Commvault channel chief increasing partner support

Commvault's recently appointed channel chief has vowed to increase the support it can offer resellers as it looks to expand its indirect business.

The data management firm is riding a wave of strong customer demand thanks to GDPR and an increasing awareness of the importance of looking after information against a backdrop of growing cyber threats.

Owen Taraniuk, Commvault’s head of worldwide partnerships and market development, was given the channel role at the end of last month and is planning a year of investment.

"We can talk about growth all we like but we have to bring very strong offerings to market that are easy for our partner base to deploy and manage," he said.

"We are looking to increase the focus on the partnerships we have and are investing heavily in supporting those partnerships," he added “Investments to make it easier to interact with us.”

As well as taking steps to make life simpler for existing partners the firm is also expecting to grow its channel base and has been given access to a larger number of resellers through some of its alliances with the likes of Cisco, AWS and HPE.

Taranuik said that it was open minded about the emerging IoT and born-in-the-cloud partners and would make sure that it worked with the right people to ensure it had market coverage.

With GDPR, ransomware and an increased awareness about the importance of data management the opportunities for channel partners are quite extensive but there are some challenges for resellers to get into a position to guide customers through the process.

"There is a big opportunity for partners but there is a lot of new learning and working out what it means long term. Wrestling with the complexity of the [regulations] and working out what is the right outcome," said Taranuik.

“In terms of data protection the challenges for customers are a lot more diverse so that is a huge opportunity for our partner base,” he added.

From a UK perspective steps to widen channel coverage include the decision to sign CMS Distribution as a distributor and aggregator of licenses.

“As we continue to evolve the way that we work with partners, it is important for us to develop relationships with the MSPs that are working directly with end users and supply them with the right technology. Our longstanding relationship and deep understanding of the Commvault Data Platform makes them an ideal company to expand into this arena with," said Justin Griffiths, enterprise solutions director at CMS Distribution.