Are you an MSP, VAR IT consulting firm or reseller? Depending on your answer, you could be "force fit" into a vendor's specific channel partner program program. But that's not the case for StorageCraft's new Global Partner Program, the data protection and storage management company says.
“Rather than type-cast partners into a box, we have constructed the StorageCraft Global Partner Success Program to be highly flexible and modular so they can create tailored and differentiated solutions and services around their business model,” said Marvin Blough, VP of worldwide sales at StorageCraft. “This way, we ensure they can successfully service and profit from every aspect of the business continuity category.”
Senior Director of Channel Marketing Jeannine Edwards echoed those thoughts in a conversation with ChannelE2E. "We've designed the new partner program in a way to ensure it's simple, flexible and inclusive -- covering all of our products. It's a significant refresh to the way we work with partners. We've got one partner program for all shapes and sizes of partners. We're not going to put you in a box."
StorageCraft competes in the fast-growing but highly fragmented market for backup, disaster recovery, business continuity and data protection software. The consumption models vary from traditional software reselling to hybrid appliances, pure cloud, managed and subscription services.
Regardless of which lane on that highway a partner chooses, their business is driving toward more perks and higher profit margins with StorageCraft, Edwards says.
StorageCraft Partner Program Details
The program is three-tiered and includes Certified Partner, Premier Partner, and Elite Partner designations.
Key elements, according to StorageCraft's assertions, include:
- Enhanced Profit and Margin Opportunity: Partners will benefit from enhanced profit levers including larger up-front and tier-based discounts, new back-end rebates and regular SPIFF programs.
- Flexibility: The Partner Success Program has been specifically designed to let partners buy modularly. Partners are rewarded on any mix of product adoption to ensure optimum revenue, growth and expansion opportunity.
- Market and Revenue Creation & Protection: StorageCraft has overhauled its MDF program to include robust lead creation, MDF matching, and pre-configured marketing tools. The company has also revamped deal registration to improve margin protection.
- Ease of Business: The entire suite of StorageCraft business continuity solutions is available through distribution partners Synnex, Tech Data and Lifeboat.
- Infrastructure Support: Partners can access billing, training, pricing, marketing, MDF, SPIFF tools and information via the StorageCraft Partner Success Program Portal, which uses multi-factor authentication (MFA) and highly redundant providers like Salesforce.com. This robust infrastructure ensures high availability for partners as they conduct business 24/7, plus provides them the ability to scale with ease.
Big Opportunities, Key Rivals
StorageCraft has a large installed base of partners and customers. The company competes in the midmarket and enterprise against rivals like Cohesity, Rubrik and Veeam, and also MSP-driven small business specialists like Datto.
During the early days of the MSP market, StorageCraft nearly emerged as a type of "Intel Inside" de facto standard for storage management code. But a company ownership change left the door open for rivals to innovate and depend less on StorageCraft's code.
Still, StorageCraft has renewed its partner focus over the past six months or so. Plus, StorageCraft acquisitions and R&D work have given partners a broader portfolio of solutions from which to choose.
Tighter integrations with ConnectWise Manage and Datto Autotask PSA surfaced in June 2018, which was bolstered by a strong showing at the ConnectWise Automation Nation that same month.
StorageCraft is expected to have a similar presence at ConnectWise IT Nation Connect 2018 in November. We’ll continue watching for potential updates.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
