Unitrends, a unit of Kaseya, this week announced it had updated its channel program to enable partners to benefit from recurring revenue generated on all additional customer purchases of products included in the Kaseya IT Complete platform for the lifetime of the customer regardless of how they are subsequently acquired.
After most initial deals for backup and recovery solutions are made, many customers wind up purchasing add-on products directly from an IT vendor. Unitrends will now reward partners participating in the Unitrends Xtra channel program for add-on product sales, regardless of whether the partner closes the deal or the end customer buys a product directly from Unitrends, says Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola.
Unitrends is making this offer as part of an effort to increase margins for partners, which Voccola says should encourage more partners to recommend the company’s backup and recovery offerings to customers.
Unitrends is making this move after evaluating what the impact this program is likely to have on its own profitably, adds Voccola.
“This will have a significant impact on the cost of sales for us,” says Voccola.
It will also undoubtedly put pressure on other IT vendors to follow suit. IT vendors frequently rewards partners for landing new customers, but those rewards don’t often extend over the lifecycle of the customer relationship.
Competition across the data protection category has never been fiercer as IT organizations continue to expand their reliance of cloud services for backup and recovery. Much of that battle is being fought in the channel trenches because solution providers have established relationships with end customers. Those customers may decide to select a backup and recovery platform on their own.
But for the most part, when it comes to data protection, most customers still rely on the recommendation of IT solution providers. While a lot of factors go into making those recommendations, profitability is always a paramount concern for IT solution providers.
It remains to be seen to what degree this move by Unitrends will shift market share among IT vendors in the channel. But with each passing day of late, it’s becoming more apparent that pressure on every vendor in this category is mounting.
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