AirWatch: Channel Partners Drive Our Growth

AirWatch Connect 2013 has brought more than 90 channel and technology partners to the AirWatch Mobility Expo, not including other partners in attendance, at least that’s what AirWatch Chairman Alan Dabbiere told MSPmentor in an interview, but how has AirWatch been balancing its relationship with the channel?

To learn more about the company’s allegiance to channel partners, MSPmentor sat down with AirWatch Director of Business Development Kevin Keith, who runs the company’s North American channels, while also working with AirWatch’s strategic technology partners.

Keith told us that AirWatch started to get more serious about the channel a couple of years ago, searching for valuable partners for customers. Now, he said, AirWatch has several hundreds of partners across the globe, including referral partners, value-added resellers (VARs), service providers and technology partners.

Partners are looking for continued innovation on the technology, he said, plus, they continue to ask for integration application programing interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) that can easily integrate into their solutions, and AirWatch is constantly working to meet these needs.

Keith said partners have also been looking for a very marketable, public certification program, and the company is delievering this now, compared to earlier training programs. Partners now have the option of being AirWatch certified, which according to Keith, differentiates partner offerings, making them more marketable.

AirWatch partners can look forward to what the company is doing with laptop management, he said, acknowledging CEO John Marshall’s announcement from earlier in the day. Resellers and services providers can now manage PCs and the mobile ecosystem behind a single pane of glass, marrying two disparate parts of the business, Keith said.

AirWatch Workspace is another new component that moves the company into other markets, Keith said, giving partners the ability to earn reseller margins and professional services fees. Airwatch Workspace is part of the company’s containerization solution that separates company data and apps from personal data and apps. End users can only access corporate resources such as email, apps, content and intranet browsing while logged into this secure workspace.

With regards to sales, Keith said the company on a global level is more slanted toward the channel than it is with direct sales

“We have seen, easily, 100 percent growth in the channel quarter-over-quarter for the last several quarters,” he said. “Most of our growth right now is through the channel.”

We’ll continue to cover AirWatch’s channel commitment, as well as any channel updates at this week’s AirWatch Connect 2013.