YouSendIt Looks To Channel For Cloud Collaboration, File Sharing

The program targets VARs, MSPs, systems integrators and consultants and arms them with weapons for business content collaboration, said Sean Jacobsohn, YouSendIt vice president of worldwide alliance, who joined YouSendIt to run its global channel program.

"We want partners that sell complementary products," he said, noting that YouSendIt can standalone, but for solution providers wrapping it into a Microsoft SharePoint or Exchange offering can help partners better penetrate clients.

Adding YouSendIt to their portfolio also gives VARs a new recurring revenue stream, Jacobsohn said. And the new partner program program includes technical, marketing and sales support, including free sales and technical staff training, as well as marketing and sales materials.

What sets YouSendIt apart from similar offerings from Dropbox and others is the strong enterprise focus and its integration capabilities.

YouSendIt can offload attachments from Microsoft Exchange servers, preventing storage growth and boosting performance while reducing costs. With its Exchange solution, the integration lets users send large files through an Outlook plug-in. Sending files through YouSendIt ends worry over inbox size limits, can eliminate large file e-mail bounce backs and can be set up to automatically send files through YouSendIt's cloud service when attachments are larger than a certain size.

Jacobsohn said that roughly 90 percent of collaboration is through e-mail, so YouSendIt would rather work in tandem than against it.

Jacobsohn said YouSendIt is expecting significant growth within its channel ranks and it welcomes the addition of new partners to extend its sales force.

"It is impossible to build a big enough sales force to cover the market," he said. "That's why we're bringing in partners."

Patrick Monahan, president and founder of Iron Cove, a Los Angeles-based solution provider, said Iron Cove leverages YouSendIt as an add-on to Microsoft cloud and e-mail offerings.

"We're an e-mail-heavy business, so this was a logical next step," he said. "I treat this as an extension of the browser and the e-mail system."

Monahan said Iron Cove chose YouSendIt's over its free or cheap rivals due to competing services not being mature enough to thrive in businesses. He said some competing services are rife with vulnerabilities and aren't designed for enterprise use. He uses the mantra: If it's free, you get what you pay for. With YouSendIt, he gets support and security and additional protections.

He said it also fills a void in Iron Cove's portfolio, and that's the sending of large attachments and additional cloud collaboration.

"The ability to share large files; that's becoming more burdensome," he said. "This really is a perfect extension to what we do."