The roughly 15 Canadian CommVault channel partners are about to be shaken by the company’s determination to get its VARs to carry the full lineup of its data lifecycle management applications.
Rob Stroud, the company’s new country manager, and Stephen Matheson, vice-president of channel sales for the Americas, said Tuesday they’re looking to add more partners here. But at the same time they’ll be pushing partners to carry more than CommVault’s backup and recovery software, which some VARs are satisfied with limiting themselves to.
While they wouldn’t go so far as to say existing partners will be dropped, they left the impression there could be a shake-up.
At one point in the interview Matheson said he couldn’t say if CommVault had the right mix of partners in Canada.
Asked if that means not all will continue with the company, he said that like any other vendor CommVault will find that some partners will chose not continue supporting their products.
The company won’t drop a partner for not carrying the full line, but it wants to encourage them to broaden the depth of those supporting only a limited number of products.
Stroud, however, left the door open. In talking about the number of partners he expects to have a year from now, he said he believes there will be “a very similar amount” although he’s scouting for additions.
What he’s looking for are partners – both existing and new – willing to commit resources to the company’s products. In turn they will be rewarded by CommVault committing resources to them, he said.“As they come up for renewal we will evaluate them,” he also said.
“Not all of the partners will make it,” he added. “What will emerge is a very select group of go-to-market partners in Canada.”
In looking for new VARs “we’re going to be extremely selective in picking partners that meet the appropriate profile,” he also said, meaning VARs that have storage experience and are willing to support CommVault’s entire product line.
Until recently the company had been servicing its channel partners directly. However, last month it announced an exclusive distribution deal with Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions as part of a strategy of increasing the number of VARs and improving training to better improve penetration of new markets.
Stroud was lured from EMC Canada, where he’d been for the past six years, three of which as Canadian channel sales manager. Before that he spent three years with Hitachi Data Systems Canada.
He took over his new job in April, but the official announcement was only made this week.
Comment: cdnedit@itbusiness.ca