Cohesity's UK channel boss calls out backup space for 'lack of innovation'
The backup vendor's UK channel exec opens up to CRN on how it is disrupting the market and why it revamped its 'basic' partner programme
The backup and data management space has been stagnant for the best part of the past 15 years, according to Cohesity's UK channel boss Martin Smith.
The data management firm has made a splash in the industry since its inception in 2013, including securing $250m in money from investors, including SoftBank, HPE and Cisco, last year.
It made its first acquisition earlier this year with the purchase of backup and recovery firm Imanis Data.
These are reflective of the capabilities Cohesity offers customers compared to its legacy competitors, Smith said.
"We're doing stuff in the market with customers that they haven't been able to do for 10 years - there's been no real innovation, certainly within the backup space, in that time," he told CRN.
"We're helping organisations get a lot more out of their data. The backup and secondary data management space has always been deemed as an insurance policy, but we're actually enabling customers to analyse and get more out of that data.
"That's really changing the game for us in the way that we go up against some of the more established vendors. Customers can see the benefits of consolidating multiple silos in their DC onto one web scale platform - it's one support costs, one maintenance cost, one point of contact for support
"It's far simpler and a more intuitive way of doing it in the way that customers have done it in the last 10 to 15 years where they might have 20 different vendors doing similar things, but obviously management and overhead and costs can spiral out of control."
Cohesity established its UK operations two and a half years ago, with the UK channel boss joining 18 months ago from Dell EMC.
It recently brought in a new partner programme, which replaces what Smith admitted was a "basic" setup.
Partners had been asking the vendor when a more structured programme would be introduced so that they could better differentiate themselves in the market, he explained.
The new programme introduces the three new partner tiers, Associate, Preferred and Premier. These were not part of the previous setup, which Smith called a "basic agreement" between Cohesity and the partner, which included sales and pre-sales 101 training.
"There wasn't really a programme before, that's the real truth of the matter," he stated.
"More established vendors, such as Dell EMC, Adobe and Nimble have structured programmes in place and we just didn't really have that.
"Partners have been asking questions about when we're going to bring in a programme. It gives them a clearer understanding of where they need to be in terms of mutual goals of what we want them to get to.
"I think for most partners, a Premier status is very much achievable or certainly should be within the next 12 to 18 months."
Cohesity has a "handful" of partners in the UK, including Softcat and CDW, and Smith said that he plans to grow this number, as well as his channel team which he anticipates will have an additional four people by August 2020.
"It's about getting out there and making enough noise - I think we've done really well in a short period," he said.
"We don't have as many feet on the street compared to the likes of the Dell EMCs, the HPEs and the Ciscoes of this world, which is why the channel is absolutely key to us.
"Being focused is majorly important and not spreading ourselves too thin, which is why the programme and our strategies is absolutely key to our success."