8 Most Important Changes For Partners In Commvault's Overhauled Channel Program

The data backup and recovery player is updating its partner tools, streamlining its product portfolio and reorganizing its leadership ranks to modernize and simplify its go-to-market strategy.

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Data backup and recovery player Commvault is making sweeping changes to its channel program, updating its partner tools, streamlining its product portfolio and reorganizing its leadership ranks as it pushes ahead with an ambitious effort to modernize and simplify its go-to-market strategy.

The changes, according to Owen Taraniuk, Commvault's worldwide head of partnerships and market development, are the result of feedback from the channel and make Commvault a truly partner-led and partner-focused vendor.

"We've had a lot of feedback from our partners saying, 'You definitely have a great product, you have superb technology that's very well recognized, but we also see a level of complexity with Commvault in the way we position those products,'" Taraniuk said.

The Tinton Falls, N.J.-based company's program changes and reorganized portfolio go into effect Tuesday. Here are a few points of particular importance to the channel.

Less Portly Portfolio

Commvault said it has taken a product portfolio that spanned some 20 backup, recovery, availability, convergence and other solutions and organized it into just four key groups. "We started with many, many SKUs to get to very tailored functionality sets, and that became a very complex piece of price engineering and SKU engineering to get to those configurations," Taraniuk said. Instead of the unwieldy SKU salad, the company has developed Commvault Complete as the designation for its bread-and-butter backup and recovery solutions; Commvault Hyper-Scale for its converged infrastructure solutions; Commvault Orchestrate for service delivery; and Commvault Activate for orchestration and data governance.o

Lessons In Leadership

Part of Commvault's new investment in its leadership ranks is the reassignment of large portions of its sales force to focus exclusively on the channel, Taraniuk said. The changes align sales leaders to four areas: alliances with partner vendors, cloud and service providers, global systems integrators, and VARs and distribution. Commvault in April hired Scott Strubel to head up the VAR and distribution effort, carefully aligning the operation to specific global geographies. "We're hiring and moving people into those areas," Taraniuk said. "At the field level we now have sales executives that handle VARs. Their goals are all around the success of those partners rather than purely customer-facing revenues. That's a big shift philosophically from where we were. We're filling out those organizations, which tended to be top-level and overlay and they'll be partner support organizations that reach down to the individual geographies."

Evergreen Opportunity

Commvault's channel program has until now been refreshed and implemented annually. Now, it will be evergreen, meaning partners are able to stay in the program indefinitely. The program allows partners to attain certain benefits on a rolling basis while maintaining tier status and existing benefits. The company has also simplified its tier structure, doing away with multiple segments and sub-tiers "so people can fall into broader headings but still get the same benefits," Taraniuk said "It's a much more easy-to-understand concept. It's allowed us to start concentrating business development funds into these areas so we have more available to support partners. We can articulate the program on one or two slides as opposed to the 25 to 30 that it took before."

Desk Duty

Commvault has created what it calls a Partner Success Desk, an on-demand service center for 24-hour assistance with RFPs, technical questions and other challenges that crop up during the sales process. The desk provides partners with a quick, direct route to the resources they need, whether it's collateral, pre-sales resources or other items. "It's about acceleration, simplicity and a lot more resources and power to the partners in terms of their engagement with us," Taraniuk said.

Access Granted

Commvault's channel changes also include a new Partner Demand Center, which gives partners access to the vendor's marketing concierge team, for help with the planning and execution of marketing campaigns, and even allows partners to stream content directly to their websites and social media platforms.

Quick Quotes

The company has overhauled its Commvault Quote Center to make it easier for partners. Now, Quote Center can generate quotes in minutes, giving partners an advantage by significantly reducing the time it takes for partners to draft proposals. "The philosophy now is to make things self-service," Taraniuk said. "It's easier to use when you're platform-agnostic."

Portal Progress

Commvault's old partner portal left a lot to be desired, Taraniuk said. "It was a little clunky," he said. "It was difficult to navigate and it didn't always cover what [partners] needed to find. We've taken a lot of feedback. The refreshed portal is visually much more simplistic, and we have the ability to add continually to it. It should be much easier for people to use." The refreshed partner portal gives Commvault solution providers new tools, content and resources focused on making partners' experience simpler. The new portal allows partners to quickly access and use new sales tools, marketing resources and enablement as it's made available.

Development Focus

Taraniuk said Commvault is now taking a more focused approach to business development funds. The new program gives partners a jointly agreed-upon catalog of options where they can fast-track spending. The approach is "fairly standard," Taraniuk said, "but we're trying to concentrate the business development funds into areas where we see growth and rapid return for our partners rather than a completely flat distribution across the base." Key areas of opportunity include Commvault's appliance solutions, as well as what Taraniuk called the upper midmarket.