Pillar Data Systems, a San Jose, Calif.-based storage systems vendor, has revised its partner program by launching a second tier, Emerald, for its top partners, who will benefit from improved margins and deal protection.
Founded in 2001, Pillar focuses on application-aware storage systems for the mid-market and enterprise with its Axiom solution. The company’s partner program was previously pretty open-ended says Ian Williamson, Pillar’s channel marketing manager. It was mainly an authorization process, with technical accreditation grandfathered for partners accredited with other tier-one storage vendors, and some partner profiling to ensure Pillar wasn’t over-distributed.
“We weren’t looking much at partner profitability,” said Williamson.
After convening a VAR council last year with Pillar’s partners, Williamson says the company decided to revise the partner program with four goals in mind: partner profitability, customer value, technology differentiation, and ease of doing business with Pillar.
“When you look at other vendors out there these are kind of common, but they were things that an early entrant like Pillar really needed to improve upon,” said Williamson.
It’s also these things that led to Pillar’s new Emerald program. The previous tier, now called Authorized, will continue as before, but Emerald partners will have access to certain advantages, such as deal registration and enhanced margins.
“One of the key benefits for Emerald partners is they’ll see roughly a 10 per cent difference in the discount structure from Pillar, all controlled through our deal registration program,” said Williamson.
He adds margin-wise, the goal is margins of over 10 per cent for Authorized partners, and over 20 per cent for Emerald partners.
Partners in the Emerald tier will also benefit from initiatives around professional services enablement, allowing Pillar’s partners to handle a lot more of the professional services related to an implementation of Pillar’s Axiom solution. Williamson says this is one thing Pillar partners were really asking for, but was no small task to make happen.
“The Axiom architecture does require quite a bit of technical competency from our partners, but we’re happy to say with this launch we’re able to extend the instillation and integration services to our partners,” said Williamson. “That will enhance their margins and allow them to maintain that account control.”
To qualify for the Emerald program, a partner will need to do US$1 million of revenue annually with Pillar, or US$250,000 per quarter. As well, three or more sales staff will need to be accredited through Pillar’s online sales training, and one or more technical staff will need to be accredited through Pillar’s technical training. The technical training involves five days of instructor-led classes with labs and hands-on work around systems administration and maintenance. Emerald partners will also need to complete a marketing plan with Pillar, and submit quarterly business reviews.
“By doing this we’re able to identify our go-to partners,” said Williamson. “We like to pass a lot of our corporate lead-generation activity through partners, and this will enable us to identify by region who those leading partners are.”
Currently Pillar has 97 partners in North America, about 10 per cent of them suited for the Emerald level. Williamson says Pillar doesn’t want to grow the overall partner base substantially, preferring to have a few go-to partners in each major city. In Canada, Pillar has about a half-dozen partners including Montreal’s Groupe TID and Toronto’s Softchoice, both of which Williamson says are prospective Emerald partners.
Pillar isn’t taking a vertical approach, says Williamson, but rather an application-specific approach, looking for partners with expertise in Oracle, VMware and Microsoft Exchange, as well as areas such as business continuity.“VARs that are truly solution-providers, those are the partners we’re looking for,” said Williamson. “Those with an application and software focus, with storage as a component of their solutions.”
