FUTURE
TECHNOLOGY
Driving channel
operations with a
customer-centric
approach
H
How important is having a
clear Digital Transformation
vision or strategy?
There’s an old saying; change is only
constant. Digital disruption is the only
constant going forward, so you need to
embrace those things to remain competitive.
When I talk to customers, I say look at the
guys either side of you and if you’re not
doing it, are they? And if you don’t, you’ll be
gobbled up – so you need to take advantage
of that. For us as Veeam, we help customers
harness, look after, recover and interrogate
that so they can use it.
How do you expect cloud to
develop over the next 12 months?
In the Middle East, I think there’s going
to be triple-digit growth. Every single
customer we speak to has a cloud strategy.
Cloud is not something you buy, cloud
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Creating and maintaining a solid eco-structure in the
channel doesn’t just happen overnight – it requires a
positive working relationship between vendors and
their partners. Claude Schuck, Regional Manager, Veeam
Software, explains how a solid and well-executed channel
strategy provides business benefits and efficiencies.
e
Sc
hu
ck
,
Re
gio
nal
Man
ager
, Veeam
Software
is something you do. Nowadays, cloud
is about running workloads, running
businesses, running ERPs in there and just
utilising what you want to get your head
around what needs to be done.
How does Veeam offer
business benefits to its
Middle East customers?
As an organisation, we are 100% channel-
based. We have Veeam cloud providers
that sit in-country and are able to offer
hosting and cloud services. So, every single
Veeam customer that’s bought Veeam has
something called Cloud Connect which is
essentially an engine to offload workloads
onto someone else’s platform, so they are
all cloud-ready. We found that the smaller
businesses which are a lot less risk-averse
have taken advantage of those services
quickly. Now that the big providers are
here, if smaller companies try to
compete on cost with big providers, it
isn’t going to be possible. It’s beginning
to make sense for large enterprises to
take advantage of that, so as soon as that
happens, we’re going to see this explosion
of big customers taking advantage.
Can you tell us about
Veeam’s channel approach
and its ecostructure?
We have lots and lots of partners. I look at
the partner landscape in Africa compared
to the Middle East and the partners in
the Middle East are more reliant on the
vendors. I think it’s a credibility thing in front
of customers that they want the vendor
responsible to be there, so we focus a lot
around training and on enablement of the
partners. We want to be relevant. If you
look at the channel, you might question why