Endpoint data protection specialist Druva has spoken about its ongoing efforts to build out a channel base in Europe.
The Sunnyvale, CA-based vendor recently appointed Exclusive Networks as a distributor in the UK, after a short stint with ASM Technologies.
Steve McChesney, VP of business development at Druva says the move to the channel is all about scale: “We recognise that in order for us to have a presence in the enterprise we need to have an ecosystem,” he tells Channel Pro.
“It’s an opportunity to get the hockey stick growth that we need,” he says, adding that Druva operates a 100 percent channel sales model in Europe, “or very close to that.”
Nevertheless, McChesney says the firm doesn’t want to over-saturate the channel: “We’re being pretty selective in the partners that sign. If we’re not relevant to that partner’s business, we’ll never get the traction we need.”
Druva offers a suite of endpoint data protection and governance solutions that helps to safeguard corporate information on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
“70-plus percent of workforce is now mobile [but] 30 percent of the data on those devices never backed up,” says McChesney. “You need something like Druva to make sure you have control over your data and ability to back it up, or share or geo-locate the device or wipe it clean. If you’re going to have a mobility story you have to be thinking about the data on that machine.”
The firm currently has around 200 employees worldwide; with 10 people in UK. One of the first things McChesney did after joining the firm in November 2013 was to create a formal channel programme, PartnerSync.
However the exec is already mapping out the next version of the programme, which he says will focus on more on opportunities around cloud. “It’s two tier, and we plan to launch another top level tier later in the year. There will be those partners that elevate and want to be part of the high level programme when it launches,” he explains.
In a crowded marketplace Druva competes against the likes of Code42’s Crash Plan, EMC Mozy and HP’s Connected Backup. However, McChesney is keen to point out that Druva has been ranked number one in Gartner’s list of the seven top performing enterprise endpoint backup products for two years in a row.
“The other technologies grew out of the consumer space and moulded it into the enterprise. We were built for the enterprise in mind,” says the exec, who adds, “We have built functionality into the solution that makes remote backup for an end user very non-disruptive.”
Danny Williams, head of mobile security at Druva partner Lan2Lan says the argument for a service like Druva’s is compelling: “According to Gartner, 28 percent of data sitting on end point devices and not backed up... Druva sits in the background and won’t inconvenience you when you’re working. But it will back up data in the background, and cleverly it knows how much of compute you’re using, only using spare computing resources. It saves the user interacting with the corporate process of backup.”
Gary Duke, sales director at Lan2Lan adds that early indicators point to Druva becoming “one of the key products” in the VAR’s portfolio. “It’s been a good first six months between the two businesses in what we have achieved, and what we’ll achieve going forward,” he says.
UPDATE: This article was updated after Druva confirmed it was no longer partnering with ASM Technologies.
