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Customized
online backup provider Intronis Technologies has formally launched a channel
program with a goal of doubling its channel partner numbers.

Intronis
CEO Sam Gutmann said while the channel
program offerings have been available to partners since 2003 when the company’s
eSureIT online backup product was launched, up until now marketing, support and
training were not standardized, and were based on custom program offerings
designed to suit the partner’s business model.

"I
don’t want to say we were reactionary, but partners just came to us and said,
‘This is how we are doing things with your product,’ and they picked how they
wanted to play," Gutmann said.

Intronis’
eSureIT online backup technology is geared for small and midsize businesses
that don’t have the budget or the resources to handle data backups themselves,
and thus typically don’t back up their data at all. Gutmann said eSureIT offers
partners a simple, affordable way to help their SMB customers back up their
data securely online and store it at two co-located, secure mirrored Intronis
storage facilities.

Intronis
has two basic partner types, Referral and Reseller, both which receive monthly
recurring revenue. Referral partners receive a monthly commission on each
paying customer they refer to Intronis services. Intronis takes care of all
customer service and billing functions for the partner, Gutmann said.

Reseller
partners sign up customers for the online backup service and are responsible
for customer service and billing functions, and also set their own end-user
prices, Gutmann said. Reseller partners can rebrand the eSureIT online backup
service under their own company names.

Gutmann
said most partners start out as Referral partners and switch to the Reseller
partner program once they’ve built up a large customer base. Gutmann added that
partners can switch between the programs at will, depending on which model
works better for them and for their end users.

In
conjunction with the formalization of its partner program, Intronis will offer
more marketing materials and white papers through its online partner portal and
will host a series of Web seminars to help partners with sales and technical
training.

Gutmann said his company currently works with almost 1,000 partners. In
2007, he said, 70 percent of the company’s revenue was driven through the
channel, and that percentage had grown from about 60 percent in 2006. He added
that the company has doubled revenue, number of staff and number of channel
partners each year for the past three years, and that by 2009 Intronis hopes to
"more than double our numbers again."

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