Today, IT management software provider Kaseya is announcing a reworked Kaseya Partner Program backed by enhanced resources and aimed at significantly strengthening their channel.

Last year, venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners acquired a controlling interest in Kaseya, and Yogesh Gupta from Insight Ventures replaced Gerald Blackie as Kaseya CEO, and put in place a plan to grow the company dramatically. The revamped channel is a major part of this strategy.

“We want to be a major accelerant of the new business,” said Roger Hodskins, Kaseya’s vice president of global channels and alliances. “We want to grow the company dramatically over the next few years, and this is an investment-oriented activity on the part of Kaseya.”

Hodskins said that the refreshed program also reflects an increased emphasis strategically on partners for Kaseya.

“There are partners who have done well with the old program, but that program was managed more territorially than globally,” he said. “Now we have a team that is world wide, and we are being supported by additional and significant resources in marketing. That’s the main thing here, the amount of resources being devoted to this.”

Hodskins, who joined Kaseya just over a quarter ago, said that a key objective is to develop or recruit more partners who are capable of delivering services to customers.

“When I came in and talked with partners, I found there was a desire for different types of partners to provide different types of services,” he said. “Before we had resellers and distributors and that was about it. Now we want new types of partners who are oriented around cervices, certified implementation partners. We need them we need that because our own services arm isn’t that large. We have a backlog. We introduced that at our Kaseya Connect event a few weeks ago, and around 15 have an interest – both existing partners and new people.”

Hodskins also said they want more integration partners, who want to integrate Kaseya platform into existing applications or help other application providers integrate with Kaseya. They will be assisted by easy access to Kaseya API integration. Getting more education partners is also a priority, as Hodskins said they are well placed to take advantage of cloud-based platforms.

“We have 2000 customers managed in the cloud today but we will accelerate that, even though our roots are not in the cloud,” he said.

While the old program had a single tier for partners, the new one has expanded.

“We now have a well-defined and new set of partner tiers,” Hodskins said. “While we only had the one before, we now have three tiers of resellers, starting at 15% and going up to 40%,  depending on how much they commit to us by certification. We have also standardized and expanded the margins available, even for referral partners who want us to do the work and support.”

More co-operative marketing funds have been added, and new rewards capabilities for co-operating with Kaseya’s direct sales force. The direct force is also now compensated for channel partner deals done in their territory. Reseller tools have also been added for on-boarding new customers, provisioning end-users, offering demos and proof-of-concept assistance, and pipeline management and forecasting.

Hodskins said there will be more emphasis on training, with tailored sales training, and technical documentation that includes dedicated sales, pre-sales and support resources.

“We will be rolling out new sales and technical tracks through Kaseya University,” he said.

Last month, Kaseya also introduced a new Partner Portal that includes a rich set of business and technical resources, as well as deal registration, lead management capabilities, and community discussion groups.

“The portal we had before worked, but this one is cloud-based and much more effective,” Hodskins said. “In addition to the deal registration and lead management capabilities, it contains information on how to sell Kaseya, success stories, and how to manage business effectively as a partner. 180 partners have been on it already of over 300 worldwide.

“We are just beginning here,” Hodskins said. “There’s a lot we want to do strategically with partners and there will be a lot of announcements over the next 12-18 months. We can do some really unique things in the IT management space with the channel.”

This article originally appeared on eChannelLine.com.