Prime Unlimited is an optional flat rate per-user price for OpenText managed services, while Prime Protect is a standard support package for partners.

TORONTO – Enterprise information management vendor OpenText made a pair of important channel-focused announcements at their Enterprise World 2018 event here on Tuesday. First, they announced that their private cloud business, which has previously been a purely direct play, has been opened up to partners for the first time. Secondly, they announced a pair of channel focused enablement packages. Prime Unlimited is a new pricing model designed for the MSP market. Prime Protect is a new global support package.

OpenText’s announcement of their new OT2 hybrid EIM platform, which supports native cloud SaaS applications that can integrate with on-premises deployments, is important from a technology perspective, but is also important from a channel point of view, because it will have the impact of opening up the cloud to the OpenText channel for the first time.

“The vast majority of our business is on-prem today, said Mark Barrenechea, OpenText’s CEO, CTO and vice-Chairman. “A lot of our customers want cloud, but they want to maintain control. We do have a different point of view than most on private clouds, and that’s because we engage with the Global 10,000. They keep information very close to the vest, and aren’t going to move into public cloud environments. Nuclear power plants aren’t going to put a plan for a power plant into Box in Palo Alto. That isn’t going to happen.”

Now, however, Barrenechea said that with OT2, OpenText is altering their cloud strategy to allow two things to happen. For the first time, their public cloud offering will now be available on the major public clouds. The second change – closely related to the first – is that the cloud offering will be available to channel partners to sell for the first time.

“We have accelerated this so that it can run on public clouds,” Barrenechea said. “We’ve never let the hyperscalers have them before. We didn’t want to do that at first. We wanted to get it right. Our private cloud has been important to us, with over 2000 customers, and we have never let a partner sell that either. Now our partners can sell this.”

The OpenText Enterprise Cloud will be available through the Azure, AWS or Google clouds.

“This is our blueprint for the future, where you can bring your own license to the cloud,” Barrenechea said. “We are looking to simplify that consumption, so we are announcing that it has been fully containerized and will run anywhere.”

OpenText officially launched their OpenText Prime pricing model for managed services. Prime Unlimited gives access to all OpenText enterprise software, for $99 per user, per month. A minimum of 2,000 users is required, as is a three-year term. It is flat rate pricing, not the utility-like consumption-based pricing model that many MSPs prefer.

“There are certain assumptions around consumption, but the pricing is user-based,” Barrenechea said. “It is also an option for partners, not a default.”

In contrast, the new Prime Protect support model is the new default, Barrenechea noted. It is a global program, which provides 24/7 support, which includes CORE, free storage for collaboration purposes.

“We have great scale in our managed services, and will bring new processes and customers into the cloud with this,” Barrenechea said. “Let’s support some of the hyperscalers, and make consumption easier with Prime Unlimited, and make support easier with Prime Protect. That’s all new as of today.”