ScienceLogic Intros Channel Program Post-Goldman Sachs Investment

**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of January’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

IT management and monitoring software company ScienceLogic followed a major investor’s advice by formally launching a channel sales program Tuesday.

The Virginia-based vendor announced a three-tiered program, dubbed ChannelLogic, that provides training, tools and resources to partners who want to sell and use the company’s hybrid network management platform.

Steve Kazan, senior director of channel development, said the announcement comes after a year of huge growth for his company, which hopes to increase enterprise sales.

“We’re really taking off, and this is really the perfect time for ScienceLogic to be launching a channel program, for a handful of reasons,” he told Channel Partners.

Kazan said ScienceLogic has gone through three rounds of venture capital financing. The most recent investment came from Goldman Sachs last year to the tune of $43 million. One of the reasons behind Goldman Sachs’ support was ScienceLogic’s involvement in the cloud market – hybrid cloud in particular.

Kazan said the investor recommended that ScienceLogic go further with it.

“When Goldman came in, they said, ‘ScienceLogic, you’ve done a great job selling to managed service providers who are providing network management and network automation as a service, but we think there’s a huge opportunity out in the marketplace to sell to channel partners, solution providers,’” he said.{ad}

ScienceLogic agreed, and Kazan left Adallom – which was acquired by Microsoft – to lead the new channel effort.

He said the program’s main values include strong communication and commitment to enablement. Reciprocity between the vendor and partner also is key.

“We’re not expecting all of the leads to come from them, and they shouldn’t expect all the leads to come from us,” he said. “We should work on accounts jointly.”

One ideal partner type for SciencelLogic has experience in network monitoring, Kazan said. Another would be a partner that’s getting into the hybrid cloud space.

“They understand AWS. They understand Microsoft Azure cloud applications. They have clients who want to move their workloads into those clouds,” he said.

One partner in the program is ePlus, which uses ScienceLogic’s solution as a …

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… managed service platform, in addition to reselling it. The two formed a relationship about five years ago as ePlus began to transition its emphasis from solution resale to service.

“Our initial focus with ScienceLogic and the EM7 platform was to build out a service-delivery capability that we could then provide for our customers, more so than a partnership to be a reseller of the application, if you will,” said Kevin Detsch, executive vice president for business development. “Over the course of the last five years, the platform has served us very well as customers have moved from tactical device management to more complex, interoperable, multiple OEM environments.”

Detsch said ScienceLogic’s platform has had the elasticity to grow alongside ePlus’ customers over the years.

He said clients are facing a higher level of IT complexity, as workloads “proliferate and reside both within the customer data center as well as the public cloud environment.”

“I think it just reinforces how critically important it is for organizations to really take a look at the tools they’re using to manage these dynamic environments.”

Kazan said ScienceLogic’s goal is not to sign up hundreds of partners, but rather to target a select number.

“I’ve worked in other businesses where that was the strategy. We’re probably looking to recruit 30-40 really good channel partners across North America in this next year, but those 30-40 have to be the right profile, the right technology skill set and the right level of commitment,” he said.