INTERVIEW: A Real Spirit of Cooperation

N-able recently held its N-able Partner Summit 2011 in Sydney to share its vision with its partners and build solidarity throughout its Australian reseller network. Patrick Budmar caught up with N-able Technologies President and COO JP Jauvin.

What is your channel strategy in Australia?

N-able Technologies President and COO JP Jauvin (JJ): In the last few years, there has been a shift away from a traditional value-added reseller (VAR) network towards being managed service providers (MSP), which provide ITas- a-service in either a proactive or managed way. If you are an SMB with or without an IT manager, and IT is vital to your business, then you are probably looking for an MSP to manage portions of or the entirety of your IT. It’s a very new type of role for the traditional VAR, so fast forward to today where we have hundreds of VARs that want to become MSPs, and every quarter we sign up hundreds of companies. We have a partner development specialist group that will handhold an MSP and essentially guide them through the process of becoming an MSP. So that means we’re going to understand their business and their customers, help them defi ne and design their products that they’re going to sell, and how to package and sell those managed services.

How does the Australian market fit into your overall Asia-Pacific strategy?

JJ: The Australian market has some of the most sophisticated users in the world. The market itself has adopted managed services, so in turn it is driving demand for our software through our MSPs. We have a very mature and sophisticated MSP customer base here, and part of the reason we’re running the Partner Summit is to get input back into our direction. Australia is very strategic to us, with a good customer base that is very technically aware and possesses very deep knowledge of our products, all of which allows us to gain valuable feedback in what we should be doing next.

Has N-able been running any special initiatives for partners recently?

JJ: What N-able provides MSPs is a 100 per cent coverage strategy with the objective of providing them with the right product that they can use with their customers. To do that, we have a hybrid licensing model consisting of professional licenses that they can use on the more proactive and managed type of contracts. So the objective is for MSP to control their market and convert those reactive customers into more recurring monthly revenue streams.

What message do you have to somebody who might be interested in becoming a reseller?

JJ: Any company that is looking to becoming an MSP should start with the community. Our MSPs are quite willing to share their experience and offer advice, so that’s a great place to start. Being an MSP is not technology but a business model, so it’s important to understand what the business model looks like.

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