Channel Partner Program Roundup: Zerto, IBM, SevOne

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time to get our boots dirty with the Channel Partner Program Roundup. This week we’ve corralled news from Zerto, IBM (IBM) and SevOne, so grab your lasso, saddle your pony and let’s ride.

Zerto: The disaster recovery/business continuity technology company announced the expansion of the Zerto Alliance Partner (ZAP) Program, which now is comprised of more than 250 channel partners worldwide. According to the company, the ZAP Program added 141 channel partners in 2013, a 129 percent increase over 2012.

In an effort to build on the success of the partner program, Zerto conducted a survey of more than 200 partners and found 90 percent said they would welcome additional training programs if provided by Zerto. In response, Zerto now offers two new training programs designed to improve partner sales knowledge in conveying the overall benefits of BC/DR to enterprise customers and verify partner technical expertise in demonstrating and managing Zerto Virtual Replication software:

“The success of our partners is integral to the continued success of Zerto, and enablement is critical to the channel,” said Mariah West, director of Global Partner Marketing for Zerto. “It was important to us to hear from our partners regarding how we can help further empower them, and we’re pleased to be able to make these investments in the channel that directly address the needs of our partners.”

IBM: Data backup solutions vendor STORServer has been named a winner of a 2014 IBM Beacon Award for Outstanding Solution for Midsize Businesses. Each year, this honor is awarded to a select number of IBM Business Partners who have delivered exceptional solutions to drive business value and transform the way their customers and industries do business.

“We are honored to be recognized by IBM a as a leader in delivering advanced solutions proven to drive business value for our customers,” said Bill Smoldt, president and CEO pf STORServer. “The true innovation behind the STORServer Backup Appliance is that the solution solves companies’ backup, archive and disaster recovery challenges once and for all. We’re proud to be a leader in this market and an IBM Business Partner.”

The Beacon Awards are IBM’s premier Business Partner recognition program. Winners were announced at IBM PartnerWorld. This year’s awards recognized Business Partner achievements across 27 award categories.

SevOne: The scalable performance monitoring vendor is now offering Rapid Device Certification, a guaranteed 10-day certification feature for adding performance monitoring capabilities in support of customers' newly- introduced network and data center devices.

According to the company, SevOne’s Rapid Device Certification reduces operational risk by protecting companies from performance degradation as new network technologies are implemented. For every device in the network with an SNMP agent, SevOne guarantees complete performance visibility within 10 days. The new Rapid Device Certification feature guarantees that all hardware changes are met with fast turnaround for expanded network performance visibility.

In addition to full-service device certification, SevOne now enables customers to run their own on-boarding process for new hardware in the performance monitoring system. Through the user interface or SevOne's API, companies have the flexibility to set up their own processes for managing visibility around network upgrades, the company noted.

And that’s the roundup for this week. Don’t forget to lock the gate on your way out and, as always, stay safe.