San Jose-based Xangati, which makes intelligent cloud and workload performance management solutions for virtualized environments, has amplified the role of the channel in its go-to-market strategy. The company has announced the appointment of Fred Pazos as vice president of worldwide sales, and given him the responsibility for scaling Xangati’s go-to-market sales organization. At the same time, Xangati also announced their previously modest channel program has been enhanced and expanded.

“Xangati’s secret sauce is we give a live and continuous view of performance intelligence,” Pazos said. “Most such tools are in a silo. They take snapshots of what you are looking at in a silo. Without being agent based, we give an up to date second by second view of what’s happening in the system. We help you put the fire out, not find the remnants of the house after it burns down.”

Like most enterprise-focused software companies, Xangati has sold mainly direct in the past.

“It has been more of an enterprise direct play with a handful of partners,” Pazos said. “Most of our customers have been very large enterprises. Some partners have played key roles. In the federal space WWT is a partner who introduced us into the Navy. But we need a much stronger channel and partner presence, and that is what this partner program is for, trying to build it out.”

Xangati is looking for partners with a deep server and desktop virtualization background, who have worked with solutions from companies like VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft, as well as converged infrastructure solutions, such as VCE vBlock and Cisco/NetApp FlexPod.

“The implementation of our solution is easy,” Pazos said. “It only takes an hour, so there’s not a lot of fear there. But partners who would use this are generally working in medium to large enterprises, and so it’s generally a more technically savvy partner that would be involved.”

Pazos said that smaller companies can generally manage without Xangati’s solution, which thrives in complex environments.

“Around 500 VMs or more is where we really make sense,” he said. “Below that, a smaller customer doesn’t have that many applications running where they can’t figure something out with tools commonly available to them today.  We really remove the contention, and the cloud environment is a true strength of ours, because it adds another layer of complexity.”

The new program has two levels, Authorized and Premier. While the Authorized level offers a 5% discount, the Premier discount starts at 15% with registration, and can go up to 30%.

“We really have two requirements – technical certification, and a joint marketing program.” Pazos said. The joint marketing involves joint business plan, which Pazos said should ideally be done on a quarterly basis.

“We have a unique support group for the VARs in place right now,” he added.

Pazos said that the evolution of Xangati’s product line will soon bring new partner opportunities.

“New product scheduled for September and after will allow for service opportunities for the partners,” he said.

This article originally appeared on eChannelLine.