Help desk software vendor hopes to discover more Canadian partners

With a re-branded edition of its network inventory management suite recently released with a host of new features, Alloy Software is planning a new marketing campaign designed to boost its channel presence in the Canadian market and bring more resellers onboard.

Based in Nutley, N.J., Alloy specializes in help desk and asset management software solutions. Its network inventory management suite, formerly dubbed Alloy Network Inventory, has been re-launched as Alloy Discovery and Robert Josefs, Alloy’s manager of sales and marketing, says it adds more flexible auditing tools and supports more operating systems than its predecessors.

“One of the biggest (upgrades) would be how it supports the data,” said Josefs. “People can do more reporting with the data and quickly see what they need to see.”

Paul Ille, technical services with Alloy, adds Discovery also features improved agent-less on-demand audits that are quick to get up and running, more agent-based audits, support for Linux and Mac as well as Windows, smart filtering tools to filter and dynamically sort audit data, and more ways to publish, export and play with report data.

“It really gives you the ability to get the information quickly, analyze it in a full way, and manage it by exporting to different systems or to Excel,” said Ille.

He adds the information a user can gather through the Discovery tool is wide-ranging.

“Say you need to roll-out a new piece of software, do my computers have the RAM and hard drive space to do it? How many installations of this piece of software do I have? Who has this file on their machine? Pretty much any reason you can think of,” said Ille.

Josefs says Discovery’s primary target markets are SMBs and IT service providers looking to gain visibility into their IT networks, often for compliance purposes.

“Any company with a technical or help-desk team, or an IT service provider, would have a use for a product like ours,” said Josefs. “It can be used by any company that has a need to inventory their network.”

The Canadian market accounts for about 10 per cent of Alloy’s customer base, putting it behind the U.S. and the United Kingdom. While customers run the range from Mom and Pop operations to large financial institutions, Josefs says Alloy has developed a strong base in the education and government sectors in Canada.

Given the proximity of the Canadian market to the U.S. and the ease of business that facilitates, Alloy wants to increase that 10 per cent figure. Key to doing that will be expanding Alloy’s channel presence in Canada. While in the U.S. the bulk of Alloys sales are direct, he says in Canada they’ve found most clients want to work through the channel. A marketing campaign is currently in the works, he says, to widen Alloy’s Canadian channel visibility.

Alloy does have 20 listed Canadian resellers, although most aren’t active with the exception of Softchoice and Insight, which he says lead the way.

While any reseller can apply for permission to resell Alloy offerings, the formal partner program is three-tiered. The Silver level requires US$2000 in annual revenue and offers a 20 per cent margin, Gold requires US$15,000 in annual revenue and offers a 25 per cent margin, and Platinum requires US$30,000 in revenue and offers a 35 per cent margin to resellers.

“Typically we try to find a couple of resellers in an area and really focus on those people,” said Josefs. “We try to get them in for some training, including a Web orientation with new high-level product info, how the licensing structure works, and the reseller area on Alloy Web site for quotes on rates and marketing information.”

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Jeff Jedras
Jeff Jedras
A veteran technology and business journalist, Jeff Jedras began his career in technology journalism in the late 1990s, covering the booming (and later busting) Ottawa technology sector for Silicon Valley North and the Ottawa Business Journal, as well as everything from municipal politics to real estate. He later covered the technology scene in Vancouver before joining IT World Canada in Toronto in 2005, covering enterprise IT for ComputerWorld Canada. He would go on to cover the channel as an assistant editor with CDN. His writing has appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen and a wide range of industry trade publications.

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