Rubrik Go is being presented as an option for customers, but the company thinks there’s no reason why a net-new customer who hasn’t already invested in perpetual licenses would want to buy any other way.
Jenn Wei, Rubrik’s Director of Product Marketing
Data management vendor Rubrik has announced Rubrik Go, its new evergreen subscription purchasing program. Rubrik Go draws from the SaaS approach they implemented last year with the development and launch of the Rubrik Polaris platform. The company believes that it offers multiple advantages for customers, to the point where it will become the de facto standard for new purchases. They also think, based on partner feedback, that the subscription model has significant advantages to the partners who are the company’s route to market.
Jenn Wei, Rubrik’s Director of Product Marketing, is the architect of the program, which is the first of its kind that Rubrik has offered.
“We started working on it last year, although it wasn’t our intention when we started to create this specific type of program,” Wei said. “We talked with customers, prospects and key partners about the things they looked at when they purchased, so that we could refine our go-to-market strategy.”
Wei said that they heard three pain points over and over.
“With legacy converged vendors, they would have to replace the equipment every three years or so, and that became expensive,” she said. “Many have mandates from their CIO to move from on-prem to the cloud, so they didn’t want to commit to up-front CAPEX purchases. In addition, I used to work at VMWare and they only sold CAPEX. With the rise of cloud technologies, a lot of customers are also moving to OPEX because they like the predictability.”
Rubrik Go works on a SaaS model adapted from Rubrik Polaris, a SaaS platform they introduced a year ago that complements their flagship data management offering by providing a global policy framework, workflow orchestration, and deep data intelligence as cloud-delivered applications.
“Polaris was the genesis of Rubrik Go and Rubrik Go bundles in Polaris technology,” Wei said.
Rubrik Go also addresses the key customer pain points. It lowers upfront costs, and shifts spending from CAPEX to OPEX for more predictable payments. They receive free technology refreshes over the subscription term. And if they migrate to the cloud during the term, the licensing will also migrate.
“We bundle in cloud licenses at no additional cost, so if they migrate to the cloud, they don’t have to pay again,” Wei indicated.
Wei also said that the pricing is transparent, and will cost customers less.
“Rubrik Go will always be cheaper than buying perpetual licenses,” she stated.
“Based on the feedback so far, we think this is what customers want,” Wei added. “We are not just shifting everyone to subscription. It’s not forced. But we think all new customers will want to purchase this way. Existing customers who have already purchased perpetual licenses will want to retain those.”
Bertrand Yansouni, Rubrik’s vice president of worldwide channel sales
Bertrand Yansouni, Rubrik’s vice president of worldwide channel sales, said that partner feedback to the new model has been positive.
“Jenn and her team were great about involving partners in developing this,” he said. “We aren’t the first ones to come out with a subscription. However, we find that partners today welcome it. The best partners care about their customers. They want the greatest simplicity and the greatest amount of choice and flexibility, and this provides that to them.”
Yansouni said that Rubrik Go is also useful to partners in overcoming some key customer objections.
“There are some customers who need to purchase on the OPEX model, and partners can now sell to those,” he said. “This model may help accelerate a deal or make one happen that couldn’t happen until the follow year and a new budget. Go also gives customers automatic access to new platforms as they come out, so the evergreen model takes that objection off the table. In addition, every customer is moving in one fashion or another to the cloud. Our partners play a key role in helping customers with those initiatives. With Go, we are future-proofing customers for the journey to the cloud, and the flexible cloud licensing allows them to do that.”
