SPONSORED: Channel Awards winners Q&A - intY

CRN Cloud Distributor of the Year intY on how it celebrated winning at this year's Channel Awards

Outline intY's channel strategy

With a channel-only model and portfolio of cloud-only services, our focus is clear and that helps us to enable channel partners in their cloud journey. Our strategy is to be more than traditional distribution; we add true value. We understand that partners need insight into their customers' behaviours, to help advise them and give them the services they need. With our new Partner Insights™ feature, our partners have a real-time view of each of their customer's estates. Our plan is to continue to build on this - watch this space…

What has been the highlight of 2018 for your business?

Winning CRN Cloud Distributor of the Year for the second year in a row! It is a fantastic achievement for the whole company, and demonstrates the hard work everyone has put in and our dedication to our channel partners.

In 2018 we have continued to enjoy considerable growth and hosted another of our market-leading CloudFest events, which was a fantastic success. We announced two great new vendor partnerships there with Nulia and Comodo Cybersecurity and gave delegates a first look at new applications from Symantec.

Throughout the year we have won numerous awards which we are genuinely proud of.

We created a dedicated team to continue to grow our partner base in the US. This team helps support US partners with account management, technical support and marketing among other tasks and has helped us strengthen these important relationships that need our support in their time zone. This growth has helped us expand a lot and is something we're very proud of being able to provide our partners.

How pleased are you to have won?

Winning the Cloud Distributor of the Year award acts as a fantastic recognition of the hard work of our whole team. Celebrating our achievements is something that is really important for us, and winning awards that recognise our excellence in our own industry means a lot. We are always pleased to be recognised for our strengths and winning awards (and missing out on them) helps us to identify where we are working well and where we can improve. We will certainly be back next year to see if we can win three years in a row!

How has the award been received in the company so far? How did you celebrate?

The whole team is over the moon. It just reinforces to us that we are making huge strides in the cloud distribution industry and leading the way in our market, which is a great feeling. We had a table of staff at the CRN Awards and some of our vendors were there too, so we naturally celebrated into the night with everyone and instantly notified our followers on social media about the win. I sent a message of congratulations to the whole business thanking them all for their hard work, and a few staff members had a celebratory drink the next day. Everyone is so proud to have won.

What would you say is your greatest channel achievement in 2018?

By far our greatest achievement is the number of partners that we have helped deliver double-digit growth month on month with cloud services. Our Cloud Sales Specialist team works tirelessly with each account and it's fantastic to see so many partners prospering.

How important is the channel to your business?

As a channel-only business, the channel is the most important part of our business. It's what drives our staff every day and we always strive to better our processes, resources and capabilities to ensure that all partners working with us can thrive. We really are proud of our continued relationships with our partners and vendors over the past year. Having really strong connections with everyone we work with is really important to us and something we pride ourselves on. Whether a partner is looking to start their cloud journey or is well established but needs guidance on how to further their cloud business, we can support and help to accelerate a partner's development.

What difference will winning this award make to your business in 2019?

Winning awards like this showcases intY as among the best of the best - this always helps in attracting new partners and vendors to work with us. I hope it enables partners to recognise our ability and pedigree when choosing who to partner with as their distribution partner.