin today is the one who invests resources in learning your portfolio tomorrow and brings leads the day after. The program enforces that long-term thinking, even when individuals do not naturally default to it. Across 35 countries, Thomas finds more universality in what partners need than people expect. Trust, respect for how the other party's business works, and the simple question "how can I help your business grow?" transcend cultures and geographies. That is the foundation, and it is remarkably consistent. _________________________ Learn more about Channext 👇 https://channext.com/  Watch on YouTube  ►  https://www.youtube.com/@channext [https://www.youtube.com/@channext]  #channelmarketing [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnersuccess]  #c [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/partnerjourney]hannelpartners