VARs Rise to cloud challenge

Fasthosts' new cloud services arm claims first-year VAR recruitment targets will be smashed

All together now: Rise wanted 50 VARs on board within first year of business

Rise, the channel-only cloud services arm of web hosting specialist Fasthosts, has confirmed that it is on course to smash its reseller recruitment target.

Since launching in March, the firm says 20 VARs have signed up to market its infrastructure-as-a-service model to SME users, and that 80 others have expressed an interest in its offerings.

Steve Holford, marketing director at Rise, said the response from the channel had surpassed expectations.

“The aim was to have 50 VARs on board by the end of the first year, which we are very close to achieving already,” he said.

So far, a high proportion of its partners have been hardware-focused and on-premises software VARs looking for ways of supplementing their existing revenue, said Holford.

“It is a slightly different model to what some of our partners are used to because it is Opex led rather than Capex,” he said. “But with the economic pressures that a lot of SME users are under, it is a model they are very interested in.”

The model also allows partners to generate recurring revenue streams, which will prepare them for the investment shift from on-premises to cloud in the future, he added.

“The biggest challenge for resellers is working out how to provide incentives to their sales teams to sell cloud because they are used to receiving commission on hardware sales,” added Holford.