Arcserve partner strategy puts spotlight on MSP partnerships
Under new Arcserve partner leadership, the data protection provider will enhance its channel program for managed services providers; other news from the week.
Arcserve's newly appointed North American channel director aims to fine-tune the company's partner organization for MSPs.
Sue Fossnes joined Arcserve from security software vendor McAfee, where she was the leader of global Arcserve partner programs. Arcserve, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., is a data protection vendor that provides business continuity offerings for both on-premises infrastructure and cloud-based workloads.
Fossnes said Arcserve will be looking to further optimize its Accelerate program for the managed service provider (MSP) market. Arcserve Accelerate launched in August 2018, targeting MSPs, OEMs, value-added resellers and large-account resellers. She said, as the adoption rate for as-a-service offerings grows, vendors such as Arcserve need to make sure it's easy for a partner to build a service around a company's technology products.
"We really need to make sure we are communicating what value we can help [the Arcserve partner community] bring to their customers when they create solutions and services around us," Fossnes said.
The goal, she said, is to "make sure we are optimizing for the MSP go-to-market that a lot of our partners have adopted over time," she noted.
Sue Fossnes
Investments in Arcserve Accelerate are intended to increase the program's ability to scale as the vendor's business grows and Arcserve partner businesses expand. Arcserve, for example, will be adding more capabilities and content to its partner portal to better enable partners to jointly market with the vendor.
As for partner recruitment, Fossnes said Arcserve isn't looking for thousands of new channel companies. Instead, the company will take a more selective approach.
"We want to ... make sure we are the right profile and the right fit for each other," she said.
ConnectWise buys Sienna Group
MSP software vendor ConnectWise has beefed up its cybersecurity capabilities with the acquisition of Sienna Group, a managed security services provider based in Tampa, Fla.
According to ConnectWise, the vendor will use Sienna Group to help MSPs secure their businesses -- against both internal cyber vulnerabilities and liability involving customers' security incidents. Sienna Group will be a key ingredient in ConnectWise's Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a cybersecurity training resource for MSPs.
Additionally, the Sienna Group purchase expands ConnectWise's security portfolio. Sienna Group's offerings include managed data security services, cyberthreat assessments, sensitive data discovery and classification, and security awareness training, ConnectWise noted.
Prior to the acquisition, ConnectWise and Sienna Group partnered to offer ConnectWise users a cybersecurity risk assessment tool and vulnerability scanner, free for three months. The vendors announced the security offering at the IT Nation Connect 2018 conference.
PartnerPath, Compugen underscore vendor management challenge
A recent PartnerPath webinar shed light on the role that vendor management plays in the everyday lives of solution providers.
The webinar, hosted by PartnerPath CEO Diane Krakora, was part of a series exploring the consultancy's research into what it calls the "partner journey," the key stages a partner moves through when developing vendor alliances.
The partner journey breaks down into five stages: awareness, consideration, decision, experience and growth. This webinar, in which Krakora spoke with Harry Zarek, president of solution provider Compugen, based in Richmond Hill, Ont., dealt specifically with the experience stage.
One of the challenges Zarek pointed to was the amount of work that goes into developing and managing vendor relationships. According to PartnerPath's research, solution providers on average have five primary and 15 secondary vendor partnerships -- a statistic with which Zarek agreed.
He said Compugen's top five vendors account for about "80% of the company's product and software business. That doesn't include any of the services revenue. But those five are the ones that are going to make or break our business. So, it is absolutely critical that we have an amazing relationship with them."
Compugen's secondary vendors are strategic partners that have "key components of technology that are part of many of our solutions, and we need to be very invested in them."
However, those secondary vendors' revenue contribution "is in a totally different range" -- roughly about 20% of what Compugen might do with one of its primary vendor partners.
Difficulties can arise in the next rung down in vendor partnerships, he said. Compugen's relationships with these vendors are "painful in some respects," because Compugen "can't generally afford to spend the amount of time you would want to with them, because they are just not going to move the needle in the business."
"We have strategies that we use to try to manage them [minor vendor partnerships] so that they don't overwhelm us," he noted.
Other news
- Employees with the requisite skills in cloud computing and other digital technologies are tough to find, but the shortage has created an opening for MSPs. That's one takeaway from OpsRamp Inc.'s survey of IT professionals. Ninety-four percent of the respondents said it is at least "somewhat difficult" to find candidates for job openings in fields such as cloud and DevOps, according to OpsRamp, an IT operations management vendor based in San Jose, Calif. Against that backdrop, 77% of the IT professionals polled said their teams are collaborating with MSPs to boost digital innovation. "This is an opportunity for MSPs," said Jordan Sher, director of corporate marketing at OpsRamp.
- Hyper-converged infrastructure company Nutanix unveiled a technology alliance with Intel that targets systems integrators and value-added resellers. Under the partnership, Nutanix and Intel will provide Nutanix's enterprise cloud OS software on Intel Data Center Block configure-to-order servers, according to the vendor. The Nutanix-Intel offering is available in the Americas, with a global rollout to follow, Nutanix said.
- A new Accenture report stated organizations need systems that are "boundaryless, adaptable and radically human" to succeed at a time of constant and accelerating change. The Future Systems report suggested organizations move beyond current IT approaches and adopt those that are "experimental, agile and resilient."
- Wipro Digital has expanded its global partnership with Alfresco, an open source software company focusing on process automation, content management and information governance. The alliance aims to create, build and run open-source-based digital transformation projects.
- Distributor Tech Data struck a deal with hyper-converged secondary storage vendor Cohesity. Under the agreement, Tech Data will offer Cohesity's portfolio to North American partners. Cohesity has been steadily scaling its channel resources this year through moves such as investments in its partner program launched in October.
- Tech Data this week also revealed a North American distributor agreement with Seagate Enterprise Data Solutions. Seagate signed the agreement with Global Computing Components, a business under Tech Data that provides specialized component-based offerings, according to the distributor.
- Datometry, a data warehouse virtualization vendor, introduced the Elevate Partner Program. Datometry said the program targets partners with expertise in systems architecture, analytics and large-scale data management. Program benefits include joint collaboration, training and resources to support data warehouse migrations to cloud. Partners will also have an opportunity to resell Datometry software, the vendor said.
- FloQast, a financial close management software company, rolled out a partner program for cloud accounting software resellers. The vendor said partners can access dedicated channel and marketing resources through the program.
- Critical Start, a managed detection and response provider in Plano, Texas, has joined Palo Alto Networks' NextWave channel program as a diamond-level partner.
- South Africa's Ovations Technologies, a systems integrator, has joined Nuxeo's global partner program.
- JASK has inked a distribution pact with Exclusive Group, a security technology distributor.
- Ultra Consultants Inc., a research and consulting firm in the manufacturing and distribution industries, has launched an ERP Toolkit eBook. The free publication covers several aspects of ERP, including business process improvement, enterprise technology, evaluation, selection and implementation.
Market Share is a news roundup published every Friday.
