Sanovi, an Indian-based maker of disaster recovery (DR) software, has launched a partner program to deepen its nascent penetration of the North American market.

Sanovi has been in business since 2003, but is not that well known in North America because their focus has been in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. They have, however, been named a ‘Cool Vendor’ by Gartner, and they believe they have a compelling value proposition for DR in the public and private cloud as well as enterprises.

“120 enterprise customers and service providers use our software,” said Chendra Pulimaritsa, Sanovi’s CEO. “It offers Application-Defined Continuity technology, which automates the entire lifecycle. It’s critical to provide total automation for technology like FlexPod, because when the infrastructure is dynamic and elastic, the DR also needs to be dynamic and elastic. That’s a key differentiation for us  compared to other players.”

Sanovi is fully integrated into Cisco UCS Director, and NetApp SnapMirror and SnapManager suites, taking the very complex task of application BC/DR across both physical and virtual infrastructures and simplifying it into an intuitive, repeatable catalog item in the UCS Director self-service portal. This allows cloud and managed service providers to offer self-service based recovery-as-a-service (RaaS) from on-premise to cloud set-up, using converged infrastructure or off-the-shelf hardware. In turn, SIs and VARS can provide fully automated business continuity for all enterprise applications at the push of a button.

While most enterprise software companies start out selling direct, and add incremental channel revenue over time, Sanovi is one of the exceptions to that pattern.

“We were originally a services company, so more than 80% of our revenues come from channels and partners which were typically large SIs,” Pulimaritsa said. “As cloud adoption has been increasing for DR, our new channel model is increasingly cloud service providers.”

In addition to MSP and cloud service providers who offer DR-as-a-service, solution providers who sell converged infrastructure like FlexPods are a key target for Sanovi.

“The converged infrastructure does not contain DR software to provide seamless plug-ins, so when a reseller sells a FlexPod solution, this allows them to manage DR seamlessly in that infrastructure,” Pulimaritsa said.

“We entered the North American market late last year, and we began to start signing up resellers after we established partnerships with NetApp and Cisco,”  Pulimaritsa said. “We are a NetApp alliance partner, and a Cisco solutions partner.”

“The FlexPod market is a rapidly growing market,” he added. “Because this is software, it integrates into Cisco’s UCS Director and is easy to manage. The partner will be able to easily increase their deal value without much additional sales effort. The comprehensive management strengthens the ability to sell to the customer and provides more value to the customer, because it provides good business value.”

Pulimaritsa said their DR solution also gives partners additional services revenue because of the nature of the process.

“Sanovis provides out-of-the-box automation, but there is customization, which leads to additional services revenue,” he said. “We have seen that in APAC and the Middle East. That’s another important element to consider.”

Pulimaritsa said that while they are looking to the new program to recruit partners, they are being very selective.

“We are targeting the top 15-20 FlexPod resellers,” he said. “We are very focused on top resellers.”

The program has a comprehensive onboarding process. Signing the partnership agreement gives immediate access to Sanovi’s partner portal, with enablement documentations, technical specifications and demo videos. This stage also has built-in extensive sales and technical trainings.

MDF allocations are done and co-marketing activities get kick-started as part of building a joint funnel. Evaluation licenses and telephone technical sales support are provided, as well as access to Sanovi labs and demo set-ups.

“On the incentives side, we give very high points to partners,” Pulimaritsa said. “In addition to the high base incentives, we are rolling out a special incentive program for the next quarter.”

This article originally appeared on eChannelLine.