Freedom 9, a Canadian-based global network security solutions company, is looking to expand its North American channel base by establishing long-term relationships with each new reseller who joins.
Scott Barrett, president and CEO of Freedom 9, says his Mississauga, Ont.-based company specializes in e-mail archiving and Internet content recording solutions for use in the education, healthcare, government and small to medium-sized enterprise markets. The solutions are primarily used for compliance, eDiscovery and litigation purposes, as well as legal cases. In addition, the company also offers bandwidth management and IT asset management solutions.
The company is entirely channel-led with over 600 resellers across North America and growing. However, of these partners, only 50 of them are authorized within its club9 reseller security partner program, which offers support to resellers who sell Freedom 9’s E-mail Archiver and Internet Content Recorder solutions. Today, there are between 10 to 15 Canadian resellers who are a part of this program, with the remaining partners coming from the U.S. Barrett said he’d like to have 50 Canadian resellers and 100 U.S. resellers authorized in club9 by the end of next year.
“We’re receiving applications on a regular basis but we’re not accepting all of them,” Barrett said. “We don’t want overlapping partners and a lot of our partners primarily come from the major cities in Canada. So we’re looking for partners in other areas too.”
As a club9 partner, Barrett says businesses will receive access to resources such as, case studies, Webinars and other forms of training, marketing tools and a partner portal, which is set to launch sometime next month. When the partner portal goes live, resellers will have the ability to add their own company Web site within Freedom 9’s, he said. There will also be an online partner forum where resellers can communicate and collaborate with other partners.
“We have three tiers in our partner program,” Barrett said. “An entry level partner can get up to 30 per cent points on our hardware solutions. For our top level tier, partners can make up to 40 per cent points on services offerings.”
The company’s flagship E-mail Archiver and Internet Content Recorder appliances allow users to record, capture, track, search and report on Internet activities.
The appliance works by sitting on a business’ network and then collecting and recording all of the information that flows through. The solution is an easy-to-use Web-based tool, which also gives users the ability to monitor what’s coming through in other areas of the world too, he added. The solution also features reporting and management capabilities to provide e-mail notifications to IT administrators so they can better limit access to certain services and monitor employee activity.
There are still plenty of opportunities for partners to get in on this solution and market, Barrett says, because there are still voids that exist in areas such as educational institutions and small to medium-sized enterprises.
“These are high growth markets in Canada and we need partners to help us with the product installations,” he added. “We’re looking to build a long-term relationship with our reseller partners because this will help us grow our business.”