It is all about focus and offerings specifically for MSPs as Quest Data Protection aims to build MSP sales to about 10% of its global total. John O’Boyle, Director of Channel & Marketing talks to IT Europa about changes in how it addresses the market. He is responsible for leading channel and marketing globally for Quest’s data protection business.
“Two things are guaranteed in life: data will be growing exponentially for many years to come, and the other is that more people are moving towards subscription services-based business models and that's driving a lot of grief but a lot of opportunity. What we are seeing over time from more of our service providers is that they really want more from vendors in terms of more tailored offerings and specific programs and offers available designed for MSP as opposed to just being available.”
“So we've got an enhanced license model designed for MSPs, with pay as you grow licensing, making it easier for MSPs to enter the market and build their resources and make that part of their business profitable. And then from a product perspective, we are adding NetVault Backup which is our data protection solution for larger more complex environments. We're also adding a product called QoreStor which is a software-based duplication and replication technology and a product called Foglight for virtualization which is designed to monitor an optimized complex hybrid virtual environment. So we've essentially expanded the number of products available.”
“The other area of focus in terms of what we're changing is the support. Technical people are available 24x7 who are specialized in supporting MSPs. From a commercial perspective with the licensing, from a technical perspective with the enhanced portfolio and from our support perspective - all of this is designed to ultimately make it easier for those MSPs that want to enter the market or help make it more profitable for those existing MSPs to add services to their portfolio.”
When he looked at the MSPs that Quest does business with today and the service providers it has partnerships with, he thinks there is a good mix and range. “And we've got more interest from partners that would have traditionally been reselling solutions. So there’s quite a broad group of different sizes playing in different verticals, some being solely focused on providing disaster recovery services with others being much more broad.”
“Moving forward I don't know that we actually have any one specific target group. The program has been designed to be relatively flexible and open so it can be available to all of those partners.”
So how to win in this market with such a general approach? “From a profitability perspective, the feedback we get from our partners is that our program, whether it be in terms of upfront discount or back-end rebate, is one of the most competitive in the market in terms of the margins. The other thing from a technology perspective is the fact that we have a portfolio of products that really do complement each other.”
By the end of this year he expects MSP business to be more than 10% of business globally, up from low single digits in 2018. “We expect that will be driven by the recruitment of MSPs as well as by existing MSPs doing more, growing with the services they are already providing or adding additional services to their portfolio.”
The market in Europe does tend to be more channel-driven than in North America for example, he says. “I’m very conscious of the fact that this is a competitive market - becoming a mature market maybe, not saturated but definitely very competitive. We have started and will continue to put more effort into raising our brands within the MSP community and getting the message out there in a number of different ways. Our MSP is providing unique services that are differentiated built on technology that's quite different.”
