Giacom, Renewtrak and Apstra reach out to partners

Giacom

Cloud distributor Giacom has a new offering for the channel called Cloud Server, which has been designed to be a service that takes over from a traditional server when it no longer has any useful contribution to make.

Cloud Server is “a simple out-of-the-box replacement for an on-premise, end-of-life server”, according to the company. 

Giacom’s service means that resellers can sell to clients instead of a server, where the partner “gets regular income from running the service and the client is saved a lot of trouble”.

“The pricing structures and technical configurations [of cloud services] can present significant challenges for IT resellers,” said Steve Law, CTO at Giacom.

Cloud Server won’t give you grief, he adds, just “quick, simple provisioning, predictable costs and secure data storage”.

Renewtrak

Nick McMenemy is focused on helping customers with their pain points. His invention, Renewtrak, solves one of the modern problems of the service economy – the wastage involved in service provision.

“If anyone can’t tell you what problem they solve for you, they are only interested in your money, not your life,” he added.

McMenemy saw that the the renewals process is often the leaking bottle neck in the revenue pipeline. The renewal of an agreement is a crucial transaction between the buyer and seller, but it is often neglected.

When the seller is powerful and the buyer is powerless – such as when our mobile or broadband contracts end – the buyer gets a worse deal. But when the balance of power is more even, the service provider could be held to account and replaced.

Renewtrak aims to take each contract deadline and breathe new life into them.It does this by spotting the ways resellers can help customers save money on their renewals, creating better value and winning their long-term loyalty by creating more value for their business.

It works by automatically analysing all the relevant licences, contracts and commercial arrangements and highlights ways the service provider can win better deals for their client.

Resellers and service providers can offer a straightforward ‘solution’ to a problem everyone suffers from – the renewals of contracts. The service from Renewtrak can be white-labelled for partners.

Apstra

Apstra, the inventor of Intent-based networking, has launched a new partner programme that will be “simple, flexible and unique”, according to John Atchison, Apstra’s director of global channel marketing.

Partner Advantage automates the manual processes – such as onboarding, deal registration and marketing funding requests – to create more collaboration and engagement. The social media functions can be exploited to amplify any joint solutions and generate demand with Apstra.

The vendor is highlighting its different approach as something that the channel should take notice of, with Atchison saying Apstra’s operating system, which works with any vendor, is the key.

“Members will no longer be constrained by their customers’ hardware choices such as Arista, Cumulus, Juniper, Cisco or Open Networking,” said Atchison, adding that this flexibility gives partners the chance to make money and grow their business.

“We don’t intend to have thousands of partners,” said Atchison. “We will engage with partners that want a collaborative partnership where Apstra Sales, Partner Marketing and the partner will work hand-in-hand to uncover opportunities. We want it to be simple, flexible and unique.”

The bigger the company, the more complicated partner programmes can become, added Atchison, so Apstra’s programme was “created simply so partners can get to work immediately”.