LogicMonitor has intensified its channel focus since Mark Banfield joined the company as CRO from Datto 18 months ago.
Sanjay Gupta, LogicMonitor’s global VP of channel and alliances
SaaS-based IT infrastructure monitoring vendor LogicMonitor is continuing its pivot towards being a channel-led business. The company recently announced the addition of new channel partners across five global geos. None of them were Canadian, but the company is actively looking for new Canadian partners.
Sanjay Gupta joined LogicMonitor as global VP of channel and alliances last November, with the real significance being that he was the first person in this role at the company.
“My coming here is part of that transformation of LogicMonitor that Mark Banfield initiated after he joined the company as CRO,” Gupta said. Banfield, who had been SVP of Sales and International General Manager at Datto, came to LogicMonitor in late 2018.
“Initially, the LogicMonitor channel was more SMB and midmarket,” Gupta indicated. “When Banfield came, we began that transformation to focus on enterprise customers and to drive towards a channel-led business. We started to make that pivot last year. No enterprise-focused business can thrive without a solid channel ecosystem.”
LogicMonitor’s channel is made up of four components.
“Our MSP community is a big part of our coverage model and is a good part of our business,” Gupta said. “We have over 500 MSP partners.”
VAR partners is an area where LogicMonitor has stepped up their investment. New VAR partners were the primary focus of a recent channel momentum announcement which added new partners in the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Mexico, and Australia.
“We have good VAR coverage in North America, including Canada, and are expanding in EMEA and APJ,” Gupta said. “Some of these territories and markets, like South Africa, will be partner-led. Our focus is on partners who can offer a complete solution for their customers.”
GSIs, including Infosys and CapGemini, are the third partner type.
“We do a lot of activity with them,” Gupta indicated. “They are effective with large organizations and bring a global capability.”
The final partner category is the strategic alliances, which include ServiceNow, Cisco, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
“We have some really exciting things going on with ServiceNow, Cisco and AWS in terms of product integration and GTM activity,” Gupta said.
LogicMonitor sees a differentiation for itself in its ability to provide the advantages of SaaS monitoring – of no small value in the pandemic environment – as well as traditional on-prem situations.
“We are making significant progress in bringing partners on board who see the value of what we bring in terms of hybrid infrastructure monitoring intelligence,’ Gupta indicated. “The transition to cloud outside North America is a lot further back than in North America, and they often have huge on-prem infrastructures. Our ability to provide hybrid support is very compelling there.”
On the other hand, the coronavirus’s shift towards Work From Home accentuates the value of their SaaS capability, even as Gupta acknowledged that the overall impact of the pandemic on LogicMonitor’s MSPs is still uncharted waters.
“There are a lot of distressed businesses and changes in the market,” he said. “Many of our customers have been able to adapt effectively to working remotely by being able to support the user base. Many companies with their on-prem monitoring weren’t able to adapt to this change. But because we are agentless, there’s nothing to install beyond the collector into the customer’s environment. It gives us tremendous flexibility and speed of deployment, and our customers are embracing that. Our MSP partners are responding to those customer needs, and we are enabling partners to be more flexible and adaptable.
“We just announced an offering for customers to be able to monitor all their SaaS solutions in a trial format at no charge for a 90 day period, “Gupta added.
In Canada, the Canadian channel is still fairly small, in the single digits, Gupta said.
“We want partners with expertise in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver and a number in each locale,” he stated.
Gupta also noted that Logic Monitor revamped their partner program earlier this year in terms of structure around margins and deal registration.
“We are very much focused on partners building a solid profitable business around LogicMonitor,” he stressed. “A lot of SaaS players out there support from initial sale but pull in renewals. We don’t, and LogicMonitor partners support the renewal process to grow their business with us. That differentiates us from a lot of SaaS players. We also do not have a big services organization, and are looking for partners to build our services capability and expand and integrate. We provide a unique capability to build out services offerings.”
Canadian channel partners who are interested in working with LogicMonitor should reach out to them at https://www.logicmonitor.com/partners.
