Marlene Mullowney, account executive at Datto Canada

He’s not Victor Kiam, but Modest Mycyk did like the product so much, he bought the company. Or at least the Canadian rights to the company.

The channel community may know Mycyk best as a peer – from his Saskatchewan-based solution business, Nova-Tek Innovations. But they’re going to probably hear a lot more from him in his new role heading up cloud-based managed backup and disaster recovery solution Datto in Canada.

As a VAR, Mycyk has been a Datto customer since 2009, when it spun up a node in its Saskatoon data centre. Since then, it’s grown that business, and now it runs multiple cluster nodes. Over the last year, it’s been building channel connections for Datto in its home province, and in the fall of last year, it became Datto’s official presence in Canada.

And now Mycyk is looking to start working with solution providers across Canada.

Datto has worked with Canadian partners in the past, but under the new deal, solution providers get a much more made-in-Canada solution. One that’s hosted in Canada on a Canada-based data centre, and includes Canadian technical and sales support. Mycyk said that alone make it interesting, eliminating solution provider challenges like packages stuck at the border in customs, to say nothing of everyone’s favourite American data centre problem, the privacy challenges of the U.S. Patriot Act.

Marlene Mullowney, account executive for Datto Canada, said that made-in-Canada message is one that’s driving the company’s growth.

“We’re getting a lot of positive response from MSPs and service providers that are being pitched by U.S.-based companies with U.S.-based solutions that pushes their customers’ data into the U.S.,” she said. “That really causes a lot of concerns for MSPs and their customers.”

Although he continues to be involve with Novatek as a solution provider in Saskatchewan, Mycyk stressed that Novatek and Datto are two entirely separate businesses, and that Datto is focused on the channel and expanding its network of solution providers. In fact, he said Novatek is “pulling back” on its own backup and data recovery sales in favour of building the Datto Canada channel. Still, his years of experience in selling Datto solutions as an MSP is proving very valuable for new partners just ramping up their presence. Mycyk feels the company has the opportunity to work with a large base of Canadian solution providers.

“Once an MSP has sunk their teeth into this product, they will want more and more of it because it’s such a prevalent customer need,” he said. “All the resources are in place, and our goals for this year are very aggressive.”

The target Datto Canada partner is typically already pretty far down the managed services journey, and the company’s sweet spot is with smaller five- to 25-person managed service providers. For those partners, offering a data management solution like Datto “builds that sticky factor” with existing customers and opens the door for more monthly services like enhanced remote monitoring and management practices, Mycyk said.

The company will soon debut a new and enhanced partner portal, complete with sales and marketing training and material to help partners grow their business.

“It’s fully end-to-end for the MSP,” Mullowney said. “We’re not only helping them build up those recurring revenues, but they’re giving customers the best possible solutions.”