Arcserve LLC has launched an all-new partner program for MSPs, OEMs, and resellers of its data protection and availability products.
Called Arcserve Accelerate, the program is designed to re-ignite interest in the Minneapolis-based vendor, which brought a new CEO onboard last October and subsequently hired a raft of new senior managers, according to Adam Olson, Arcserve’s vice president of worldwide sales and a member of that revamped leadership team.
“It was very clear to us that we needed a program that sat alongside great technology in order to attract more attention and help our partners get excited again and start to make more money alongside of us,” he says. “We want this to really feel like the new Arcserve.”
The core of the Accelerate program is a fast-track, hands-on engagement with partners aimed at producing a joint go-to-market plan.
“We sit down for a couple of hours with our partner and understand their business,” explains Scott Walker, Arcserve’s vice president of strategic alliances and another recent addition to upper management. “We then will adapt our portfolio to that and create joint solutions that are compelling to their end users.”
The vendor then agrees on sales targets with the partner and collaborates on designing a demand generation campaign capable of realizing those goals.
The new program includes silver, gold, and platinum tiers, as well as an entry-level associate tier with limited benefits. Existing partners have been grandfathered into Accelerate at appropriate levels based on their status in Arcserve’s previous channel program, and have a minimum of six months to meet the new program’s qualifications for that tier. According to Walker, partners committed to building a relationship with Arcserve should have little trouble satisfying those new criteria, which focus chiefly on bookings and certifications.
“It’s easy for them to remain at their level as long as they’ll sit down with us and do the go-to-market plan,” he says. “We’re looking to invest in partners who are willing to invest in us.”
New and enhanced benefits available to Accelerate enrollees include a refreshed library of simplified sales and technical training resources. Olson saw personally just how badly partners need more easily consumed educational offerings shortly after joining Arcserve, when he asked his pre-sales team to take him through the same training courses the company’s partners take.
“They sat me down in front of dozens and dozens and dozens of documents,” he recalls. “We took that overwhelming material and distilled it down into very bite size pieces.”
Partners can consume the new educational materials online or at an Arcserve facility. The vendor will deliver the training for partners in person at their own office in select cases as well.
Accelerate partners can qualify for a new and rotating collection of spiffs too. At present, for example, partners who execute a proof-of-concept trial deployment of Arcserve in connection with a deal that eventually closes receive a five percent bonus.
“We want to encourage proof-of-concept trials, because our win rates are extremely high once we get into a head-to-head battle,” Walker says. Partners receive incremental discounts for large-volume orders as well.
Other new elements in Accelerate include a certification program for partners who wish to deliver professional deployment and integration services for Arcserve solutions, a new set of ready-to-go marketing campaign kits, and Arcserve’s first market development fund program. In general, only gold and platinum partners are eligible for MDF, though silver partners can qualify as well on a case-by-case basis.
According to Olson, the leadership team assembled by Arcserve CEO Tom Signorello since last fall has focused on rebuilding the company around two key themes: “easy to do business with” and “priced to win.” The new and simpler training program exemplifies the first of those priorities. A new rate structure informed by input from partners reflects the latter.
“I think in the past, prior to this new leadership team, there was an appetite to dig in on certain types of pricing,” Olson says. “We want to listen to our partners and make sure that we’re being very fair in pricing rather than managing kind of arbitrarily, let’s say.”
Arcserve has invested in an entirely new squad of outside salespeople since Signorello’s hiring as well. “When a partner finds an opportunity, we can help them by co-selling alongside with them,” Walker says.
Significant product updates under the new management regime include a refreshed version of Arcserve’s UDP Cloud Direct disaster recovery-as-a-service solution. Shipped in January, it’s designed to support recovery point objectives as low as 15 minutes at prices midsize businesses can afford. Thw system incorporates direct-to-cloud DRaaS technology acquired in July 2017 along with Zetta Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.
