OVHcloud on channel strategy: "We focus on partners aligned with our values"
European cloud giant bets big on UK channel partners through a collaborative and selective programme
European cloud provider OVHcloud is pushing its channel-first strategy further in 2024 as it hopes to grow with its 1,500 channel partners globally.
"We formally established our current partner programme around four years ago, after seeing tremendous potential to leverage our differentiated offerings," says David Devine, partner programme manager at OVHcloud in an exclusive interview with CRN.
"We realised partners were critical for reaching mid-market and enterprise customers beyond our historical base of SMEs and consumers."
The programme takes a selective and personalised approach, with partners getting dedicated account management and support.
"Rather than recruiting many partners, we focus on those aligned with our values around open source, transparency, sustainability and price performance," explains Devine.
"Partners must see the benefit of co-creating solutions taking advantage of OVHcloud's unique advantages."
Driving partner success
Two key tenets of the programme are comprehensive training and go-to-market support.
"All partners get access to free technical and sales training to become experts on the full OVHcloud portfolio," says Devine.
"We also provide extensive hands-on help developing opportunities and closing deals."
OVHcloud's account managers actively join partner customer calls and engagements to provide credibility and increase the chance of success.
"This high-touch model differs from the self-service approach of hyperscalers like AWS and Azure," notes Devine.
He stresses that partners repeatedly confirm the value of having OVHcloud's technical and sales experts alongside throughout the sales cycle.
"It helps them design and articulate differentiated solutions based on OVHcloud's strengths."
Open source, sustainability and price-performance
Key messages OVHcloud wants partners to take to market include open source, sustainability, no lock-in, and transparent pricing.
"We contrast ourselves against proprietary hyperscalers on features like open source infrastructure," he continues.
"Our water-cooled data centres also offer greater energy efficiency."
OVHcloud owns its entire network backbone, so it can offer very fair bandwidth pricing rather than passing on high egress fees, Devine points out.
He says OVHcloud prides itself of not charging egress fees, with the exception of object storage (which is set at £0.0072/GB, and ingress is free).
"These advantages allow partners to build OVHcloud into cost-competitive solutions while meeting customer goals around future-proofing and carbon reduction," explains Devine.
Partners have seen particular interest from organisations migrating legacy systems or running VMware and Nutanix stacks.
Ramping up recruitment and training
While growing engagement with existing partners is critical, OVHcloud is also ramping up recruitment of new resellers and MSPs.
The provider is especially targeting those working with mid-market and enterprise customers on hybrid/multi-cloud adoption.
"We believe there is still significant room to expand our partner base in the UK.
"We are undertaking a large brand awareness campaign to get on partners' radars as an alternative to the hyperscalers."
Once on board, UK partners have access to the full range of sales and technical training at no charge.
"We see knowledge transfer as an investment in our own success," notes Devine.
"The better partners grasp the platform and selling points, the more competitive their solutions."
The company's four-tier programme sets reasonable revenue requirements for entry, with the focus on partners driving customer value.
It recently introduced an elite level for larger partners wanting to undertake more joint activities and campaigns.
Overall, OVHcloud's channel-first approach banks on openness, collaboration and expertise to drive mutual growth with UK partners.