Druva Expands Partner Program Into Germany, Austria, Switzerland

Druva, the cloud data protection vendor, is now broadening its channel reach to Germany, Austria and Switzerland as it moves to grow its nascent global Druva Compass partner program, which the company launched last June.

The expansion into the DACH region of Europe, consisting of those countries, comes as the company grows the Compass program in Europe. Initially, Compass was available in only a few select European nations, Timm Hoyt, vice president of global partners and alliances for Druva, told Channel Futures.

As part of the expansion, the company has named Bernd Wachtler as its new regional leader of the channel program in DACH. Wachtler will work to grow the program and the Druva data backup business in the area. Druva’s cloud data protection products and services are used by business customers to protect and manage their data while migrating to the cloud and maintaining regulatory compliance.

The extension of Druva Compass in the region means that partners will gain access to enablement resources, accreditation curriculum, co-marketing opportunities and more, according to the company.

Druva’s Timm Hoyt

“An increasing number of European countries, including Germany, are investing billions to improve digital infrastructure and networking, and are only making it easier for enterprises to move more of their business to the cloud,” said Hoyt. “Additionally, the investments in Germany that AWS announced in September are a clear leading indicator that this market is ready for a cloud-first data protection offering. Taken all together, there is a clear demand from prospects and partners in the region for this sort of offering and we feel now was the right time to expand Compass even further.”

The program’s continuing growth is a sign of success for the Compass partner organization, he said.

“We are getting great feedback from those already taking advantage of the new resources and are now seeing strong demand from partners in other countries, including Germany and others. Partners are core to our success, accounting for the majority of our sales — and Druva Compass is designed to help these partners and their customers thrive.”

Wachtler has more than 20 years of management experience with direct and partner sales organizations.

“He will be closely aligned with our key strategic partners, including AWS and VMware, to expand solution selling opportunities for our resellers, system integrators and MSPs,” said Hoyt. “Bernd has a unique background working with and for these types of organizations during his career, which will make him a valuable resource for our partners to collaborate with.”

Druva’s Bernd Wachtler

Wachtler comes to Druva from Veritas, where he led the cloud migration and data resiliency practice for Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, as well as for other German-speaking countries, said Hoyt. Previously he held various direct and channel sales positions at major storage and data management companies including Dell EMC, IBM, Brocade, Seagate and Fusion-io.

Dan Olds, an IT analyst with Gabriel Consulting Group, told Channel Futures that Druva’s advance into the DACH countries is a good move for the company and its customers.

“For customers, it gives them a new and easy-to-use alternative for cloud backup and disaster recovery,” including ransomware protection, “which is starting to become a must-have feature these days,” said Olds. “For the company, this opens up a new territory that is full of medium- and large-sized organizations that will definitely see the need for Druva’s SaaS solutions. VARs in the DACH area should take a close look at Druva’s value proposition with an eye towards reselling Druva services as this will give them more capabilities to use to help solve the problems of both new and existing customers.”

Another analyst, Rob Enderle of Enderle Group, said that Druva’s Compass partner program appears to be well managed and tightly executed.

“This is critical for any partner program because, done right, they provide significant value to customers and sales momentum for the platform they are tied to,” said Enderle. “As we have seen with most well executed partner programs, I expect this effort will significantly improve Druva’s market position and customer satisfaction over time.”