Unitrends, the backup and disaster recovery vendor that merged with IT management software vendor Kaseya Ltd. in May, has rolled out a new partner program designed to funnel benefits to the company’s most committed resellers.
“We wanted to go deeper with those partners that were making investments in Unitrends, that were building out practices, and that were showing year-over-year growth,” says Dante Gordon, senior director of channel marketing at Unitrends, which is headquartered in Burlington, Mass.
Unlike its predecessor, which had one level for all members, the new Unitrends Global Channel and Alliance Program features authorized, silver, gold, and platinum tiers. To attain gold status, partners must satisfy a range of sales, certification, and co-marketing requirements. Platinum status, which is awarded on an invitation-only basis, is available solely to channel pros who partner exclusively for BDR with Unitrends.
“We have other partners, great partners of ours, that are growing and driving a lot of business but we’re one of several vendors in that space,” Gordon says. “We wanted to create a distinction at the platinum level for the partners that are really dedicated to building a relationship with Unitrends.”
Existing partners have been slotted into the new tiering structure based on past performance, as well as Unitrends’s assessment of their future potential.
“We grandfathered some partners into the platinum and gold levels in advance of them achieving the qualifications based on discussions with their leadership,” Gordon says.
Unitrends will re-evaluate tier assignments once a year. At the discretion of their channel manager, partners delivering especially strong results can jump up a level at the six-month mark between evaluations as well.
“For example, if you’re a silver level partner today but you’re really blowing it out this year and in the first six months you’re at a run rate to exceed what you would need to be a gold level partner, we’re actually granting those partners gold level for the remainder of the year,” Gordon says. “It’s an incentive for the great work that they’ve done in the early part of the year.”
Benefits in the new program include access to a pool of market development funds that will be allocated based on the merits of a given reseller’s plans for the money, rather than their revenue numbers.
“If it makes sense and can be justified, we’ll grant those funds for use by the partner,” Gordon says. Only gold and platinum partners are eligible for MDF.
Unitrends has rolled out a new portal for its revamped channel program as well. Designed for maximum usability, the system is optimized for use on smartphones and tablets.
“A lot of partner reps are on the road, so the ability to very quickly and easily access information through the portal over a mobile interface is something that [they] have been pretty happy about,” Gordon says.
The new portal includes a planning and performance module as well that lets resellers monitor progress toward their sales targets and other key goals.
“Partners at any time can go in and see how they’re performing against their mutually agreed upon business plan metrics,” Gordon says.
A new incentive payment component in the portal distributes spiffs directly into a reseller’s checking account or through gift cards and even cryptocurrency, based on partner preference.
Functionality for submitting MDF applications online and conducting automated email campaigns is coming soon. The latter feature will utilize a third-party service with a database that Unitrends can’t access. The vendor hopes that will reassure partners otherwise leery of uploading information about current and potential customers.
“We’re providing them the ability to plan and execute email campaigns that are firewalled from anything that we do from a Unitrends direct marketing perspective,” Gordon says.
At launch, the Global Channel and Alliance Program has about 1,800 members. That’s a smaller number than the program it replaces, and follows a “pruning” process aimed at filtering out partners not transacting business on a regular basis.
“We did some housecleaning,” Gordon says. “The partners that we rolled into the new program were partners that were active with Unitrends over the last twelve to eighteen months.”
Unitrends plans to grow the program, but will prioritize quality over quantity in that effort.
“Our philosophy is not a volume partner play, but rather targeted recruitment of partners that are looking to make an investment to build out a practice verses to fill in a line card with just another vendor,” Gordon states.
Kaseya partners looking to move upmarket into the enterprise space will be prime recruiting candidates, according to Clark Brown, Unitrends’s vice president of channel sales.
“We’re a natural fit for some of them,” says Brown, who has added channel chief to his title in conjunction with the new partner program rollout. “And for some of our partners who were maybe looking at going downstream into SMB or coming out with managed service provider offerings, this makes sense to them too.”
Unitrends has been actively courting managed service providers since December, when it launched a wholly owned subsidiary named Unitrends MSP that offers multi-tenant, subscription-priced editions of Unitrends solutions. The partner program unveiled today applies only to companies that partner with Unitrends MSP’s parent company, however.
According to Clark, the recent merger with Kaseya positions Unitrends for accelerated growth.
“We have far more resources from just human headcount, from financial resources, and more importantly from an R&D perspective, integrating the two dev teams to come out with bigger and better solutions,” he says.
Kaseya named CJ Wimley, a 30-year industry veteran, its president and chief customer officer last week.
