Asigra is taking measures to increase the number of channel partners, with an emphasis on adding VAR partners who play in the midmarket and enterprise space.
Pete Nourse, Asigra’s CMO and CRO
Security focused backup vendor Asigra has launched their new Tiger’s Den Channel Program, with the name being a play on the Asigra Tigris Data Protection platform. The new program adds a second tier, enhanced support for value added distributors, new product marketing materials and enhanced partner services. The goal of all this is to increase both the number of channel partners and availability of product globally.
“Our old program was good for our existing partners, but we had no way to do rapid expansion,” said Pete Nourse, Asigra’s CMO and CRO. “We used to have a single tier. Now it has two tiers, with D2C being the first. VADs will also provide support for us, both Tier One and Tier Two. This will let us expand more rapidly, particularly as we also have access to their existing partner base.
“We are a smaller company, and we want to be engaged,” Nourse continued. “We aren’t ready to bring on 10,000 new partners, but we are aggressively trying to go out to grow our partners’ base. We want our expansion to be better known.”
A key objective is expanding the partner base beyond MSPs to include more VARs.
“Almost all our partner base today is MSPs,” Nourse indicated. “We love MSPs, but there are also VARS who work more of the midsize market and even the enterprise. You have companies acting as a VAR, selling multiple technologies to say, a government agency.
“Going out and trying to find pure play VARs is a little trickier except for the nationals, and we will talk with some of them,” Nourse continued. “But more will be MSPs who have dual businesses as VARs.”
Another change is much more proactive support from Asigra’s salespeople, pre-sales engineers and distribution partners, in assisting with demonstrations, pre-sales consulting, assistance with backup designs, sales calls, and other sales activities, within one business day or less.
“We had pre-sales support available before, but now we are being much more proactive,” Nourse said.
Another change is the addition of an updated suite of sales and marketing collaterals in the Asigra partner portal, which have been changed to reflect the evolution in backup and recovery today – especially in the area of cybersecurity and ransomware 2.0.
Asigra has also expanded their VAD program, adding an additional partner tier to its ecosystem to reach a wider array of partners. Local VADs will provide an added layer of support as well as regional expertise.
Asigra will also be embarking on new market awareness and lead-gen campaigns to educate the market about outdated backup security practices that leave their customers vulnerable. As these activities drive leads to the company, they are provided to partners in support of their businesses.
“In the past, Asigra focused primarily on partner recruitment, and that is still part of the model to get leads, but now we are adding on end users to get leads, and will pass those in to partners.”
Nourse also emphasized the importance of Asigra’s 100% channel model.
“We don’t have any direct customers. We don’t have any legacy customers. When we get leads, I’m not saying we wont work to move them forward, but we wont close anything directly. We will always bring in a partner for that.”
