VAR Dynamics completes a major restructuring with a name change to highlight the company’s focus on its platform rather than the services on top, and to illustrate that the company’s base has also moved beyond VARs to include other types of partners.
Britt Von Roden, Principal/CMO at CloudPlus
Clearwater-based hosted services company VAR Dynamics has rebranded itself as CloudPlus, a VAR Dynamics company. CloudPlus is also making a flurry of strategic shifts, announcing new pricing, a new website, and a reworking of its channel programs.
The rebranding is the culmination of a long term restructuring designed to better position the company going forward. The company was created early in the century as The Message Center, and their focus was hosted Exchange. That was the bulk of their business for years, but more recently they began to add new services. Now, with the new name, they are branding the company with the same name as their platform to emphasize that the platform – not the services – are the core of the business.
“The company had always about the services in the past,” said Britt Von Roden, Principal/CMO at CloudPlus. “Initially, it was selling the Microsoft Suite, and as it was commoditized, additional services were added on. Last March, we decided that it was no longer about the services – it was about the platform.”
The platform was of course already in existence, but Von Roden said that the company began introducing the CloudPlus brand – which luckily, no one else had taken – in a rolling soft launch over the past year.
While the VAR Dynamics brand still exists – as a supporting tag to the principal brand – Von Roden said the time was ripe given the company’s restructuring to move on from that name.
“Many people still associated VAR Dynamics with hosted Exchange – and we are far more than that,” she said. “In addition, we are also now targeting an audience outside the VAR community. While the VAR customers are still there, today there is also telcos, MSPs, and distribution. We didn’t want people to think that because VAR was in our name that that was all that we serviced.”
CloudPlus is also announcing some significant pricing changes.
“We have standardized our margins,” Von Roden said. “We made some pricing changes last year, but they were more of a competitive play. Now our core services will see a drop in pricing, and the add-on pieces will see a smaller, slight increase. We are talking pennies. We also now have bundles – an Active Partner bundle and a Super Partner bundle for more of a solution sell.” The Active partners are MSPs while the Super are distributors and other larger partners, although it is possible for an Active partner to become a Super partner.
Von Roden said the new website, www.cloudplus.net, is about more than just a new look and feel.
“It better portrays the pricing,” she said. “It gives all of the new programs, and details our service portfolio much better. The old web site was a little outdated on services. In addition, we are going to launch an additional 20 services.”
The new sites also lays out the company’s three step strategy – position, enable, deliver – and its components.
“Those three things in addition to private-label support and billing are effectively a business in a box,” Von Roden said.
The company’s channel program has also been changed, to make it simpler.
“The program is now a rewards program which requires only hitting a minimal revenue threshold, rather than a lot of calculations,” Von Roden said. “The idea is to simplify it and expose it to everybody. The reward is instant cash back.” Rewards are paid to the company, not individual salespeople.
The program has two sections, for Active and Super partners.
