01732 759725 22 IT MANAGEMENT Technology Reseller recently caught up with ManageEngine’s UK Country Head Shankar Haridas and Ganesha Chellapa, Head of Support Services, to hear about the enterprise IT management company’s growth plans for the UK. In this article, we consider its channel expansion plans. Next month, we take a closer look at its product offering, including AI come in handy, informing people about our portfolio and the strengths and capabilities we have. It's a win:win for everyone; we have customers looking for a solution and we have affiliates helping us to reach them.” Chellapa adds that affiliate partners come in many shapes and guises, with a diverse range of capabilities. For example, they might offer complementary services, such as implementation or training, or they might be system integrators that customise some of ManageEngine’s solutions for a specific audience. “An affiliate tends to have their own client base and are already offering certain solutions. The idea is to have a partnership with ManageEngine because we have a strong portfolio and can fill gaps they might have. For example, a vendor who is offering software solutions and services that predominantly focus on enterprise IT Service Management but lacks a cybersecurity solution will obviously look at individual point products and other vendors who offer cybersecurity solutions. “The benefit of being an affiliate of ManageEngine is that we have a wide portfolio of products that are all built from scratch. We don't look at building products, we build a framework, on top of which we build services, on top of which we build applications. At the end of the day, we might have 40 or 50 different solutions, but they all share the same services and framework in the background and because of that they can tightly integrate and share data between each other, working like an ecosystem rather than an individual product.” UK Country Head Shankar Haridas adds that while there are qualification requirements for affiliates, ManageEngine expects a greater commitment from accredited VARs. “When we talk about expanding our channel network, we always look for value added resellers. Rather than just box shifting, we want the partner to carry the ManageEngine portfolio and deliver the service and implement the product. That's where most VARs make their money today; they sell the product and they sell services on top of it. It's ManageEngine's responsibility to train our partners and to get them certified. That's how we want to expand this channel network.” Service providers ManageEngine also has relationships with service providers, like Tata Consultancy Services in the UK, that might procure one of its solutions and offer it as a service to clients that want a solution more quickly than is possible with a traditional projectbased model involving time-consuming solution customisation. Chellapa adds that ManageEngine is seeing growing demand from service providers that recognise the value of off-the-shelf solutions that enable them to service many more clients, more quickly, pointing out that its saervice management, operations management, endpoint management and identity and access management products are all available in on-prem, cloud and managed service provider editions. “Service providers tend to go for the service provider edition because they would like to procure a solution, deploy it and offer it as a service to their own clients. We have good growth with service providers now because building custom applications for each client has become cumbersome.” The fact that ManageEngine has such a large portfolio of products that integrate closely and share the same UI technology and framework is another benefit, not just in terms of functionality but also for ease of use and user acceptance. “The bottom line is these solutions are supposed to work together,” declares Chellapa. To find out more about the benefits of ManageEngine’s portfolio, please see next month’s issue. As we have reported before, ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, has big plans for the UK. With more than 8,000 customers across the public and private sectors, the UK is already ManageEngine’s second largest market, generating 25% of its global revenue. UK Country Head Shankar Haridas now wants to double the volume of its UK business to capitalise on growing cloud adoption – he estimates that demand today is split 50:50 between the company’s on-prem and SaaS solutions – with a commensurate expansion of ManageEngine’s UK operations, including sales & marketing, admin and technical support staff; infrastructure – last year it opened two new UK data centres; and channel reach. The channel currently generates around 40% of ManageEngine’s UK revenues and ManageEngine wants to maintain this ratio, effectively doubling its revenue contribution, as the company closes in on global revenues of $1 billion within the next two years. To do this, ManageEngine is looking to add more channel partners and extend its geographical reach across the UK. This includes not just MSPs and VARs but also affiliates that might introduce or recommend its solutions for a commission. Affiliate programme ManageEngine launched a global affiliate programme in 2021 and, according to Head of Support Services Ganesha Chellapa, its 186 affiliates play a vital role in helping customers find the right solution for their needs. “There are some solutions that we have in the ManageEngine portfolio that even our existing customers are not aware of. Affiliates fill that gap by talking about, for example, our IAM solution or our PAM solution. Sometimes, customers look at us in surprise: ‘Oh, you guys have a PAM; we didn’t know that’. That's where affiliates Growing its network Shankar Haridas Ganesha Chellapa
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