Veeam partner chief: We want to be more relevant to partners

Continuity vendor Veeam Software has revealed several initiatives that will impact its North American channel, including a new focus on the enterprise market and the expansion of its Cloud & Service Provider Program.

The vendor's recently appointed vice president of North America channel sales, Kevin Rooney, will oversee these initiatives. Rooney joined Veeam in January from VMware, where, as senior director of Americas vCloud partner sales, he helped establish and launch the vendor's cloud partner program. Previous to VMware, he worked at Hewlett-Packard prior to the company's split, managing its corporate reseller and federal channel teams before relocating to Sydney, Australia, for about two years to manage HP's enterprise business for Australia and New Zealand.

Kevin Rooney

One of the reasons Rooney was drawn to Veeam is its commitment to driving 100% of its business through the channel. "It gives you a tremendous amount of trust and momentum in the channel community, when that's the way you approach the business," he said. "I think the program is very solid, and the satisfaction survey results and the feedback attest to that. It's a fair and generous program that allows everyone to mutually benefit from our activities."

With a strong channel foundation in place, Veeam's goal is now to identify ways it can improve the business, which Rooney said he believes starts with deepening its partnerships.

"We have a great number of [transactional] partners. We also have a solid number of ... very committed, strategic partners that help us deliver the rapid growth that we've been achieving over the last several years. But what I want to do is expand that," he said. "I want to get our number of partners that are simply transacting to look more like partners that are truly invested in growing a business with Veeam."

I want to get our number of partners that are simply transacting to look more like partners that are truly invested in growing a business with Veeam.

Deepening Veeam partner relationships means becoming more relevant inside their businesses, Rooney said. Veeam will become more pertinent to partners by providing more enablement and support resources necessary to handle a growing business. 

Veeam is also focused on pushing into the enterprise market and will hire an enterprise segment team for the first time in its history. "Veeam has earned the right to compete in all segments," he said. The vendor is currently identifying partners that have enterprise accounts that it can sell into, and aims to develop a plan with its Alliance partners, which include Cisco, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and VMware, to support its move into the enterprise. "[Our Alliance partners] have the resources that are needed to be a consistent player in this space," he said.

In addition to improved Veeam partner resources and a new emphasis on the enterprise, Rooney said partners will see the vendor build out its Cloud & Service Provider Program. "We're going to work diligently to continue to improve and expand our Cloud & Service Provider Program to provide the solutions that our mutual customers are demanding."

He asserted Veeam partners will see no significant changes made to the ProPartner Program. The program doesn't need an overhaul, he said. "We already have one of the best programs in the industry ... and so I think the way that you improve it is you stay consistent with it. You don't look to turn the dials every quarter to keep people guessing as to what they can expect from Veeam," he said.