Data protection vendor Code42 is reporting “considerable momentum” in its year-long effort to build a European sales channel as part of its international growth strategy.
Minneapolis-based Code42 debuted its Summit Partner Programme in August 2013, claiming there wasn’t “any other endpoint data protection vendors with an active channel programme.”
In those 12 months the vendor claims to have increased its reseller roster to more than 700 channel partners worldwide, adding that it expects to grow that number to more than 900 partners by the end of the year.
Code42 says it has seen particularly strong growth in the UK since it opened for business here in 2013, recruiting 12 channel partners to date, including Q Associates, Harbor (which goes to market through Softcat), Tectrade and Apple partner Jigsaw24.
All of its sales in the UK go through the channel, and roughly half of its annual revenue worldwide – which Code42 says it intends to increase further over the next year.
“The Summit Partner Programme is integral to Code42’s larger enterprise strategy as demand for our products continues to increase,” comments Ryan Gruening, director of channel sales at Code42. “Looking ahead, we are committed to strengthening the Summit Partner Programme even more to address and support our extended team in the field.”
Dell’s EMEA storage sales director, Andy Hardy, has joined Code42 – alongside a number of former Compellent colleagues – with the remit of growing the vendor’s European operations, as managing director for EMEA.
He tells Channel Pro: “There’s a shift that’s going on. We invest a huge amount of money in hardware, software, people and processes to protect information in the datacentre – but the information has largely shifted outside the datacentre, that’s why we’re seeing the storage market shrinking now.
“The fastest growing data is unstructured data, and 75 percent of that is created by information workers, on laptops or any device. More than half of information workers have three devices. It’s outside the datacentre and where the IT guy can’t protect it.
“We make sure that information is part of the customer’s corporate security domain. We effectively bring that information back into the protection levels they expect of a datacentre... It restores that visibility to IT.”
Pricing model
Code42 offers its flagship CrashPlan software via a SaaS model, either via subscription to a public cloud service – which Hardy describes as “the cost of a cappuccino, per user, per month” – or where larger customers want their data kept in their own datacentres, it can shrink wrap that public cloud service down and put it in appliances which it then manages behind the customer’s firewall.
Pointing to competitors such as EMC Mozy and Druva Hardy says: “This is not like that saturated primary storage market. The companies that are active in this market now are addressing a fraction of the pent-up demand. People are only starting to understand they have this problem.”
Hardy also reckons Code42 stands out among its competitors due to its ‘all-you-can-eat’ pricing model: “We don’t charge per terabyte,” says Hardy who says it’s difficult for organisations to guess how much of the service they’re going to need.
He also stresses the importance of the services-model to the channel: “Your customer doesn’t want to spend CAPEX on stuff it doesn’t need. They want to solve a problem. SaaS or cloud services, or anything with a subscription model, are very attractive to the customer.
“That also means we have a constant revenue stream, which is good for our investors and for the channel. It’s an important way to build stability into your business.”
File sync & share
As well as CrashPlan for endpoint devices, Code42 goes up against the likes of Box and Dropbox in the file sync & share market with its SharePlan platform. Explains Hardy: “Staff use Box or DropBox or GoogleDrive or whatever with or without corporate sanction. Some people take the approach of trying to block access – people will ignore it.
“We think IT departments need to compete with that. They need to provide a service that’s as slick and consumer-friendly as that glossy, shiny public cloud service – but you need to add it as part of your corporate security domain. The biggest differentiator for us, apart from the flat pricing, is that we can bring these two things together in a public or private cloud. It’s regaining that visibility and control by corporate IT, which is slipping through their fingers.”
Code42 now has more than 30,000 paying customers globally, including TaylorMade (a division of Adidas), Uber, Adobe, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce.com, Sony Pictures and Genentech as well as Harvard and Princeton universities.
