Andre Carpenter
American cloud software vendor AvePoint has hired its first channel chief for Australia and New Zealand in an effort to move away from direct sales.
The company, which specialises in protecting data stored in Microsoft Office 365, has hired Andre Carpenter as it looks to implement a 100 per cent channel model.
Carpenter, who was most recently a principal technologist at Oracle, has spent the past 20 years in the IT industry, working for companies including Dell EMC, HPE and Dimension Data across A/NZ.
“Historically AvePoint has been more of a direct business, but now our leadership team in the US understands how valuable the channel actually is. That’s why I was brought on board - to ramp it up across Australia and New Zealand," Carpenter told ARN.
“Having been at Veeam Software, which is a 100 per cent channel business, I’ve seen how useful that approach can be and AvePoint recognises that and wants to capitalise on it.
"My mantra now is to use the channel whenever I can, but for the first year, I accept it will be more like 50 per cent. There’s no timeline on when we’d go 100 per cent, but it is my personal end goal," he added.
“My first priority is to recruit and maintain top partners for Microsoft Office and really enable them to help their customers. We are looking for high-performing partners that will go up and above what they would typically do, which is selling software. We want value-added services to make sure customers get a good outcome."
The company already works with around 200 resellers in ANZ, but as part of an effort to increase its partner reach, AvePoint recently signed a distribution deal with Microsoft specialists Ingram Micro.
“There’s the services element that we don’t have as direct. Going 100-per cent channel also extends your sales team by six times. The idea is that your revenue growth will surge,” Carpenter told ARN.
The deal is their first and so-far only partnership with a distributor and operates on subscription-based, monthly payment plan, although Carpenter said he wouldn't rule out changing that at some stage.
The deal came as Ingram relaunched its cloud marketplace, unifying what previously counted on three control panels – transaction, administration and management – into one.
As well as signing AvePoint, Ingram will also start working exclusively with Australian productivity tool vendor, Geo.
