'7 Minutes' With Liquidware President and COO Chris Akerberg

**Editor’s Note: “7 Minutes” is a feature where we ask channel executives from startups – or companies that may be new to the Channel Partners audience – a series of quick questions about their businesses and channel programs.**

Desktop virtualization is one of those technologies that benefits immensely from cloud — and not just in terms of more hosted desktop as a service (DaaS) offerings and cheaper storage. Culturally, end users are now accustomed to their “stuff” being stored somewhere other than on the hardware they use every day. And, greater dependence on IaaS and SaaS mean companies are buying more bandwidth, which also enables use of remote desktops. Partners not reselling DaaS may want to reevaluate.

Liquidware’s Chris Akerberg

While you may think Citrix, Dell or VMware when you hear “VDI,” Liquidware president and COO Chris Akerberg says companies serious about gaining the security and cost benefits of virtualized desktops need an agnostic management and monitoring layer, as do managed service providers looking to provide DaaS offerings — and that’s where his company comes in.

Analyst Gabe Knuth takes a deep dive into Liquidware’s technology here. We sat down with Akerberg to find out what’s new with the channel program.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Chris Akerberg: From a technical perspective, customers love the ease of setup and use of our solutions, which solve real issues while helping them to maximize their investment in their desktop deployment. We have a complete suite of solutions that help in the planning and onboarding phases of a project through the ongoing management of their desktop environment.

Strategically, customers like that we are an agnostic management stack that is platform-independent, allowing them to scale and switch from physical to virtual to cloud across any OS or virtualization platform as their changing needs demand of them.

If we must distill what customers love most about us into a single secret sauce, then we’d have to say that it’s our ability to easily prove the value of our solutions in a simple demo or [proof of concept]. The truth is that once customers see for themselves how we can add value, the conversation quickly turns and the question shifts from “Why should we buy,” to “How can we buy?”

CP: Describe your channel program — metal levels, heavy on certifications, open or selective, unique features?

CA: Our channel program has three tiers – Acceler8, Premier and Standard. We primarily focus on a smaller subset of partners that have a dedicated end-user computing (EUC) practice. In addition, we cater to enterprise accounts as well as key verticals such as health care, education, financial and government.

… larger and more proactive partners that actively work with us to grow their business with joint GTM plans.

Our channel program also includes a very competitive deal-registration program as well as a highly flexible MDF program, via which we commit funds to partner initiatives to introduce customers to – and educate them upon – our solutions.

CP: Quick-hit answers: Percentage of sales through the channel, number of partners, average margin. Go.

CA: Nearly 100 percent of sales go through the channel. Approximately 250-300 Accler8 and Premier partners globally. Our average margin is 20-30 percent.

CP: Who are your main competitors, and what makes your offering better?

CA: Only Citrix and VMware come close to matching the complete functionality of the totality of our solutions. That said, we don’t only compete with them, but in certain instances are able to comfortably co-exist with them.

Of course Citrix and VMware are platform vendors that have many priorities that go well beyond our key offerings of user-environment management, application layering, and end-user monitoring. Nevertheless, we benefit from their efforts to educate customers on the need for solutions like ours, because in many cases these customers are looking for deeper functionality and/or an agnostic solution for greater coverage and flexibility to meet their needs, which only our solution provides.

There are also other “point” solution companies, which provide one of our three solutions, and from a technical perspective we typically stack up very well against these firms, solution to solution. However, when clients learn our wider story, we invariably win over them over from a broader, strategic point of view.

CP: How do you think your technology portfolio will change in the next three years?

CA: The functionality of our solutions will make them relevant and required for many years to come. We therefore don’t anticipate any major changes to this technology but rather to the manner in which it is consumed. That is to say our biggest change will be our increasing evolution to cloud and SaaS-based models.

CP: How do you expect your channel strategy to evolve over that time frame?

CA: Our strategy will continue to be that of remaining focused on the EUC partners that are also adapting to the changing, more cloud-focused market, and to building programs that help them accelerate their own and their customers’ growth to the cloud.

CP: What didn’t we ask that partners should know?

CA: Our program delivers to partners a peerless “trifecta” of benefits, by giving them: