CommVault up-skills its resellers

Trade

CommVault Systems, the US-based producer of enterprise storage management systems, is to extend its support to resellers in Ireland and the UK with a new European Partner programme.

The programme is intended to encourage new and existing business partners to provide more in the way of support and back-up services for CommVault customers, as well as training and professional services, software licences and upgrade programs to channel partners.

The company, which sells entirely through resellers in both the Irish and UK market, says its resellers have played an integral part in achieving growth rates of 274 per cent in the UK and Ireland over the last year.

Alistair Kilgour, UK and Ireland manager for CommVault, says the company has been in the Irish market for three years, but only ‘seriously engaged’ for the last two.

‘A lot of the business opportunities for both the Irish and UK markets are now in the support side.’ He said feedback from customers indicated strongly that end users wanted to gain access to local support, and not just for the Commvault hardware, but also for issues relating to Oracle, Linux, Microsoft or other software.

The financial incentives on offer for resellers who want to become part of the programme will vary according to the four partner grades on offer — business partner, premier business partner, enterprise business partner and executive business partner. Each grade has different criteria and benefits.

Other benefits members will receive include software, tools, information, training, support and joint marketing opportunities, seminars and exhibitions.

Kilgour said that CommVault did not expect its Irish resellers base to grow dramatically as there are few with the specialised skills that the company required.

Scott Mercer, vice president, Europe, Middle East and Africa said that the company valued its resellers as business partners. ‘We are a channel-centric company, and with the transitional backup market growing into one of data and storage management, we want to ensure that our resellers can offer an increasingly demanding end-user the service they expect.

He said there were unique revenue and margin opportunities for the partners spanning software licensing, upgrade insurance, training, support and professional services.

05/09/2003

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