File sync and share vendor Egnyte has set wheels in motion to grow its indirect channel across Europe.
The US vendor landed in the UK in 2014, signing up a handful of partners. Now it says it’s ready to take its first significant steps to build out its channel, and has appointed new channel director Melissa O’Leary to oversee the task.
Currently only around 16 percent of Egynte’s business goes through the channel, but O’Leary (pictured) says she wants to increase this figure by 30 percent. “It’s apparent that at Egnyte we need to grow, and by growing we need to focus on the channel,” she tells Channel Pro.
O’Leary – who previously worked with Egnyte’s VP for EMEA, Ian McEwan, at Gigamon and FrontRange – says that while the firm’s current MSP model is working well, there are improvements to be made with its VAR relationships.
Since joining Egnyte in September O’Leary says she has spent time revisiting partners on a one-on-basis to gauge “how well are they performing, are they achieving results, is the partner relationship on track or not?”
She says she wants to see more enablement training for partners, and encourage them to work with Egnyte’s technology partners like Okta and NetApp on delivering end-to-end solutions.
“I want to build more of an effective, long lasting relationship,” she says.
O’Leary and her team are also participating in meetings to decide channel structure, marketing, and the partner programme potential components that will be rolled out globally.
“When you build a house you have to build the foundation first. We’re putting a plan together,” she says.
Distribution will also have a part to play across EMEA: “I’m working on a plan; there’s certain regions where I would like to put a distribution model in place,” she explains.
Demand
In a crowded market, McEwan claims the vendor is seeing demand for its hybrid cloud/on-premise offering from second generation file sync and share clients that are moving from legacy solutions.
“We’re starting to get inbound enquiries from the channel that are hearing about us,” he says, adding that it is “validation” of its hybrid approach.
“There are a lot of legacy organisations that have a lot of expensive storage that needs to be renewed but don’t want to go completely to the cloud just yet,” he comments.
In addition, McEwan believes changes in European directives, such as the Safe Harbour ruling, mean that “more and more partners are now looking for partnership with vendors that have a European – or in our instance a UK – subsidiary. We have our datacentres here, we have our operations here – they’re not just dealing with sales and marketing here.”
Ultimately it’s down to relationships, says O’Leary. “People buy from people. It’s about gaining that trust as well, and that’s what I’m going to be offering.”
