Bullish Intermedia looks to lure 50 VARs a month

Cloud vendor turns its business towards the channel

Cloud vendor Intermedia hopes its "aggressive" plans to sell exclusively through the channel will see it sign up a whopping 50 resellers a month.

The Reading-based vendor, which specialises in helping SMBs organise their cloud services, already has 500 channel partners but hopes the new campaign will see that figure grow quickly.

When the firm first came to market, its sales model was entirely direct, but as it grew it opened up to resellers. According to its newly appointed head of EMEA marketing Jarmila Yu, the firm now sells only through the channel for the first time, which she hopes will see its VAR numbers rocket.

"The plans I am building are quite aggressive and we are looking to build out the channel considerably... I am hoping to bring on around 50 new channel partners a month," Yu told CRN.

She also commented that Intermedia will now offer market development funds (MDFs) for channel partners, which were not previously available, along with joint go-to-market campaigns and specific marketing agency support.

"We haven't had MDFs before and it has been very much on an ad hoc basis," she said. "Where we have a specific relationship that requires it, then we have been funding campaigns or running our own lead generations."

Yu remained tight-lipped on how much funding would be made available for the MDFs.

She added that Intermedia is now looking to focus on a more "direct touch" approach with its partners and provide them with more support from the start.

"What will be new in the first 30-day period is we will work with the partners to help them with account planning, business development, marketing support and early-day leads," she said.

"We see that if you have more direct touch with the partners, you are going to get a better return and breed a much happier relationship."