30 01732 759725 Technology Reseller finds out more about AvePoint’s channel plans for 2025 from UKI&SA Country Channel Manager Chris Shaw From backup to Copilot readiness Channel growth This focus has resulted in a rapid scaling up of AvePoint’s channel business across all regions to the point where today it has more than 3,500 MSP, VAR and system integrator partners worldwide and availability in more than 100 cloud marketplaces. “If we just look at the UK business, we’ve grown from next to nothing when we first started to multi-millions of pounds worth of business. Our partner ecosystem is in the hundreds now and we still want net new. We’re still hungry. We’re still growing at 30% to 40% as a minimum across our business and in the channel that’s closer to 50% in the UK. Our growth curve is still on the way up and that creates the need for us to streamline, simplify and scale up our channel processes and programmes to support it.” In the UK, AvePoint encourages partners to deal with distribution partners such as Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, Infinigate, Arrow, Also (which recently acquired Westcoast) and Exertis because it is easier for all concerned, although Shaw says that a small minority of partners do still have a direct relationship with AvePoint. “You get one or two partners who for whatever reason want to come direct to us, but the majority are happy with distribution, because they have a commercial relationship in place, there are better credit lines, it’s easier to transact and it makes things simpler. There’s an element of efficiency in distribution,” he explains. AvePoint has around 280‑300 partners in the UK and, according to Shaw, it is on the lookout for more. “When I joined a couple of years ago, we had two or three really big fish, four or five good-sized, middle-grade partners and a very long tail. What we’ve done well over the last couple of years is to bulk out the middle and find more to go on the top of the tree. The long tail is still growing and still important, but we’ve and securing digital workspaces, becoming a toolkit not just for the Microsoft ecosystem – last year it won its sixth global Microsoft Partner of the Year award – but also for Google and Salesforce. A little over a decade ago, AvePoint started to make the transition from selling direct to enterprises to selling through the channel to extend its reach from the enterprise to the mid-market. UKI&SA Country Channel Manager Chris Shaw says that in the last two or three years, AvePoint has started to ‘industrialise’ its channel programme, giving partners the ability to buy through AvePoint if necessary, but preferably through distribution or marketplaces. “What that allows us to do,” he explains “is to have a genuine SMB business, a really solid mid-market business and, as the cherry on top, enterprise as well. And, from that starting point, to be able to scale across all those market segments. “A focus this year is industrialising the channel and making it properly efficient and the primary go-to-serve motion. Our stated goal over the last two or three years has been to be channel-first, so that direct business now doesn’t happen and, where we can, renewals are pushed into partners. We have a tiered partner program behind that and a really robust referrals model.” What Shaw means by ‘industrialised’ is a programme that works for everyone, that enables AvePoint to sell more and that gives partners added value, rather than just a transactional model. “There are reward mechanisms; there’s a better MDF program for partners to lean on; there are more collaborative sales motions; and there’s more engagement from people within AvePoint that wouldn’t traditionally have known how to work with the channel. It’s that embracing of the channel that we call industrialisation, and the ability for us to do a lot more with that motion.” AvePoint started 2025 with the acquisition of Ydentic, adding new capabilities for MSP partners (see box) and strengthening its offering in data security, governance and resilience built up over more than 20 years through a combination of R&D and acquisitions. In that period, AvePoint has expanded from its roots in Microsoft Exchange backup and Microsoft SharePoint migration with the addition of around 30 technologies for modernising, optimising PARTNER PROGRAMMES Chris Shaw
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=