The new channel program is designed to make things simpler, eliminating confusion by promising zero channel conflict, clarifying deal registration and establishing a minimum advertised price, and adding a new track for MSPs.
Jose Rangel, Director of Channels at HYCU
Multi-cloud data management vendor HYCU has announced the introduction of their new Global Partner PACE [Partners Accelerating Cloud Environments] Program. The new program makes some significant changes from the old, in order to provide the focus the company wants, in order to manage partners more closely and effectively than in the past.
“The old global partner program reflected our early stage of growth, where as companies come out of the chute and grow, they tend to want to work with anybody – and you wind up with 340 partners,” said Jose Rangel, Director of Channels at HYCU. “Many of these partners sign up for a couple leads and then drift away. The job in channel is to get sales leads. That’s it, an inside-out model. But the company is moving to a model where our account reps and BDRs are growing from the inside, so you have to be really precise on what partners are doing, particularly because you don’t have the breadth to cover them all. Many can sign up through our huge distribution presence.”
The new program has two tiers. The top tier, Premier, requires an average of four sales a month. The other partners go into the Seed Tier.
“This was done because of our leaders at the top, including Justin Endres, the new head of global sales,” Rangel said. “They saw we had to change the way we deal with large VARs because they expect that. We also had to come up with a plan that includes marketplace purchases.”
The new program also adds a track for Managed Service Providers [MSPs], as well as ones for Cloud Service Providers [CSPs], Managed Security Service Providers [MSSPs], resellers and distributors.
“You now have three different groups to work with in a typical partner organization,” Rangel said. “One is legacy data centre guys, who are still focused on selling hardware, and you have to deal with them differently, melding these into the new age of selling. When you have product like ours, built in the cloud to sell as a service, you have to be able to work with all three.”
Rangel also emphasized that it was time for MSPs to get their own track.
“We started out working solely with Nutanix, and initially, we got a ton of leads from them,” he said. “But you morph into working with MSPs when you have a managed service product. It was time that they got a defined track and not just be handled with the CSPs.
“The CSP model is very interesting for us, since we do a lot of deals with GCP and Azure,” Rangel added. “You have large national resellers now swallowing up $500 million to $1 billion CSPs – and you have to accommodate both models.”
HYCU has always been committed to not competing against their partners by selling direct, but competition between partners was potentially problematic. Accordingly, they have announced commitment to a transparent, predictable, and fair approach to all partners, which will ensure HYCU is joint selling with partners through a formal Customer Acquisition Plan or not at all. This commitment extends to Support, Subscription Renewals and New product sales approved through Deal Registration.
“There have been a lot of growing pains, where as you try and gain market share, it’s all about whatever it takes to get a deal,” Rangel noted. “You have to get consistent about what u do. This protection against channel conflict is protection against other partners. Regional VARs are still a major focus for us, and they need to know they will be protected.”
The new program also establishes a new, formal, consistent and predictable margin promise for deals registered by partners, which are assured prior to any discounts by HYCU.
“You need clarity to avoid confusion,” Rangel said. “We now put a stake in the ground. The Seed partner has an assured margin and make a guaranteed minimum, and if they train up and do more deals, we move them to the Premier tier.”
Finally, HYCU has unilaterally established a policy of minimum advertised price [MAP] standards for all HYCU products.
“It wasn’t that discounting was a big problem before as much as there was a problem with a lot of confusion,” Rangel stated. “You need a price list you can share with all your partners.”
Rangel concluded that having more clarity in the program will not just better satisfy partners, but will have positive benefits on customers as well.
“Having this focus really changes the game when having discussions with customers,” he said. “It gets them engaged and it will grow sales.”
