THE PATH that brought Axcient to where it is today is a complicated one, with roots that extend back to 2013, when data protection vendor eFolder bought file sync and share vendor Anchor. In the next five years, those two firms acquired BDR vendor Replibit, merged with Axcient, a maker of disaster-recovery-as-a-service software, and put the latter company’s name atop the entire collection of products and platforms.
Now, after all those twists and turns, what Axcient wants most for itself and its partners is simplicity. “”It’s pretty much everything we talk about,”” says Angus Robertson (pictured), Axcient’s chief revenue officer. “”We try to be fairly ruthless about it.””
Indeed, in an effort spearheaded by CEO David Bennett, who stepped into that role early in 2019 after a stint at Webroot, the company has boiled down nearly 1,500 SKUs to just 11 and combined multiple solutions into a unified business availability platform called x360. “”We’ve been sort of getting our story together, getting our strategy together, and getting our platform together,”” Robertson says.
New Four-Tiered Partner Program
Now the company is getting its partner program together too. In a bid to bring both simplicity and clarity to a channel that already had over 3,000 members and was growing 10% to 20% a year, Axcient has replaced a legacy program featuring loosely defined requirements and benefits with a new offering, unveiled this month, that features four tiers: registered, silver, gold, and platinum.
Members climb through the ranks by spending more money with Axcient, driving greater adoption of its products, and engaging in activities that demonstrate engagement, like taking training courses and executing co-branded sales campaigns. Gold partners, for example, must have at least one certified engineer and engage in semiannual business planning sessions in addition to deploying two or more Axcient products on over 15% of endpoints under management and generating more than $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue from those systems.
“”We really want to package the benefits to identify those partners that are excited about what we’re doing and are willing to invest in what we’re doing, and reward that investment,”” Robertson says.
Those benefits begin with things available to everyone, like access to brandable marketing assets, software trials, and certification programs. Silver partners get market development funds as well as the ability to earn points, at both a company and individual employee level, for participating in engagement activities. “”Those can be redeemed for discounts or swag or gift cards or donations,”” Robertson notes.
Gold partners, meanwhile, receive dedicated account management plus assistance on closing deals from Axcient salespeople. They can also participate in early adopter programs, influence the future direction of Axcient products by attending roadmap workshops, post customer success stories on Axcient’s website, and collaborate with Axcient sales engineers on technical audits aimed at optimizing their technology stack for greater efficiency. Platinum partners get sales leads, an executive sponsor from the vendor’s leadership team, and support from a “”marketing concierge,”” among other perks.
Needless to say, Robertson adds, stepping up from one level to the next in the program wins you higher back-end rebates as well.
The new partner program isn’t the only reason to join forces with Axcient though, the company contends, pointing to its channel-only sales model and exclusive focus on MSPs as others. The growing x360 platform, furthermore, now includes components for business continuity/disaster recovery, cloud-to-cloud backup, and file sync and share, all tied together by a common interface, shared billing engine, and single sign-on, as well as integration with the all-new marketing portal Axcient introduced last summer.
The ultimate goal of the platform, the partner program, and everything else Axcient has been working on, Robertson explains, is turning mere partners into advocates who are “”so happy with that experience that they want to go out and tell everybody else that it’s been really helpful for their business.”” Simple, no?
