Scale Computing Grows MSP Program to Challenge Nutanix, Pivot3

Eight months after a soft launch of its MSP partner program, Scale Computing continues to add new partners to help drive sales and market share for its hyperconverged infrastructure software, appliances and services.

Since creating the program, the company expects to grow it to about 1,000 MSP partners by the end of 2019, up from about 550 around the world today, Jeff Ready, the CEO of Scale Computing, told Channel Futures. Most of its partners are in North America.

Scale Computing’s Jeff Ready

“The MSP program has been very popular,” said Ready. “They bring in their own hardware and then can use Scale Computing software and we will price it to match how that MSP’s business works.”

By providing the program to its partners, the MSPs have known fixed costs when working with their customers without the partners having to make giant investments in hardware and software, he said.

“As they grow their business, we can grow our business,” said Ready. “It works particularly well for MSPs with smaller customers.”

The company says the MSP partner program uses a flexible pricing model that reduces capital expenditures through a per-node-per-month subscription license. The program was created to boost partner profitability and enable partners to sell additional vital services to help meet growing customer requirements around disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and remote management as a service (RMaaS).

The target market for Scale Computing’s customers are small and medium-size businesses, he said. All of the company’s business is done through the channel, mostly through VARs.

Scale offers automation and orchestration technology, a self-healing system that works to find and mitigate infrastructure problems, said Ready. The software can run on premises or using appliances the company sells and services. Customers can get Scale Computing or Lenovo hardware-based HC3 appliances, or a complete on-premises data center in a box, enabling them to add additional services as they grow.

“The channel expansion is a rolling thing,” said Ready. “It had a quiet launch and has already doubled the number of partners each quarter so far. Now it’s a double-digit part of our business in a very short time. We expect that to be a very high growth area of our business.”

Most of that partner growth has come by word of mouth, from potential customers who are interested in Scale Computing’s offerings and mention those desires to their favorite MSPs, said Ready. Those MSPs then contact Scale Computing and discussions have ensued, often resulting in partnerships.

The company, which went into business more than 10 years ago, is based in Indianapolis and has about 200 employees.

Scale Computing offers a wide range of products and services aimed at hyperconverged infrastructure, edge computing, disaster recovery, virtual desktop infrastructure, data analytics and more.

Competitors in its market include Nutanix and Pivot3.

“We are committed to working with the channel in a true partnership, and our updated program is a reflection of this as we strive to enable our partners to maintain a competitive advantage,” said Ready. “The market is dynamic, and channel partners need to adapt to meet new challenges and customer requirements.”