While N-able Technologies‘ primary route to market for its network and systems management software has been through enabling managed services providers (MSPs), the company has recently launched a new partner program to tap what it sees as a growing opportunity: midmarket companies that want to run their internal IT shops like a managed service, just without the outsourcing.
N-able has launched the N-able Midmarket Partner Program to go after this opportunity, and capture sales and services opportunities in the midmarket by enabling solution providers, VARs and consultants to resell the N-able platform to IT departments,
“We’ve seen over the last few months a real spike in call volume from midmarket companies as a result of our MSP partners successful in the market,” said Frank Colletti, N-able’s director of sales. “Many have been calling our company trying to find the same efficiencies as our partners.”
With the new partner program, N-able’s MSP partners will not only be able to offer IT managed services based on N-able’s platform, but they’ll be able to resell the platform itself to companies looking to bring those efficiencies in-house. N-able has about 1800 partners in the US, and about 180 in Canada.
“It’s certainly a new space for us in that we’re able to target and market to midmarket clients, but our focus has always been on channel fulfillment,” said Colletti. “We’ve designed the program with feedback from our key MSP elite partners, and they’ve helped us frame how to go to market and frame the commission structure and support,”
N-able’s model is 100 per cent channel, and central to the new program will be a Web site where the company will distribute leads and partners can register deals they’re working on. Partners will earn a 30 per cent commission on deals they’ve registered that close, even if it’s with help from N-able’s sales team.
“The beauty is the partner has the ability to leverage the N-able sales team as much or as little as they want,” said Colletti. “We’ll come into the picture as much as our partners want.”
Some 90 resellers have registered for the program, and of those, 40 per cent have engaged actively and entered opportunities. As the program ramps-up, Coletti said N-able will distribute leads to those partners that have been successful and done the training, with the model evolving over time to include territory and success ratio.
Derik Belair, N-able’s vice-president of marketing and business development, said the program is currently being offered only to the company’s existing MSP partners, but over time the company expects to open-up the criteria for new partners.
The program includes a technical certification, to ensure partners understand how the technology works and the consulting services on the backend, and certification on the sales side to ensure partners know how to sell the platform and understand how it works in customer environments. The N-able partner resource centre includes online training that partners can leverage.
“It’s the managed-services value proposition that’s attractive to customers, because they’re looking for ways to gain efficiencies and productivity and managed distributed environments in a cost-effective way” said Belair. “It’s a real one-two punch to bring a proven product to the enterprise and do it with MSP partners that have the expertise and solutions to do it effectively.”
