Big plans for CommVault NZ partner programme

CommVault is focusing on its channel partners and channel strategy for the coming year. 

Ash Diffey, head of channel sales ANZ at CommVault, sees 2015 as a big year for developing relationships within CommVault's partner ecosystem, with new offerings and solution sets.

Diffey joined CommVault in March 2012, and he says the business has come along way since then with its offerings and how it partners.

"We spend a lot of time with partners and how we can support their businesses," he says. CommVault revamped its partner programme last year, fuelling the company's cloud growth in the process.

At the time, the company said its ongoing cloud strategy builds on its software innovation, and through strategic relationships with service provider partners, delivers solutions to simplify and secure the transition of these services providers and their customers to cloud computing.

Diffey says since his move into the New Zealand market, he has really enjoyed seeing the entrepreneurial spirit in the New Zealand partner community. He says everyone is focused on building simple and effective solutions.

"We've taken our existing partner base across to New Zealand," he says. "What drives our partners? That's what we are looking at," he says.

He says he sees many similarities between the Australian and New Zealand market. "The amount of opportunity in New Zealand is significant. Kiwis are early adopters, similarly to Australians, although I think New Zealand is quicker off the mark on some occasions. "

"We have a good spread of traditional partners focused on infrastructure and storage, as well as a new breed of partners we have seen emerge around the cloud space, which is obviously a hot topic," Diffey says.

"A lot of new partners are solution focused, leading to long term strategies. To address that we've introduced new solutions which enable our partners to go to their customers and start conversations.

 "We want to be working with solution providers to develop more valuable solutions. We want to help our partners have conversations that open doors," he says.

"What we are looking to do is to develop our partners' offerings with data information management consulting. We want to enable our partners to go out to customers and understand how data is being used in their customer's enterprises," Diffey says.

Trends for 2015

"What I've seen in the last year are customers across both Australia and New Zealand becoming a lot more savvy with what they are purchasing," Diffey explains. "Customers are holding off on refresh of hardware to see what the cloud can do for their businesses.

Diffey says over the next 12 to 18 months, customers are going to be looking for more 'business consultant' types of offerings.

"In the competitive landscape, CommVault sees a lot of end user sets with only one solution," Diffey says. "CommVault has the ability to protect data throughout its lifecycle when it comes to migrating data into a cloud environment.

"We are interested in talking to partners who have a focus on cloud based solutions."

CommVault launched its Endpoint Data Protection system Simpana earlier this month, a new solution set designed to help protect and enable the mobile workforce. It includes several capabilities and benefits to organisations that can be purchased modularly to meet each unique need.

"Our products have grown, which has allowed us to have a broad offering into the market. "