NASHVILLE – Commvault hosted its first Partner Xchange Day this week as the prelude to its annual user conference, Commvault GO, to talk about how it is transforming into a partner-centric organization. More than 300 attendees from 117 partners participated.
Partners heard from president, chairman, and CEO Bob Hammer and chief operating officer Al Bunte, Ron Miiller, senior vice-president of worldwide sales, and the rest of the partner leadership team, who discussed the route to market strategy, the culture change Commvault had to go through to execute it, and the way it’s changing the way it does business.
Commvault’s global head of partnerships and market development, Owen Taraniuk
“We needed to be a partner driven company,” said Owen Taraniuk, vice-president of worldwide partnerships and market development, in a later interview. To do so, Commvault had to align with partner needs, simplifying products and processes, adjusting compensation, and rejigging its internal sales organization. Today, he said, 65 percent of sales and pre-sales personnel are dedicated to partners, with resources such as live support via chat, ticketing, and a partner success desk available on demand. It hasn’t been perfect, he admitted, but it’s evolving rapidly as partners provide feedback.
The effort has been underway for about eighteen months, with changes rolling out since early this year, and a major announcement in July. Over the past couple of months, the partner portal and simplified quoting system for new business were launched. “We’re about 80 percent there now,” Taraniuk said. “The last 20 percent is continuous improvement.
In addition, Commvault has expanded its global alliances, announcing full integration between Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery Software and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) StoreOnce systems, including integration with HPE StoreOnce Catalyst, extending its partnership with HPE, as well as the fact that Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery Software is now available for purchase directly from NetApp and NetApp channel partners.
It also grew reseller opportunities with two additions to its family of cloud-ready appliances – the Commvault HyperScale Appliance (model HS3300), a scale-out infrastructure for managed service providers (MSPs) and large enterprises that will be available by the end of December, and the Commvault Remote Office Appliance, a turnkey appliance available today that enables enterprises to extend Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery solutions to smaller remote offices.
“Appliances tend to be easier to sell, with a shorter sales cycle,” noted Phil Wandrei, director of product marketing.
Hyperscale installations using verified reference architectures from alliance partners tend to be more complex and have longer sales cycles. Commvault provides a validated bill of materials for the partner to quote; some alliance partners such as Cisco and HPE have taken those reference architectures and create an SKU in their price books.
The company also announced the Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery as-a-Service (B&RaaS) portfolio. This new portfolio brings organizations of any size as-a-service packages that are outcome-driven and simplify data protection and management. The portfolio includes three new cloud-based services – Commvault Complete B&RaaS, Commvault Complete B&RaaS for Virtual Machines (VMs), and Commvault Complete B&RaaS for Native Cloud Applications – providing customers the flexibility to select specific outcomes that best fit their business needs.
Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery as-a-Service will be live and available for subscription on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, the AWS Marketplace and the Commvault Marketplace by December 2018. The new services will also be available for purchase through Commvault’s Partner Network with additional options for support, plans and customization.