Monday Morning Impact – July 28

By Ken Presti, Senior Consultant, Channel Impact

Webroot Rolls Out New Channel Program

Colorado-based Webroot, which specializes in cloud-based Internet threat detection, has announced a new channel program with an expanded portfolio of tools and other resources.

Marketed as the Channel Edge Reseller Program, the initiative specifically targets the SMB space through attempts to better support partners serving that customer segment in which the company claims triple-digit year-over-year growth.

New and updated features include syndicated web content that delivers product information, trial software downloads and whitepapers designed to help customers understand the Webroot product line and engage with partners through product trials. The program’s updated resource center provides a central venue through which partners can access sales and marketing materials. A separate syndication module enables partners to promote content and communicate with prospects over social media.

Other benefits, such as qualified sales leads, speaking engagements and joint seminars, market expansion programs, sales incentives, and access to a dedicated channel account manager, are linked to hitting minimum quarterly volumes.

Channel Impact:
Webroot is clearly looking to leverage updated communications media toward helping partners maintain a dialogue with partners and customers. As malware and other threats continue to gain critical importance in the SMB market segment, such capabilities will likely become more prevalent and more important.

VeloCloud Offers New Branch Office WAN Service through Channels

VeloCloud Networks, Inc. has announced availability of a subscription-based WAN service for enterprises wanting to eliminate hard choices between Internet-based broadband as opposed to private lines. The service dynamically steers critical business applications over the most efficient links and paths in order to improve performance, resilience and security. A large part of the value proposition is to simplify branch office deployments while at the same time providing improved WAN visibility and cloud-scale analytics through a pay-as-you-go model.

The company claims its service can displace substantial quantities of CPE, virtualizing access control, application-aware firewall, dynamic multi-path QoS and VPN. VeloCloud’s subscription service includes a management platform, distributed cloud services gateways and cloud services edge devices deployed at each branch by authorized channel partners.

High technology, hospitality, retail, financial services and construction are among the targeted verticals.

Channel Impact:
According to the company, the service offers substantial savings compared to most conventional deployments. Channel partners may find such a strategy to be instrumental in penetrating large enterprises by focusing on delivery of services to branch offices.

D&H Distributing Launches New Disaster Recovery Initiative

D&H Distributing is adding new resources to support channel partners pursuing the disaster recovery space. Seeing an enhanced emphasis on storage devices, virus protection, automatic backup solutions, power supply units and server solutions, the Harrisburg, PA-based distributor is offering new training opportunities and materials to help resellers communicate the value of Disaster Recovery to SMB customers before a Big Event takes place.

Resources include messaging at an upcoming trade show, an interactive webcast and new marketing collateral.

As Microsoft prepares to end support for Server 2003 next year, D&H says customers could find themselves particularly vulnerable to misfortunes ranging from flood damage and power outages to full-scale natural disasters.

“We’re trying to instill the value of disaster recovery as a crucial long-term investment,” said Jeff Davis, senior vice president of sales at D&H. “A secure disaster management plan will allow companies to safeguard essential customer data–and in turn, their own businesses.”

Channel Impact:
Channel partners frequently tell us that the value of security is hard to measure until something bad happens. And if the proper countermeasures are not already in place, it’s obviously too late. From a channel enablement perspective, anything that helps the partners demonstrate this fact to a degree sufficient to inspire customers – especially SMBs – to open their wallets is probably a good thing.