In this “Road To NASDAQ” series, I’m sharing some of the growth drivers that make AvePoint such a dynamic and exciting company. I have previously covered how we will grow through product innovation, and now I’d like to turn and look at how we will grow by enabling channel partners to scale their business with AvePoint products.
In addition to selling direct to customers, there are many indirect routes-to-market in the IT ecosystem. Local value-added resell (VAR), managed service provider (MSP), global system integrators, consulting services, eCommerce resellers, distributors, and B2B Marketplaces—all of these business models comprise “the channel.”
One of the reasons why the channel is important to AvePoint is because utilizing the channel scales growth without scaling costs.
The channel will be a force multiplier that can help AvePoint significantly expand market reach and help accelerate the number of customers AvePoint serves. Our goal is to turn our channel business into a significant part of our revenue mix in the next three years.
Three Ways Channel Partners Can Grow Their Business With AvePoint
1. Mutual Profitability
The most important item in any business relationship is that it’s mutually beneficial and profitable. AvePoint is well-positioned to help managed service providers and other partners grow through selling solutions as a result of our broad portfolio of Microsoft 365 data management solutions.
As I told CRN in their “CEO Outlook 2021” article, the daily number of active users for Microsoft Teams has nearly tripled since April last year. AvePoint has the most comprehensive solutions for moving, managing, and protecting Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams on the market today.
Collaboration security in particular is a tremendous opportunity for AvePoint partners to help button up and secure the Microsoft 365 environments many of their customers rushed to adopt to enable remote work at the start of the pandemic. AvePoint’s Policies and Insights solution provides unrivaled insight and security across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams compared to any of AvePoint’s competitors.
Another important way AvePoint is thinking about how to make partners profitable with our solutions is to help them build and scale their service economy. Monthly reoccurring revenue is great, but it’s even better when it’s supplemented with valuable service engagements–enabled by our solutions–that can generate additional revenue at good margins.
2. Expand Partner Business With The Best Technology and Great Support
As the largest Microsoft 365 data management solutions provider, we want to enable our channel partners to scale their business with our global SaaS platform. We built a robust cloud infrastructure across more than a dozen global data centers and with leading security credentials:
Various partners worldwide have enabled their customers’ digital transformation journey with our solutions. For example, CMIT Solutions of Cleveland Northeast and Northwest (CMIT CNN), a managed service provider, was engaged in a migration project with a client in the medical field. Business downtime was not an option and migration windows were tight.
They used a competitor’s migration tool and got a bad surprise. It didn’t have the ability to migrate OneDrive and SharePoint from the source (GoDaddy) into the target tenant, so it migrated the emails and stopped. Worse, this issue was not in the documentation and the CMIT CNN team could not get a hold of a human when they called the vendor support for help.
Issues like these cost partners money and hurt their reputations with clients. For AvePoint, those are unacceptable outcomes. Luckily, CMIT CNN’s next call was to AvePoint. In the partner’s words:
“AvePoint immediately had a senior sales and solution engineer ready to go. They didn’t ask unhelpful questions and assumed we had to execute on the timeline we said we did,” said Ludwick.” “We purchased, configured the tool for OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, and were migrating all in the same day within four to five hours from when the other vendor’s migration solution failed….The customer was extremely happy. They weren’t aware of any of the challenges behind the scenes, just that we made the timeline with zero technical issues after the go-live.”
On top of our world-class technology solutions, AvePoint prides itself on our 24/7 customer support. AvePoint will always go the extra mile to support partners and make them successful. That’s a promise from me to all of our partners and customers.
3. AvePoint Industry Experts By Their Side
Channel partners will benefit from our expertise, experience, and Microsoft relationship. We have a very close symbiotic relationship with Microsoft and are innovating alongside them for our partners’ benefit. Apart from being Microsoft’s top Microsoft Teams co-sell partner globally, we’re a five-time Microsoft Partner of the Year awardee, we have multiple Microsoft Regional Directors (RDs) and Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) on staff, and are among the few partners participating in their various advisory councils.
When we say we want our channel partners to thrive, we put money where our mouth is. We’ve already announced some key hires to invest in our channel business since our initial public merger announcement, including a new channel chief and senior VP of channel marketing.
In addition to our channel leaders, our channel partners will have access to our brand experience, product innovation, and customer success teams to help scale their business.
The Opportunity Is Bright For Channel Partners
As we move towards an increased channel presence, AvePoint’s go-to-market model will evolve. We believe AvePoint will always have the latest and greatest solutions, a listening ear, and the best possible customer and partner support. That is always a recipe for growth and success.
I invite all channel partners to join us in this journey!
As AvePoint’s Chief Executive Officer, as well as a member of the Board of Directors, Dr. Tianyi Jiang (TJ) is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of AvePoint, which includes product innovation, investor relations, and business development. He is focused on delivering value to customers, partners, shareholders, and the AvePoint team, every day.
TJ was named 2023 CEO of the Year, in the Information Technology Products or Services category by the Globee Awards and is a recipient of Ernst & Young’s 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year award in New Jersey. He received both B.S. and master’s in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Philosophy and PhD in Data Mining from Department of Information Systems, Operations Management, and Statistics, Stern School of Business, New York University.