Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rely on channel partners to protect them from the costs of potential downtime. Arctera’s Global VP of Channels and Alliances, Michael Gray, shared his insights on the needs of the market in a recent interview with Channel Insider.
How Arctera’s partner network addresses risks associated with downtime
Arctera’s solutions suite targets SMBs who need enterprise-grade backup, recovery, and data resiliency solutions but often lack the budgets and expertise to truly leverage those tools. Gray says Arctera is committed to its channel partners in part because it knows those partners are trusted advisors for their customers.
“One of the reasons why I really love the channel is that our partners have built trust with these customers that we just can’t access, because we would come in and just sound like another vendor talking about a product,” Gray said. “Partners really serve as trusted advisors for their customers, and they have their ears on what they should be looking for in terms of outcomes.”
As Gray notes and many in the industry know, ransomware attacks and the subsequent impacts of those attacks on businesses are now top of mind for many leaders. But, Gray says, SMBs in particular remain in the dark about how exactly they would respond if they faced business downtime.
That concept of downtime in particular also highlights another truth: the costs of inoperability are simply too high for smaller organizations to absorb. From losing thousands of dollars a day in stopping normal operations to the longer-term brand and reputation impacts that likely follow even when a business resumes operations, SMBs can’t afford to not have a resilience plan in place.
“Ultimately, it’s all about the recovery here. If you are stuck having to manually recover your data after something occurs, it’s already too late,” said Gray. “Far too many SMBs haven’t thought about recovery until they’re in the middle of it, and then they’re in a state of panic.”
On top of that, ransomware and other forms of cyber attacks are still only one aspect of the threat present to businesses. Natural disasters and even relatively simple human error can also wreak havoc on organizations, some of whom Gray says still haven’t tested a backup even if they have them deployed.
Why SMBs need enterprise-grade technology simplified and molded to their needs
Arctera itself is a little less than a year old; the company was spun off from former partner Veritas in December of last year to focus almost exclusively on the SMB market. The company was created to support three formerly Veritas-established products: Data Compliance. InfoScale, and Backup Exec.
Gray stresses the importance of simplicity in Arctera’s products and in how its partners take the products to their customers.
“For the SMB leaders who understand this, the first thing they ask is ‘if something happens, how quickly can I get back up,’ and we need to provide something simple and scalable that SMBs can easily understand,” Gray said. “The solution needs to be clickable in that the UI is easy enough to follow, and it needs to offer things like pre-configured policies and automated workflows.”
Gray also highlights the assumptions some executives still make around the responsibility models that come with cloud computing. He points out that security and resiliency are shared responsibilities between a business and a major cloud provider, and implores businesses to not grow complacent and assume their cloud deployments are safe simply by nature of them being cloud-based.
All of this ties back to Gray’s guiding principle: when partners understand the product and how to best deploy the full offering to the SMB, the shared outcome is resiliency with simplicity.
Seven months after spinoff, Arctera sees focus on SMB channel paying off
Now that Arctera has spent several months developing teams focused on the SMB product lines that Gray felt got lost in the shadow of the enterprise-focsed Veritas linecard, the importance of channel partners is clearer than ever to the longtime channel leader.
“The channel becomes almost like a safety net for the SMB,” Gray said. “Our partners are on the front lines every day. They aren’t just selling data solutions, they’re providing peace of mind for business leaders.”
Gray told Channel Insider he feels Arctera is at the beginning of a growth journey as it continues to meet the needs of SMBs through the channel partners supporting them.
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