Aryaka leans on partners as channel revenue soars to 85 per cent

Specialist vendor talks to CRN about the role partners played in its 2023 growth

Aryaka leans on partners as channel revenue soars to 85 per cent

Unified SASE solutions vendor Aryaka has announced its channel revenue accounted for 85 per cent of the company's overall revenue in 2023, up from 73 per cent historically.

The company claimed it "doubled down" on its partner-led sales strategy in recent years and credited its global partner programme relaunch, Aryaka Accelerate, for the success.

Vendors have been increasingly turning to their channel partners as revenue boosters as more and more proudly state they are 100 per cent channel focused.

A few months ago Dell made waves with its announcement that its direct sales reps would earn more money if they moved its market-leading storage products through the channel than if they take that same business direct.

These changes came as Dell presented a new partner-first sales strategy.

CRN spoke with the new SVP of partner and eCommerce sales at certificate lifecycle management vendor Sectigo last year, who said "you can't scale without partners," and that it surprises him when a business "feels that they can go at it direct."

Craig Patterson, SVP of global channels for the vendor commented: "We designed a programme that would provide partners of all types with a more frictionless experience to capitalise on the growing demand for fully managed SD-WAN and SASE solutions, which Dell'Oro Group projects to reach $10.6bn by 2024.

"The results are clear, with year-over-year increases in partners, pipeline and sales across the globe."

Double-digit European growth

The number of partners actively selling Aryaka's secure networking solutions increased across all regions, fiscal year-over-year.

In EMEA, active partners rose by 17 per cent, while it North America and APAC they increased by 34 and 19 per cent, respectively.

The rise in active sellers had a significant impact on the global channel pipeline, which increased 88 per cent, fiscal year-over-year.

Regionally, the North American channel pipeline increased 113 per cent and the APAC channel pipeline rose 167 per cent.

In turn, the vendor claimed the strong pipeline has boosted channel sales performance.

It said a majority of the uptick comes from Aryaka's DRIVE partners, which include technology services distributors AVANT Communications, Telarus, Intelisys and Bridgepointe in the US and its white-label reseller partners Deutsche Telekom in Germany and SoftBank in APAC.

These strategic channel partnerships represent 79 per cent of Aryaka's revenue.

"Aryaka's partnerships are critical to our continued growth," Patterson told CRN.

"We're not selling widgets, but complex, secure global networks, so their recommendations are invaluable to businesses that are looking for a modern, agile alternative to legacy network providers."

Patterson points to two partners that exemplify the success: TSDs AVANT and Telarus.

AVANT is reported to have increased sales of Aryaka solutions by 43 per cent year-over-year, while Telarus amplified pipeline more than 1,000 per cent year-over-year to more than $3.6m.

"What we have here is a perfect storm. It starts with alignment and synergies between AVANT and Aryaka leadership and channel teams. Together, we're enabling the massive shift to next-generation networks that support enterprise applications and security in a fundamentally different way and empowering the trusted advisor movement that's embracing this change," commented Drew Lydecker, co-founder and president of AVANT.

Richard Murray, chief commercial officer at Telarus also added: "What we're seeing with Aryaka is one of those rare, and cherished occurrences when customer demand, technological capabilities, and true channel alignment all come together.

"Aryaka is doing all of the right things to help our partners succeed, and it's led to incredible growth in sales and pipeline creation."

Aryaka is joining in on a trend that sees vendor leaning more and more on partners and the channel.