Carbonite Formalizes Channel Program For Its Home, Business Offerings

Carbonite is finally looking to capitalize on one of the best-known brands in the online storage business with its first formal channel program.

Carbonite is now targeting solution providers looking to provide cloud storage to SOHO and SMB customers, a large portion of which are either familiar with the Carbonite brand name through the company's ubiquitous consumer-focused radio and print advertising or already use the consumer version of its service, said David Hauser, director of channel partnerships for the Boston-based company.

Historically, Carbonite has had a reseller program for the company's Home edition, which primarily targets consumers, Hauser said.

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"We really haven't promoted our reseller program," he said. "But last year, we had a lot of resellers contact us on behalf of their customers."

With the new Carbonite Reseller Program, Carbonite is now offering all three Home editions and its two Business editions to its solution provider partners, Hauser said.

They include the base Home version with unlimited online backups for $59 per year; the HomePlus edition, which also includes support for external hard drive backups and mirror image backups for a total of $99 per year; and the HomePremier edition, which adds courier recovery service for a total of $149 per year.

They also include the Business edition, which offers backup to any number of users with a total maximum capacity of 250 GBs for $229 per year, and the BusinessPremier edition, which includes backing up of Windows Server data and a maximum capacity of 500 GBs for $599 a year.

All editions include encryption of data on customers' computers with 128-bit Blowfish encryption and SSL transmission, with data remaining encrypted on the cloud for security.

Hauser said the Carbonite cloud storage offerings target a customer base similar to that of such companies as Symantec, SOS Backup and Mozy, the latter of which recently upgraded its channel program. However, he said, Carbonite offers the lowest pricing of those companies and is the only one with U.S.-based phone support.

Carbonite is also targeting such popular consumer cloud storage offerings as Dropbox, iCloud and Google, none of which offer a secure way to protect data, Hauser said.

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Solution providers that bring the Carbonite offerings to customers are eligible for recurring revenue, including at least $20 per year for each customer of the Home edition and an average of $120 per year per customer for its Business Edition, Hauser said.

That recurring revenue is in addition to any services partners sell based on the Carbonite products, he said.

Solution providers signing up for the Carbonite Reseller Program receive the necessary tools to fully manage customers' accounts, Hauser said.

Those tools include a dashboard that lays out the entire Carbonite product line with customer and reseller pricing as well as multi-year pricing.

They also include a console that shows which products customers have purchased but not used and which products are already in use. Another tool shows partners what data was not backed up properly, which customers are approaching their capacity limits and which customers' accounts are expiring soon.

"We want to make account management as simple as possible," Hauser said.

Carbonite took its time developing its reseller program despite introducing its business-oriented platforms, said Pete Lamson, senior vice president for small business and channels for the company.

"When we launched our business platform in June of 2011, demand from resellers began to grow," Lamson said. "We felt if there's that kind of demand, we need a program to help partners. With Carbonite Business, we aimed to bring the same simplicity and low cost of our consumer products to business customers."

PUBLISHED JUNE 26, 2012

This story was updated on June 29, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. PST to clarify details of company information disclosed.