Savvis Looks To Cloud Channel For Growth

St. Louis-based Savvis Thursday launched the cloud-focused global Savvis Alliances Program for channel partners, a multi-level program that arms partners with Savvis cloud services, managed hosting, collocation, network services and managed security services.

According to Jaywant Rao, vice president of global alliances for Savvis, said the new program, which builds upon Savvis existing partner programs, was built to give VARs, integrators, managed service providers and other providers access to its cloud offerings. Savvis' new program lets partners bundle, integrate and white-label Savvis solutions.

"It's a program tailored completely to the models our partners want to use," Rao said.

Rao said Savvis made a massive investment in intellectual property and assets for partners. The company will also launch a new partner portal that will be the hub of partner activities.

To help partners seize the cloud opportunities, Savvis plans to offer education and enablement tools to ease the transition partners make from hardware and software licensing to a cloud model. The company also plans to launch joint marketing programs to help partners hone their cloud strategies.

The tiered Savvis Alliances Program offers three membership levels: Strategic, Preferred and Affiliate, each which carry varied benefits and requirements based on commitment and investment from partners. Strategic partners are global partners that demonstrate a deep investment in sales and marketing enablement for driving Savvis offerings via their own distribution channels; Preferred are regional or vertical-specific partners that provide coverage for a given geography or application offering; and Affiliate partners engage with Savvis for a one-time transaction.

The Savvis Alliances Program also has two distinct camps for partners, referral or reseller. Referral partners refer opportunities to Savvis for fees tied to the deal size, while resellers re-sell Savvis offerings on their contract to end-customers and receive built-in margin pricing.

Rao said that currently Savvis' indirect sales accounts for roughly 10 percent of its overall business. Through the new program, Savvis is hoping to bulk that up to between 30 percent and 35 percent in the near future.

Savvis also hopes the new Savvis Alliances Program fosters international growth. The company has been seeing growth outside of the U.S., and a strong Alliances program will help it expand its global footprint, Rao said.

"The focus here is to build strategic partners for growth," he said, adding that Savvis will gauge its own success based on partner success.