HYCU was created to develop and sell a custom-built backup solution for Nutanix, and this new program is designed to parallel the go-to-market strategy for the upper SMB and midmarket that Nutanix launched with their Velocity program in June.
Junelle Swan, HYCU’s VP Channels, HYCU
Boston-based HYCU, which makes a data backup, recovery and monitoring solution that is custom-built for Nutanix, has moved to support partners selling through the Nutanix Velocity program introduced last June. HYCU has announced its new Speed to HYCU program, which provides additional rewards for selling HYCU licenses in Nutanix Velocity deals.
While Nutanix has increasingly been selling higher up in the market and now defines itself primarily as an enterprise vendor, in June they introduced the Velocity program, to incent sales into the lower part of their market. While Nutanix terms Velocity a midmarket program, its focus is the sub-500 seat market, making the real sweet spot the M part of the SMB and the low end of the midmarket. It is not – formally – a Lenovo-centric program, although Lenovo is playing an active role in it and has contributed HX product bundles of its own to the program to complement ones offered by Nutanix, with the Nutanix bundles not being Lenovo-specific. The Nutanix Velocity program includes accelerated selling processes, incentives and marketing investments for partners selling into this market segment.
“We wanted to ensure we are lockstep with Nutanix in delivering value to partners,” said Junelle Swan, HYCU’s VP Channels, HYCU. “While we care about the entire market, we wanted to make sure that we complemented Nutanix’s strategic direction with Velocity. Speed to HYCU is specifically designed to complement those Velocity opportunities, and is specific to them, providing additional margin rewards for including HYCU in those opportunities.
“Each quarter, we will also be awarding additional marketing dollars to the partners who made the most Speed to HYCU sales by region,” Swan added.
The intention is for the Speed to HYCI program to have the same lifecycle as the Nutanix Velocity program
While HYCU is designating Speed to HYCU as a program, in terms of administration it is a component of the HYCU Global Partner Program they introduced in July.
“We wanted this to be very simple,” Swan said. “The partner just selects a dropdown from the menu in the current Deal Registration portal that indicates if this is an approved Nutanix Velocity Program opportunity. The additional margin discounts will be automatically applied. We made it very easy.”
HYCU introduced their Global Partner Program in July, a year after they were formed, originally as a brand of Comtrade Software, specifically to provide purpose-built data protection for Nutanix environments. By that time, HYCU had spun out of Comtrade into a separate company, bringing the CEO and leadership team from Comtrade. While they had had a rudimentary partner program under Comtrade, the new one was much deeper. It added a second tier to differentiate between transactional partners and strategically important ones. those with whom they have deeper partnerships. The new program placed a deep emphasis on deal registration as a component of margin, and featured a new and easy-to-use portal. Both the portal and the deal registration system are heavily leveraged in Speed to HYCU.
“The feedback of partners to the Global Partner Program who were working with us before the new program was launched has been very positive,” Swan said. “They loved the level of simplicity. Since then, we have added many new partners to the partner network. We have had a really nice reception in Canada, and will further align with the Nutanix channel team in Canada. We are one of the sponsors of their Canadian event.”
All HYCU and Nutanix partners are eligible for the Speed to HYCU Program. Additional information is available at https://www.hycu.com/deal-registration/.
