businessinfomag.uk magazine 30 DATA MANAGEMENT retain (backup still accounts for about half of AvePoint’s revenue and around 70% of its customers will take back up in some shape or form). This is leading to conversations around its Opus technology (see below) and driving organic growth. Another critical area is AI, where AvePoint’s focus is on making customers AI-ready. “A lot of people don’t know where to start with Copilot,” explains Shaw. “They don’t know how to use it well and they don’t know how to structure their estates and their data to get the most from it. What we tend to say in regard to AI-readiness and Copilot especially is ‘Make sure the right users can get hold of the right data and then raise the bumpers so they can’t get out of their lane. What are they allowed to look at? What can their Copilot find? How structured is your data and how relevant is the data that Copilot bases its returns on? How ready is your data? How ready are your security permissions and your sharing options? Can you set them up properly?’. Most people say ‘No’.” And this, according to Shaw, is what is driving a lot of the conversations AvePoint and its partners have with customers. We can have that conversation and there are times when it’s really, really relevant. However, MSPs and resellers increasingly want to take their customer on a journey and want to sell multiple technologies to the same seat within that customer. That is how we separate ourselves from the pack, and that’s why people come to AvePoint. We let you get your data in the right place through our migration technologies, back it up properly once it’s in the right place, apply the right security profile to it so that you don’t have unintentional breaches, leaks, internal sharing problems and that sort of thing. Then you’re looking at change management, ROI and analytics and, as an extension of that, Copilot-readiness – using our tools to get ready for Copilot. Those conversations are driving growth in the number of our technologies taken by customers. Our average at the moment is something like 2.7 technologies per customer.” Growth areas Shaw says that one of the big growth areas for AvePoint is storage optimisation, particularly amongst backup customers that are now looking to cut costs and reduce the amount of data they AvePoint started 2025 with the acquisition of Ydentic, adding new capabilities for channel partners 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 Sharepoint migration with the addition of around 30 technologies for modernising, optimising 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. Today AvePoint has more than 3,500 MSP, VAR and system integrator partners worldwide (including 280-300 in the UK) and availability in more than 100 cloud marketplaces. This market reach, allied to AvePoint’s expanding technology offering, is fuelling double-digit growth of 30% to 40% a year, as more and more businesses appreciate the value of fixing multiple scenarios with one vendor. “That’s where we see a lot of gain,” says AvePoint UKI&SA Country Channel Manager Chris Shaw. “The best and worst thing about backup is that it can be a race to the bottom, a commodity sale. If all you’re talking about is backup, it sometimes comes down to price. AvePoint is continuing to expand its offering to help SMEs, enterprises and public sector customers modernise, optimise and secure their digital workspaces. James Goulding finds out more from UKI&SA Country Channel Manager Chris Shaw From backup to Copilot readiness Steve Pearce
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