Born in the cloud solution provider COMPAREX has set up shop in the Canadian marketplace as part of a global roll-out strategy to expand its business worldwide.
Jason Mackay
The company founded in Leipzig, Germany has hired Jason Mackay as its first ever leader for the Canadian operation of COMPAREX. Mackay is a long time senior executive at Microsoft Canada where he worked in channel sales and at CompuCom Canada.
The two new Microsoft Canada data centres had a significant reason for COMPAREX entering the Canadian marketplace, but Mackay added it was not the determining factor.
“Part of our global strategy is to increase our reach and there was great impetus for Canada. Plus we were invited by senior executives from Microsoft Canada to bring a new type of partner to this region that could focus on Microsoft and align to its cloud first strategy,” Mackay said.
COMPAREX was founded more than 30 years ago and offers Microsoft volume licensing expertise along with software asset management services. The company is in 34 locations worldwide and opened up its U.S. office two years ago.
In Canada, Mackay is employing a solutions strategy comprising three types of managed services; two of which are branded UCM (Unified Cloud Management). Under the UCM brand there are two offerings with Office 365 and Azure.
The UCM Office 365 offering starts at $9 per month, per user and enables organizations to deploy to the cloud but it also gives them change management solutions, end user training and support (dedicated Technical Account Manager or TAM).
The UCM Azure offers a complete implementation roadmap with provisioning, migration from on-premise legacy systems and the Azure Active Directory. It too has a dedicated TAM.
“Clients welcome this type of solution rather than a deployment of Office 365 in the cloud and then they walk away. This is more of a holistic approach,” Mackay said.
The third offering is called Cloud Complete and this package is geared towards the SMB. It begins with Cloud Core at $15.20 per month, per user and includes a free migration to the cloud plus Office 365 licensing. Cloud Complete is the Cloud Core plus four additional services covering security, data backup, custom intranets, and enterprise-grade support.
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Another aspect of Mackay’s strategy for COMPAREX in Canada is to openly partner with other solution providers.
“We’ve been surprised and encouraged by organizations willingness to explore new partnerships with COMPAREX as we still are a new entrant in this market. We thought it would be challenging with a brand that is not as recognized. We do have a partner friendly approach because we understand it’s difficult to build in technology with a one-size fits all approach. We understand there are some limits in our portfolio and look to add with a partner in the marketplace and it has already produced results for clients,” he said.
COMPAREX is a true born in the cloud player. Mackay told CDN that he really identifies with the born in the cloud term even though it might mean different things to others. “From our perspective we are a cloud first organization and from a licensing point-of-view this focus helps our clients understand the licensing options as they go to the cloud. Licensing and compliance can be complex and we address it through our SaaS and Software Asset Management. That term means more to us than other organizations because we have a ground up cloud mentality.”