NDR in VAR recruitment drive

Disaster recovery firm embarks on first fully fledged partner programme

Disaster recovery vendor NDR is hoping a VAR recruitment drive and the launch of a more formal partner scheme will enable it to capture additional market share in the storage sector.

NDR, which was acquired for £37.2m by the Phoenix IT Group in March last year, said it will increase its reseller numbers from about five or six to about 25 by the end of June.

John Wordly, sales and marketing director at NDR, told CRN that it has not had a fully fledged partner programme before.

“Our acquisition by Phoenix has given us focus, because it is 100 per cent channel driven,” he said. “We’ve already recruited two channel managers to formalise the market testing we’ve been doing for the past six months.”

Wordly added that NDR will also recruit another five channel managers next year, which he claimed will be instrumental in providing support to its expanding channel.

However, Wordly said that recruitment will not be an easy ride for partners and described the process as “selective recruitment”.

“We have marketing funds available [to partners] and will provide them with one-to-one training to help them achieve sales,” he said. “But it’s a two-way stream and we will be asking them what they bring to NDR.”

Claus Egge, an analyst at IDC, told CRN: “There are several companies already delivering disaster recovery services. The SME segment is still ripe with opportunities for disaster recovery, because many SMEs still confuse backup with disaster recovery.”

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