Inevidesk co-founder Tim Whiteley: 'Our intention from this point forward is to be working with channel partners'
Whiteley discusses Inevidesk’s new channel partnership programme, the balance between longevity and innovation, and international expansion
Founded in 2019, Inevidesk initially set out with the intention to enable organisations to work "wherever" they could.
So far, the virtual desktop vendor has made good on this ambition, with many of their customers using Inevidesk to work across the UK, Europe, the US, the Middle East and further afield.
Its channel strategy was always part of the plan, says co-founder Tim Whiteley, but it was put on the backburner during the early growth years.
As the new kid on the block battling with household names like VMware, Citrix, AWS and Azure, Inevidesk needed to build its credibility before setting up its own channel business.
"We were something completely different, because we weren't reselling any of those big tech solutions which most companies providing VDI were effectively doing," co-founder Tim Whiteley (pictured) tells CRN.
"We developed our own stack using open-source technology to enable the accessibility as well as making sure we could achieve the performance that we needed.
"At first, it wasn't really feasible to have channel partners, because we couldn't prove anything."
But the company is now more than ever ready to enter the channel, as it has officially launched its channel partnership programme this summer.
"Our intention from this point forward is to be working with channel partners," says Whiteley
Small step or giant leap?
The company's new direction has proved fruitful so far.
"We've made a few initial sales, and we anticipate to grow and gain momentum over the coming months and years.
"We're actively working to talk with new channel partners, and so we're currently in multiple conversations with people," says Whiteley.
Inevidesk mainly works with MSPs at the moment, as its virtual estate management pairs well with the vendor's service, who despite multiple requests doesn't provide IT consultancy.
But Inevidesk intends to become a major player in the channel by following its driving ethos: complete flexibility without performance sacrifice.
"People want to work in a much more hybrid fashion, they want a lot more in terms of business resiliency and assurance around continuity," says Whiteley.
"We have international workers plugging into UK based infrastructure and working from different locations, such as across Europe, the Middle East, the US or further afield.
"What our VDI platform offers is an incredibly efficient way to administrate a large estate of workstations that, if they were not with VDI, would be dispersed across the UK, which would create a lot of endpoints and locations that you have to secure and manage."
Inevidesk co-founder Tim Whiteley: 'Our intention from this point forward is to be working with channel partners'
Whiteley discusses Inevidesk’s new channel partnership programme, the balance between longevity and innovation, and international expansion
Future of the company
Inevidesk's future relies on that flexibility. The London-based company is already present internationally, with their "customers are using Inevidesk to work from Poland, Germany, the Middle East, the East Coast of America, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong."
"We have a lot of international users, although they're plugged into UK infrastructure for the most part, but we're hoping to gain more points of presence internationally over the next couple of years," adds Whiteley.
The vendor also has plans for the future of the channel, and wants its partners to experience and understand the product that they have developed, as such partners will "find it an exciting prospect for their customers."
The company wants to stay a strong partner and ally to its current clients in the architecture, engineering and design (AEC) sector, with "some big architectural names" who attest that their solution is really performing because "they simply wouldn't use if it couldn't provide that level of performance."
The team is counting on their budding channel relationships to help them identify new sectors.
Talking about the near future of company - the next six to 12 months - Whiteley says the goal is to open more options within the service.
Over the last few years, the company has integrated more components into its service to make it more configurable, flexible, and scalable, and tries to reinvent itself to meet the growing needs of their customers.
"We also have got a lot of new technology that we expect to see going out in the coming months," says Whiteley.
Channel and wider partners
Despite being quite new in the channel, the company has partnered with "a couple of MSPs who have a lot of their clients using our system."
The co-founder talks about the company's relation with Scan, a "massive technology supplier here in the UK."
He describes the Inevidesk team as being "very excited" about this partnership, as Scan, who has "such a wide reach across all kinds of organisations and sectors in the UK," decided to adopt the Inevidesk solution as one of their offerings."
In terms of wider partners, Whiteley discusses the "long-term relationship" with Parsec, a remote desktop technology company founded in 2016.
"We identified very early, when they were still in beta, that their technology would be incredibly useful for people working within 3D models," says Whiteley
"We wanted to partner with them, so we could match our hardware technology and our back-end management with a tool that could connect in the best possible way.
"Over the years, we saw Parsec grow to become the leading remote desktop technology in the world."
Inevidesk co-founder Tim Whiteley: 'Our intention from this point forward is to be working with channel partners'
Whiteley discusses Inevidesk’s new channel partnership programme, the balance between longevity and innovation, and international expansion
Between perpetuation and evolution
Whiteley also emphasises the importance of longevity within the Inevidesk service, and described it as "something you have to balance."
"Depending on who you're working with, the software is ever more demanding.
"We don't want to be forcing the customers to upgrade just because we've released a shinier version of something they already have.
"We try to find that nice balance to make sure we're providing the level of performance that people need, but without forcing them to over invest, over buy or junk equipment too soon."