Datto Bets on File Sync and Share to Raise Brand Awareness

Talkin’ Cloud  editor Nicole Henderson hosted a panel with Datto VP of business development Rob Rae this week at Channel Directions Live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here is an interview from earlier this year where Rae spoke about its file sync and share product Datto Drive, which is still running an introductory offer of one TB of storage for one year free.  

You’ve likely heard of the so-called busy trap, where people constantly tell you how busy they are when you ask them how they’re doing. So instead of telling you how busy backup and recovery provider Datto is, let this example illustrate it: Datto VP of business development Rob Rae bought a new house in Connecticut three months ago, and has been on the road so much meeting with partners that he has only actually slept there three times. 

In the midst of all of this, Talkin’ Cloud caught up with Rae to learn more about the new file sync and share product, called Datto Drive. The channel-only company is looking at this as a way to raise brand awareness with end users, which has been a challenge for partners working with end-user businesses who may not be familiar with Datto. 

“The end-user community is not aware of Datto and one of the challenges that our partners identified is that when they go into an end-user and they try to sell them a backup device the end-user says, ‘what is it?’; the usual response is ‘I’ve never heard of Datto.’ We need to elevate our brand…Datto is a viable product and a solid company,” Rae said in an interview with Talkin’ Cloud. 

SEE ALSO: Datto Purchases Backupify to Create Total Data Protection Platform

In order to build this awareness, Datto is offering Datto Drive free for one year to end-user businesses. Users will have to go through its channel partners to provision and support the offering which will in turn be a lead generation tool for partners. 

“In my experience working in the channel for so long I’ve never seen an organization do such a big push for generating leads for solution providers,” Rae said.

“With everything migrating to the cloud we’re finding more and more relevant services that solution providers can sell,” Rae said. “File sync and share seemed like an easy fit, seemed like a relevant fit because of course that technology is something that nearly every business is using or interested in using. For us, we look at the file sync and share business as kind of a commodity. Cloud technology is really reasonably priced, very, very affordable so for us we look at file sync and share, there’s not really a ton of money to be had there.”

Datto sought feedback from partners on Datto Drive during a beta period. Thousands of partners downloaded the offering to test it, and provided feedback which its developers acted on in real-time.  

“One of the cool things about [Datto Drive] is it is a complete open source product,” Rae said. “What that means is that our partners actually have the ability to start using Datto Drive without replacing any other file sync and share that they may already have.”

Content stored in Datto Drive will be housed in its Datto Cloud which spans the company’s data centers in the US, Canada, Europe, and soon Asia. Datto will be opening an office in Singapore. ​