The changes remove inconsistencies around these program features, and will be followed up in 2024 with additional partnership and program announcements, some of which are now imminent.
Larissa Crandall, VP of Global Channel and Alliances at Veeam
Veeam Software has announced two major enhancements to their Veeam ProPartner Network program, that are designed to make the program more consistent and offer improved benefits. The focus is primarily on two areas, deal registration and incumbency protection, although the changes also include new sales and technical training and competencies, particularly around new security solutions that Veeam is now selling.
Improved deal protection and incumbency protection sound fairly routine, but Veeam is emphasizing that the changes are very meaningful.
“A lot of what I was brought in to do was give the program a globally consistent motion,” said Larissa Crandall, VP of Global Channel and Alliances at Veeam. “The changes make us much more consistent in how we are going to market in the ecosystem. Now we have merged three programs into one, combining our North America, EMEA and EPJ programs. This was a reaction to our hearing from the partner community that we were inconsistent on these issues across the programs, which led to problems around incumbency and deal registration.”
Crandall detailed the types of changes that Veeam had made in these areas.
“With deal registration, we enhanced the front end and made changes on the back end,” she said. With Veeam having expanded its product portfolio, we wanted to make sure what we were selling was consistent. Before, in the old program, the partner would bring us a registered deal, but then it could go to special pricing, and the deal registration would drop off, and partners didn’t like that. We have had incredible feedback from partners about these deal registration changes. It allows us to provide non-standard pricing scenarios to better enable partners, even if we have to give competitive discounts.”
Incumbency is the second piece, Crandall stated.
“It was not consistent before because we would not hold to price protection,” she said. “So now we hold firm on protecting incumbency for deal registration all the way through the process. It’s simple and reflects the fact that Veeam is a partner- first organization.
“These two big changes will excite partners,” Crandall added. “We spent a lot of time listening to partners about what they wanted and what they didn’t want, and we knew that we didn’t want a major overhaul that would make things more complex.”
Veeam is also announcing enhanced sales and technical training aligned to new competencies, which enable partners to differentiate through expertise in Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery, SaaS, Kubernetes data protection and Public Cloud solutions.
“We have had competency certifications for years, and they important for partners,” Crandall noted. “The badges are meaningful to partners because they are how they differentiate themselves. With the new products Veeam has added, like security focused solutions around Kubernetes, we now have competencies that we did not have before.”
Crandall also emphasized that these changes are part of a major series of new program enhancements through collaboration with partners, alliances, and GSIs.
“I have responsibility for the entire partner ecosystem, and the big issue is who we can go out to market together with,” she said. “We announced a big partnership with Sophos this year, which is an exclusive one with us. You will see others come quickly.”
Some of these announcements are imminent.
“There are some new GSI ones that will be announced pretty soon,” Findlay indicated. “The partnerships with the security alliance are top of mind for everyone, and they will take place pretty quickly. Sophos was just a start.”
