IT Cloud Solutions may have started as a cloud backup solution provider in 2005, but almost 15 years later, it’s proved to be much more than that.
The Quebec-based company just recently announced it has been named a Microsoft 2-tier distributor for its Cloud Solution Provider Indirect program, allowing IT Cloud Solutions to sell to Microsoft’s partner channel. As a certified distribution partner, IT Cloud Solutions will integrate functionalities of Microsoft’s APIs for service provisioning and configuration so IT companies can expand their customer base, catalyze sales, and gain business recognition via certifications and competencies.
David Latulippe of IT Cloud Solutions
“We approached Microsoft two years ago about becoming a distributor for them, because at the time we were solely a file backup distributor but wanted to have the business productivity line as well,” David Latulippe, vice president of sales and business development at IT Cloud Solutions, tells CDN. “They said no at the time because they didn’t know us but we had a network of 400 partners at the time so they said if we were able to sell 10,000 [Microsoft licenses] in a year they would consider giving us the distributor status. After nine months, we exceeded that number and were ranked number one across all the cloud service providers in Canada.”
10,000 licenses represent around 1,500 new customers using Microsoft cloud solutions, Latulippe continues, and as a result, IT Cloud Solutions was approved as a Microsoft distributor – one of only six in Canada and 34 in the world – officially in September 2017.
He describes the company as “a true value cloud distributor” that offers cloud backup and business productivity products and services thanks to Microsoft, as well as anti-virus cloud security solutions for managed service providers.
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“Our partners always say how amazing the level of support we provide them is and that they’ve never seen that before. Our IT experts support them during the presale, during the sale, and long after the sale. It’s a no-brainer to deal with us because our partners just have to sell the solution, and install it, and after that we take control of the rest and we do all the support unless we’re told otherwise,” Latulippe adds.
The company boasts a success rate of 100 per cent when it comes to retrieving files after disaster strikes and consistently onboards more than 250 customers per month. It currently has approximately 600 partners and more than 20,000 customers.
IT Cloud Solutions has launched several new products recently, including an Office 365 backup service that gives customers unlimited storage space on a Canadian data centre for $3.95 a month. It plans to unveil a new solution called Replica in the next few weeks that will be a fully managed backup solution that will not just copy a company’s data, it will back up the company’s entire system.
David Latulippe (right) accepting the Best Cloud Distributor award at the 2017 Reseller Choice Awards in Toronto.
“If you have a data disaster, you usually have to buy a new computer and install your operating system and then we would bring back all your data that was backed up in our data centres. But with Replica, we will not only back up the file and folders, we will back up the company’s systems every day. So if disaster strikes, you’d still probably need to buy another computer, but you won’t need to install anything on it. We will bring back the company image on the computer and you will be up and running in a few seconds,” Latulippe says.
This new service was developed in collaboration with recovery solution provider StorageCraft. IT Cloud Solutions also signed a big distribution partnership this past year with Romania-based cloud software firm Bitdefender, becoming its only cloud distributor for managed service providers in Canada.
Despite all this success, IT Cloud Solutions has no short-term plans to expand beyond Canada. Latulippe explains that because the company focuses on helping smaller customers, there is still plenty of market in Canada to take advantage of.
“We are really good here in Canada and it’s not our intention to extend outside of it, despite that being good news for our competitors,” he says. “Microsoft has a lot of big customers but doesn’t have a lot of success with small organizations that have less than 20 employees, which is really our specialty area. It’s part of why they needed a distributor like us. With more than 95 per cent of Canadian businesses falling in this category, we know there is still a lot of untapped potential that we can go after here so we’re going to stick with Canada.”
