Amarish Karnik, Director – Channel Sales, Alliance (India & SAARC), Veeam Software shares the company’s channel strategies for 2020
What have been the key highlights of 2019 and how 2020 will be an important year for the IT channel industry?
The year 2019 was a transformational one for Veeam in India. We have seen customers adopting different revenue models. A lot more customers started subscription over the perpetual model. Customers are also adopting cloud-like consumption model for software, also referred to as pay-per-use.
On the back of these changes and as a 100 per cent channel company, Veeam continues to build extensive profitable partner programmes to constitute a strong channel ecosystem across markets and geographies. In 2020, we launched the PartnerPerks programme to increase partner engagement, streamline incentives and enable our partners with extensive tools, resources and the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of added benefits. Veeam also launched the enhanced Veeam Accredited Services Partner (VASP) programme in 2019 to strengthen its partners’ capabilities to sell, deploy and support Veeam solutions, and ensure customer satisfaction.
As the IT channel industry moves from 2019 to 2020, our channel partners are experiencing a demand from businesses and enterprises of all sizes to ensure that their data is always available, portable, and protected across any application and any cloud or platform. With a laser-sharp focus on data innovation to drive business acceleration, this demand is expected to become even stronger in 2020. The channel industry will continue enabling business continuity and helping organisations be in better control of their data to exceed recovery objectives.
Change in revenue models at the customers’ end throws a different challenge as well as an opportunity for our partners. They need to develop different sales models to stay relevant. Veeam is helping the partner to build different sales models so that they stay relevant and continue to add value to their customers.
What are the top three technology trends that channel community should be focusing on, and why?
Throughout last year, technology has continued to have a transformative impact on Indian businesses and communities. Below are the key technology trends that the channel community should prepare for in 2020:
- Cloud data management will increase data mobility and portability: Businesses will look at cloud data management (CDM) to guarantee the availability of data across all storage environments, including private, public and hybrid cloud in 2020. To meet changing customer expectations, businesses are constantly looking for new methods of making data more portable within their organisation. The vision of ‘your data, when you need it, where you need it’ can only be achieved through a robust CDM strategy, so its importance will only grow over the course of next year. The channel community must leverage the demand for CDM as an opportunity to go to the market with scalable solutions.
- Pay-as-you-go model to gain momentum: While cloud adoption will continue to gain momentum in India, organisations are opting for more cloud-friendly consumption models instead of committing to CapEx purchases. Cloud computing will shift IT spending to a pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for what you use, when you use it.
- Organisations will replace, not refresh, backup solutions: In 2020, the trend towards replacement of backup technologies over augmentation will gather pace. Businesses will prioritise simplicity, flexibility and reliability of their business continuity solutions as the need to accelerate technology deployments becomes even more critical. The channel community must be agile to respond to this trend in 2020.
What are the top channel directions your company has set for partners, and where should partners invest to be aligned with these directions?
Veeam strengthens its channel partners to meet the data management needs of the modern business/modern workloads. Organisations across industries such as BFSI, government, PSU and healthcare are increasingly focusing on modernising their data centres in 2020. Veeam and its channel partners are committed to ensure business continuity across industries through uninterrupted access to any data, any application across any hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud infrastructure. Veeam’s partner programmes are designed to build trusting, long-term relationships that result in meeting the demands of our customers. Participating in our partner programmes will help channel partners expand their portfolio and ensure we execute our vision in 2020 of being the most trusted provider of backup solutions that enable cloud data management.
As customers adopt multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models, partners also need to re-skill their sales, pre-sales and delivery teams. We believe Veeam is uniquely placed to help partners in this process. Veeam has launched new certifications – Veeam Sales Professional (VMSP) and Veeam Technical Sales Professional (VMTSP). With Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) programme, a joint investment by partner and Veeam, we extend the best practices of deployment in the era of hybrid cloud. Most importantly, partners can help the customers deploy solutions on use case basis.
