Commvault 'Doubling Down' on Indirect Business Globally

In mid-January, Commvault announced the promotion of two-year company veteran Owen Taraniuk as global head of partnerships and market development. Taraniuk, in his previous role at Commvault, served as a vice president in Asia Pacific and Japan. 

In his new position, Taraniuk is tasked with leading the creation and execution of Commvault’s global go-to-market strategy and indirect partnerships, which the vendor is intent on growing. The company has more than 3,300 partners worldwide and derives about 90 percent of its revenue via its indirect sales business. 

Channel Futures chatted with Taraniuk about his new role at the cloud data-management provider, and working with Commvault’s indirect channel. 

Channel Futures: Your promotion signals a new strategy for Commvault’s indirect business. Connect the dots for us. 

Owen Taraniuk: Commvault has a deep legacy in its indirect business with partners and alliances, globally. The company has come to realization, at this point, that it’s the growth part of our future and is doubling down on the indirect business, on a global basis, and supporting those routes to market to help it grow in the future. 

My role is to lead that function providing input and direction to our marketing development and go-to-market strategy. 

CF: In May 2017, we interviewed Ralph Nimergood, then vice president of worldwide channels and alliances, about Commvault’s channel strategy. Nimergood now serves as your chief of staff. What do partners need to know about these changes and how it might impact them? 

OT: Ralph previously ran the routes to market at Commvault and now, in his extended business function, he’s operating as my chief of staff and is also building out a global services capability to support our different routes to market — which encompasses everything from demand generation, program management, partner experience, business transactions, interfaces, communications and partner enablement. 

So, Ralph’s new role is an expansion of the team he was running before, at a global level, but the function is growing considerably as we move forward. We’re putting more horsepower into the race, myself included.

CF: Tell us more about Commvault’s indirect channel strategy. 

OT: We’re expanding the indirect channel, the scale of our partnerships globally, the number and types of those partnerships, and we’re also looking to align as a company from a product and solution offering much more toward the opportunity of those partners that we have and are adding. We will also be looking to enhance and build the experience for those partners in every measure, including enablement, the portal, and interaction level with us, and the support we give them at an engagement level in the field. 

CF: You talk about partners and alliances. Let’s break that down for readers. 

OT: We talk about them as different types of partnerships. Recently, we embarked on a number of new alliances, including Cisco, globally, HPE; we also extended alliances with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, with Google Cloud and many others. 

We’re also expanding and refining the traditional value-added reseller as there’s been a lot of convergence happening in the market around types of consumption – which includes as a service – and we’re expanding the routes to market that we have through service providers. There’s further engagement with systems integrators and managed services providers as well. 

CF: What is the mix of partner types today? 

OT: We’re looking to add to all routes to market. It’s clear at a market level that there’s a growing opportunity for us and our partners starting with our core proposition of data protection. There [are] a lot of data challenges that people are facing with migration to or living within the cloud, very complex on-premises environments, and a lot of new threats that are emerging, to compliance issues with European regulations. 

There’s a lot of specialization out there as well, so we’re looking to combine packaging our solutions for those opportunities and enhancing both the opportunity for existing partners, but adding additional partnerships. Some of those are global alliances and consistent growth in the number of resellers that we have in different markets worldwide. 

CF: Anything else that you’d like readers to know? 

OT: The message for our partners is that we, as a company, are continuing to build the support that we have for them, to simplify and enhance programs, and to continue to align very strongly toward the opportunity and challenges that they have in the market to make it easier to sell Commvault, to scale, and also to continue to grow revenue streams based on our offerings. 

We’re investing in our partnerships for growth and are taking that very seriously across the entire company. You will see, in the next month, additional changes as an organization which highlight and demonstrate that commitment.