The present ClearSky partner ecosystem includes both MSPs and traditional reseller partners, and they are looking to increase the numbers of both.
Courtney Pallotta, Clearsky Data’s VP of Marketing
Boston-based ClearSky Data has formally launched its new Partner Acceleration Program around their hybrid cloud managed service offering of on-demand primary storage, backup and disaster recovery.
“We deliver a fully managed multi-tenanted service for enterprise storage that reflects that organizations are changing the way they consume storage,” said Courtney Pallotta, Clearsky Data’s VP of Marketing. “Our hybrid service delivers cloud storage economics, keeping the data close, within 120 miles, while backing it all up to the public cloud. You can scale up or down on demand, and you pay only for what you use.”
Pallotta said that ClearSky’s offsite-cloud model gives customers a guaranteed 5 9s of uptime and full access to their data.
“The client keeps the keys – we don’t – and they get a cloud solution with more protection and control than if they just went directly to the cloud,” she said.
ClearSky’s customers typically have at least 20 TB of data, which is growing in significant amounts that make it hard to manage.
“The upper midmarket and smaller large enterprise is our sweet spot, although MSPs who serve SMBs are also really good markets for us,” Pallotta said.
ClearSky currently has over a dozen partners. The MSPs include Congruity, and Molnii, the resellers include Alliance Technology Group, and Daymark Solutions, while vendor partners include Cloudian and Docker.: Amazon, Elastic, Intel, Splunk, and VMware are technology partners, while Digital Realty is a data centre provider. ClearSky is looking to the new program to add new partners as well as improve support for existing ones, although they are looking to be selective.
“While we do do direct selling, because of the way we deliver our services, partners have always been important in our model,” Pallotta said. “A significant part of our service is metro-based, and because of that, we have to be very strategic about who we partner with. With MSP partners, we are not limited by geo in the same way, but still want to be strategic, because as a young company, we want to be identified as a good partner ourselves.”
While ClearSky had been supporting their partners without a formal program, Pallotta said that the time had come to move beyond that.
“We partner with big colos like Equinix, and it was clearly time to make it a more formal program,” she stated. “We want to develop and support a robust combination of traditional resellers and MSPs.”
All the different partner types will be managed through the single master program.
“The terms of engagement are different, however, and their agreements will be different and we will treat them different from a partner perspective,” Pallotta said.
The program features joint sales activities and promotions, co-marketing programs, on-demand lab environments, and ongoing training. Partners also enjoy 24/7 support of the service from ClearSky, and can access program assets through a self-service partner portal.
“We want to make the benefits compelling, and something that will grow their businesses,” Pallotta said. “The resource centre of tools they can use, the training, the 24/7 support – all these are designed to make sure they have success with clients. If we don’t put in time with the program to make it top of mind, then it would just be noise, and we don’t want to be that.”
