Centrify on hunt for corporate resellers
Newly appointed channel chief claims vendor's partner programme is best he has ever seen
Identity and access management vendor Centrify is on the hunt for corporate reseller partners that sell Office 365 and other applications.
Speaking to CRN, EMEA director Darren Gross said: "We work with a lot of the security-focused VARs, but now we are covering the mobility space with the whole BYOD and applications in the cloud, it's opening up a new bunch partners for us – the guys who are pushing Office 365, for example. It's opening up a new partner landscape for us."
Matt Pearson, Centrify's newly appointed channel director, said this new breed of partners is falling largely in the corporate space.
"It's the people who are selling Office 365 and the apps to the big corporate customers and we have had some good news with one of the big corporate guys [partners] about to sign with us," he said.
Following his appointment, Pearson said he is looking to build on the vendor's current partner programme.
"I am looking to augment it," he said. "It was a good channel strategy and the partner programme was the best I have seen, and I'm not just saying that because I have just joined.
"They do money for deal registration, money for people who get trained on the products, and destination success, which means every quarter someone goes on holiday somewhere in the partner community. I have worked for five start-up vendors and no one has ever done anything like that.
"I don't think I will look to change the partner programme but I'll look to change how we enable the partners – how we train and how we incentivise the sales teams. We need to go from the start to end, so we go in with a vendor fortnight giving them training, helping them with call-outs, helping them with sales. We need to do this every quarter so we are helping them move through the process."
In 2014 Centrify bagged $42m (£25m) in venture-capital cash and Gross said this money has allowed the vendor to expand rapidly in EMEA.
"It has helped us expanding the business. Part of Centrify's strategy at the time was to increase the geographical coverage over here in EMEA and we have doubled the UK staff, added 30 per cent new staff in EMEA over the past two months in sales and [roles] working with our partners, and now we are up to about 32 [staff] in the region."