New Druva Program Gives Partners Training to Help AWS, VMware Customers

Druva has created an all-new Druva Compass partner program to help its data protection and data management resellers and MSP partners find better paths to increased IT services revenue and additional business opportunities.

The new Druva partner program aims to bolster educational services about the company’s cloud data protection products and services for resellers and partners, while also adding new access to data insights, programs and incentives that can help partners increase their business with the company and boost their revenue.

Highlighting the partner initiative is a new accreditation program that was designed to help partners and their IT staffs enhance their knowledge ando help them strengthen their positions as trusted advisers with the training, certifications and other skills needed to best help customers with cloud vendors including AWS and VMware.

Timm Hoyt, vice president of global partner sales and alliances for Druva, told Channel Futures that the company formerly had a “fairly light” partner program in place but that it did not meet the expanded cloud and data management needs of partners today.

Druva’s Timm Hoyt

“It had some good fundamentals, but ultimately as Druva has pivoted into a channel-first marketing operation we saw the need to make changes,” said Hoyt.

The Compass program specifically is designed to provide empowerment for Druva partners to make them more operationally efficient, boost their knowledge and skills of the products and help to drive increased benefits for customers, he said.

“We want to help our partners target the right customer solutions that we specialize in so they can have more success more frequently and be able to provide the scale that every partner is looking to provide,” said Hoyt. “To help them bring in increased and sustained profitability is a clear goal of the program, and we didn’t feel we were doing that enough in the past.”

In the past, many partners have had business models that have called for one-and-done sales models, said Hoyt. Under the new partner program, the new strategy is to help partners find sustained and new business opportunities by bringing continuous value to their customers, he said.

The program was inspired in part by partners who have been asking for help finding new ways to grow their revenue, said Hoyt.

“Just like the cloud has challenged end users … our partner community is going through the same thing,” he said. “What Druva is doing in data protection will … make it easier for those partners to pivot” and achieve greater success.

Eduardo Figueredo, lead strategist for data protection with Druva reseller partner RoundTower Technologies, said the new partner program is a positive addition that comes just a few months after his company began its reseller relationship with Druva.

RoundTower’s Eduardo Figueredo

“What’s important to me from partner programs is that for the products that we decide will be strategic for us, we do a lot of investment and training,” said Figueredo. “When we put that kind of investment into a manufacturer, we want to see a benefit. We want to be able to be in a new tier that differentiates us ahead of other resellers. We want to know … what we get in return for that effort.”

The new Druva partner program helps Figueredo understand what his company’s relationship with Druva will be about, he said.

“It adds structure to it, and it helps me see what I need to do to get to the next tier and whether I want to go after it or not. In Druva’s case, I see a gap in my services portfolio without them, so I’ve already …

… decided to include them in our business.”

Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, said the redesigned and redeployed partner program was a necessary move for Druva.

Enderle Group’s Rob Enderle

“Given their sales are 90% through partners, the program was well below where it needed to be,” said Enderle. “This announcement indicates they plan to be equal to or better than the best and that’s where they need to be.”

The company’s move to increase education, training, support and more to customers is a good place to start, said Enderle.

“This matures the program substantially and should, if they execute well, push them toward best in class,” he added.

The Druva Compass program is available immediately to partners in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will be available to the rest of the world later this year.

Druva recently announced $130 million in new funding that will be used to fuel growth and global expansion. The new partner program is one of the first initiatives coming out of that investment. The investment was led by Viking Global Investors and included participation from investors Neuberger Berman, Atreides Management, Riverwood Capital, Tenaya Capital and Nexus Venture Partners. The round boosts Druva’s total capital raised to $328 million.