James Wright (Cloudian)
Storage vendor Cloudian is looking to double its channel network over the next 12 months, taking it to more than 40 partners this time next year.
The vendor first entered into the Australian market in October 2017 through the distributor BigTec, but only officially launched in the country itself in July 2020.
The strategy comes as the vendor sees an increase in demand for unstructured data solutions, according to regional A/NZ director James Wright.
To meet this target, Wright said Cloudian is looking to hire a channel manager in order to help it find partners that are willing to commit to this space.
“I'd rather have 20 focus partners than 100 people that will sell your product,” Wright said. “For me, it's about seeing those partners that we can go and win the opportunity in unstructured data that presents itself.
“We're saying that we're going to double because our businesses is growing substantially and I think we can handle that.”
Coinciding with its intentions to double its partner base is the signing of five partners in the region. These include: Sydney-based BEarena, Canberra-based Qirx, Melbourne-based CU2 Global and Perfect, as well as New Zealand-based and Fuji Xerox subsidiary CodeBlue.
Cloudian’s move to expand its partner base has been in the works since 2019, Wright said. Most of the legwork behind meeting with its initial A/NZ partners took place before the full impact of COVID-19.
Even when taking into consideration the impact of the coronavirus, the regional director added that the pandemic hasn’t put a damper on demand for its products.
“The opportunities that are there have not stopped. In fact, they've continued to grow. That tells me that the underlying business is strong and the reason we're here is valid,” he said.
However, what COVID-19 has slowed down Cloudian's own growth plans, which Wright added would look to expand its footprint in Australia. In addition to the channel manager, there are also plans for an inside sales person, marketing manager and multiple sales teams.
“Organisations are looking to understand how they deal with the explosion of data and to leverage that data,” he explained.
“Business partners are struggling with this. Do they put it on cloud? How do they provide a managed service to deal with it?”
“The hyperconverged market is starting to cool down and become commoditised. The next big wave in our industry is definitely security and cloud.”
This trend however hasn’t just been noted in A/NZ, but around the world - with similar trends noted in the US and Europe.
The decision to build up its partner network has been in the works for a while, with a notable increase in demand within A/NZ in the last 12 months.
“The demand in the last 12 months has shown us all, and that's why we've invested here, to put us on the ground, because the demand is there. The partner network is demanding that we be here [to] solve this problem with them,” he said.
“The larger demand has been there for quite some time and A/NZ is now at the cusp of that.”
