Looking to grow its Canadian footprint, Veeam Software has added Ingram Micro Canada to its distribution line-up, complementing its existing relationship Lifeboat Distribution and helping the company to broaden its reach into the Canadian reseller community.
Based in Columbus, Ohio, Veeam Software was founded in 2006 and launched its first product offerings in 2007. It offers a range of management and data protection offerings for virtualized environments, focused primarily on the VMware platform. It also has offerings to simplify management between VMware-based platforms and certain Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. networking environments.
Grant Folkard, Veeam’s channel manager for Canada, said Veeam’s go-to-market is 100 per cent thru the channel.
“We’re 100 per cent thru the channel for both new sales and renewals, and that’s something we’re very proud of,” said Folkard. “It’s part of our mantra to make sure we’re bringing value to the channel community.”
While it was previously dipping its feet into the Canadian market through telesales, Folkard said Veeam got its first feet on the ground in Canada this year. Its 10 employees are split between sales support in Toronto and a research and development team in Montreal. The Canadian team also leverages the U.S. organization for inside sales and marketing support.
Already, Veeam has 340 net new customers in Canada this year, and some 80 active Canadian resellers. Folkard said they’re looking to grow those numbers though as Veeam expands its Canadian distribution and begins to formalize its channel program.
Complementing its existing Canadian distribution with Lifeboat Distribution, Veeam announced Wednesday that Ingram Micro Canada will also carry the vendor’s full line of virtualization data protection and systems management solutions
“We’re very pleased to enter into this agreement with Veeam Software and extend its partner value proposition into the Canadian IT channel,” said Tim Billing, vice-president, vendor management, Ingram Micro Canada, in a statement. “Veeam’s innovative systems management tools are a welcomed addition to our growing solutions portfolio and will further enable our channel partners to proactively safeguard their clients’ investments in virtual infrastructures.”
Veeam’s channel program includes basic, silver and gold tiers. Folkard said the tiers are somewhat soft at the moment, but the requirements for both revenue and technical training will get firmer as the program evolves.
The basic level is, as the name suggests, a basic level to enable infrequent simple sales. Silver offers more margin and support, and the gold level includes better margin still, as well as deal registration and a lead generation program.
“A key reason for partners to want to be gold is our recently rolled-out lead distribution program, which gives our best partners access to hot, actionable leads,” said Rick Hoffman, vice-president, worldwide channels and alliance with Veeam.
Hoffman said Veeam is competitive with other organizations in this space on margin, ranging from seven to 26 per cent with potential for greater margin through quarterly promotions.
Folkard added Veeam has also recently launched Data University, its technical traning and accreditation program.
Veeam offers toolsets for data protection and virtualization information management, and its legacy product is around back-up replication. As the line has grown offerings have been added around monitoring and reporting on virtualization environments. Folkard said a sweet-spot for Veeam is customers with both VMware and Microsoft System Center, or VMware and HP Operations Manager. Veeam can give IT managers a single pane of glass into both environments.
Folkard said they’re primarily looking for VMware-focused resellers, and offer a strong proposition for partners focused on both VMware and Microsoft System Center.
In terms of target market, Folkard said Veeam initially began with a focus on the mid-market and SMB, but found many of those smaller implementation were actually departmental deployments in larger organizations that, once proven, were expanded enterprise-wide. The pack for Microsoft management and the HP plug-in also bring Veeam into a traditional enterprise space.
Hoffman added Veeam is also just getting into the managed services space with the launch of a service provider program to enable partners looking to set-up an MSP business.
Follow Jeff Jedras on Twitter: @JeffJedrasCDN.
