‘We are enabling our partners to back up and restores data across the widest range of cloud environments’

A recent report predicts that the Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecosystem is expected to grow rapidly to increase its share of global SaaS to 4-5%, translating to a $50-70 billion revenue opportunity by 2030. We recognised this many years in advance and introduced our SaaS offering, Metallic in October of 2019, enabling our customers to back up and restore data across the widest range of cloud environments, and are still the only provider able to support Azure, AWS and Oracle cloud workloads from a single interface.

Since then, the annual global revenue has risen from zero to fifty million dollars, much faster than the company expected. Added to this, the last two business quarters have been the best in Commvault’s history, and we look forward to the continued momentum ahead. Owing to Metallic success in India and the rapid popularity and adoption of SaaS across India, we plan to expand our presence across the IT industry over the next year.

Our team here in India continues to execute and remains focused on delivering less complexity, more security, ransomware protection, and immutable copies in the cloud, helping meet all a customer’s workload requirements. We are able to win new logos and expand into existing footprint because we help protect, manage, and migrate on-prem workloads to multiple clouds – with only one solution.

CRN India: How do you see the role of the channel evolve with services and cloud business becoming the core business.

Marco: Indian enterprises cited that their spending on hybrid cloud will increase by 14%, whereas spending on cloud security would grow by 20% in 2022 according to IDC’s 4Q21 Cloud Pulse Survey. Additionally, Indian SaaS companies now generate $2-3 billion in total annual revenues and represent roughly 1 percent of the global SaaS market, according to data from SaaSBOOMi/Nasscom report. Overall, there is a robust growth momentum in cloud adoption with digitization as the catalyst.

At Commvault, we are seeing the demand increasing across SaaS, DR, cloud infrastructure, and intelligent data services to be quite strong. Commvault’s key success lies in working with partners who build on our capabilities to drive sustainable profitable growthWe always strive to bring constant innovation to our product portfolio as well as our partner programs to grow in the industry. With the change in the market dynamics, we are also evolving our partner programs. We operate in a 100% partner environment and together, we aim to create a modern partner program positioned to help deliver the solutions they need to help customers protect and manage data and applications in a hybrid, multi-cloud world.

CRN India: For Commvault what role channel partners play. Can you give the mix of your existing channel?

Marco: Commvault has always been a partner-first organization committed to the success and profitability of its partners. Our primary aim is to support our partners in meeting the changing requirements of customers and to accelerate their business as well as strengthen their revenue. Together with our partners, we aim to offer customers the ability to tackle modern data challenges, data loss and cyber threats. To achieve this, we consistently seek new ways to support our partners and customers through our Partner Advantage Program and encourage collaborative paths to close more deals. Beyond incentivized programs in a cloud-first environment, we also commit to providing our partners with technical training sessions and extensive resources to enable them to become experts in data management and become future ready.

With cloud being a way of business and public cloud a clear market force, our alignment with key hyperscalers will be critical to our success, A monolithic approach and on-premise market is still a very large segment for us, and has upside for growth in share of wallet.

Partners need vendors with a technology ecosystem that aligns with the requirements of today and that is future proof. Commvault is committed to delivering all the requirements to work across the ecosystem with a wide range of partners. We have long-standing OEM partnerships with NetApp, HPE, and Hitachi, among others. Cloud service providers like TCL, Yotta Infrastructure Solutions, NTT, and Sify Technologies are a key part of our go-to-market strategy. One example of our strong partnership is Yotta Safe, from Yotta, a service that provides endpoint backup as a service to its customers with unlimited storage.  

Our channel partner sstrategy aims to stimulate value creation to meet the rising consumer demands and create an ecosystem where initiatives empower the channel with best-in-class technology along with robust sales enablement.

CRN India: As customers are looking at technology as a wholesome business enabler, how partners ensure the mindshare of the different products and services.

Marco: There has been a power shift from the provider to the partner. The partners now have more choices of selection of providers. Partners certainly have the potential to reap amazing results as they are better aligned to the business goals and respond best to the ever-evolving business dynamics. They can curate the most comprehensive solutions and services to keep up with the market while attaining a competitive edge within a short space of time.

However, service providers need to move above the traditional partner models to deliver on their customers’ needs and unlock their growth potential. Their roles have evolved to being business consultants who can empower customers to leverage the cloud, drive innovation and ensure optimization of their IT infrastructure. Going forward, companies and partners will collaborate, co-innovate, and co-invest in the future to deepen relationships and scale their capabilities.​ ​Through technology interventions, Commvault enables partners to scale, innovate, or focus on their growth profitability and other parameters with the breadth and the depth of our portfolio. Commvault equips its partners to understand customers’ needs and solve their problems and work towards a solution-driven perspective.

Marco: The pandemic catalysed rapid digitalization of businesses across different sectors. The cloud-centric models have taken over to reach new heights resulting in better business outcomes, especially in India. Since SaaS took the IT market by storm, India has emerged as one of the biggest markets for us and holds great potential for the partners as well. The Indian channel market is showcasing a lot of opportunities and the demand for a robust data protection solution to maximize business resiliency is at an all-time high. As a channel led company, our aim during the pandemic was to support our channel partners and distribution houses through the disruptive demand-supply chain phase. As the channel ecosystem has stabilized, we aim to take the growth cycle into the next phase, continue to address challenges, and help channel partners overcome the obstacles through our Partner Advantage Program to ensure short and long-term success.

Marco: The role of partner models has drastically evolved over the recent years. The pandemic coupled with the rise of modern technological solutions has further fortified the role of channel partners as digital transformation agents.

At Commvault, we have successfully delivered training, and profitable incentives to develop and nurture a trusted, global partner network that is focused on delivering success for its customers. Commvault’s solutions are committed to innovation and always align to what our partners offer. Channel partners account for about 90 percent of the company’s total revenue.​ ​Commvault is uniquely positioned to drive solutions via any consumption model. Gaining access to all the consumption models​​ means we will need to displace our competition and this can only be delivered through a more effective partnering strategy.

Our Partner Advantage Program has always focused on collaboration to achieve a certain goal, aligned to customer and market requirements. Strategic partnerships with smart and purposeful business outcomes have proven to be a one fail-safe solution to gain business in 2022. Going forward, partners will continue to play a pivotal role in providing customers with a digital-rich experience and in the truest sense drive enormous positive business impact for customers.