Channel push is capital idea for Core Consultancy

Online backup firm plans to increase partner numbers sevenfold after opening new London digs

Online backup vendor Core Consultancy has reinforced its commitment to the channel by opening a new sales office and refurbishing its datacentres.

The vendor ditched its direct sales team last year, vowing to drive all its future business through the channel.

Since then, the firm has ramped up its staff numbers, opened a new office in London and recently switched the back-end storage in its datacentres from Dell to EMC.

Speaking to ChannelWeb, Sharad Saggar, managing director of Core Consultancy, said the firm decided to ditch Dell for reliability and support reasons.

"The move over to EMC started in earnest about a year ago," he said. "The storage is more reliable and the brand name is powerful, which has marketing advantages for us."

Now, with this new infrastructure in place, the firm has set its sights on recruiting partners experienced in selling into legal and financial institutions.

"We have three VARs and 12 referral partners signed up to our partner programme, but we want to aggressively grow that by adding at least 20 new reseller partners to that mix over the next 12 months," said Saggar (pictured).

"We are doing really well in the legal market at the moment because barristers, for example, are required to retain large volumes of data for very long periods," he said.

Partners that join forces with the firm do not have to make any upfront financial commitments, he added, and will also receive marketing support, sales leads and white-label options.

"There is no risk as there are no startup costs involved with becoming a referral partner," he said.

"If partners find they are doing a lot of business with us and want to take greater control of their customer relationships, they have the option of moving over to our reseller programme."