Arcserve's Hockin: 'Vendors think they know what makes the channel tick, but they don't'

Backup vendor’s new channel sales head for EMEA opens up on how his distie experience is helping the vendor improve partner relationships

Arcserve's partners can expect the backup vendor to be more "visible" and proactive in its channel, according to its new head of EMEA channel sales Bruce Hockin.

Hockin recently joined the backup vendor after long stints in a number of distributors, most recently at Cloud Distribution. He told CRN that this experience gives him a perspective and knowledge that most vendors lack.

"You see things in distribution that you don't necessarily get visibility of as a vendor, certainly the way that the relationships work and the things that matter to partners," he elaborated.

"I don't think vendors actually truly understand partners - they take a very vendor-centric view. In distribution, you have to understand those partners to be successful; you have to understand what their drivers are, what makes them interested and keeps them interested in particular technologies.

"I've often felt that vendors truly don't understand what makes the channel tick. They think they do, but they don't, in a lot of instances. I'm banking on my experience to be able to make sure that Arcserve is maximising the opportunity through every partnership that it has, to the betterment of everyone involved in the channel."

He said that the move to a vendor after so many years in distribution is the result of a number of factors, not least his feeling that vendors could "do more" for their channels and that he had the right acumen to do so.

"When you're in distribution, you get to see a lot of the challenges that partners have, and a lot of the time you can't really affect some of those challenges because your hands are tied in certain ways - I wanted to see it from the vendor side," he explained.

He was attracted to Arcserve's director of EMEA channel sales role because of its reputation and because it has some "issues" with developing its channel relationships that he felt he could help solve.

"Arcserve has an established business but had a number of challenges in terms of their growth. It could have gone with someone who was a dyed-in-the-wool vendor person, but it wanted a different approach," he stated.

"I want to make sure that we're more structured in our engagement with partners; that we're bringing new ideas to them - not just in terms of technology and opportunity - in terms of how we work with them, how we enable them, how we create and support them creating net new business. There's a lot of work that can be done there, and we need to inject some focus there."

One challenge he already anticipates is encouraging partners - both current and potential - to look beyond Arcserve's reputation as a storage and backup player and explore its wider portfolio.

"Historically, we've worked greatly with storage players and people in the datacentre. We now have a proposition that is much broader and has more relevance to partners with different specialisations, for example, security," he explained.

"Yet very few of our current partners sell security, so it is a major opportunity for us to work with partners in a different area. It's an opportunity, but it's also a challenge because perhaps a lot of those partners hadn't considered us in the security space before."

He vowed that Arcserve will be more active in developing its channel relationships and at the fore of bringing new opportunities and ideas to help partners win business.

"One of the key things that I talk about with my team is whitespace opportunities - areas where our partners are not currently generating revenue from an opportunity," he stated.

"Specifically, to go into those partners who've been selling backup solutions and talk to them about security. There is an awful lot of opportunity out there that maybe they're not getting to grips with and we need to enable them to do that; they should expect to see us become a lot more visible.

"I don't think, historically, we've done a good job of understanding what makes them tick, so they will see us trying more to understand their business planning processes and their objectives."