eFolder targets European growth starting in UK and using distribution; signs deal with Westcoast Atlanta-based eFolder has established itself as a supplier of cloud data protection, business continuity, and cloud file sync solutions for MSPs, solution providers, and VARs in the US. Now it is setting its sights on Europe and beyond. IT Europa caught up with Bryan Forrester (below), eFolder’s Senior Vice President of Sales this week at Cloud World Forum.
“We have always been a channel-only company but the channel in the US is a little bit different from the channel in Europe. We grew out of selling direct to MSPs rather than through using the 2-tier distribution model you see in Europe. We have now got about 2500 transacting MSPs - most of those are in the United States.”
The penetration strategy eFolder is pursuing in Europe is a little different going for both 2-tier distribution as well as building direct relationships with significant MSPs. “We are going after the low hanging fruit, starting in the UK first as well as Australia and New Zealand. With the English-speaking countries we don’t need to worry about translation concerns. We are focussing on building relationships with key distributors in the UK - they themselves sell to hundreds of MSPS. It is the best way to approach the European market because it is lower touch. We will also go direct to an MSP that is not through a two tier system depending on what their business model is and how big reach they have. What we’re trying to avoid is the two or three man shot MSP’s that only have three or four customers because we cannot scale that way.”
“We have signed agreements with companies like Westcoast that are pretty prominent in the UK. As a company we are focused on particular SaaS ecosystems - partners within the Salesforce ecosystem for example - systems integrators and VARs. We are also focused on Microsoft partners.” The aim then is “educating them about how our software can be used in SaaS applications to increase their margins.”
eFolder’s main focus in the UK initially is on Microsoft resellers, leveraging their US experience where about 80% of their customers are Microsoft resellers but they are finding that a lot of users are only just embarking on the journey: “We find that a lot of people say that we are not in the cloud yet, but we are moving to the cloud this year or next year. They are all talking about going in that direction and we want to be at the front of that wave. Our key message is: Don’t think about moving to the cloud with Microsoft without having a comprehensive backup strategy. Just because you’re moving into the cloud doesn’t mean you can abandon having a backup strategy. A lot of companies think we don’t have servers and we don’t have local infrastructure to manage so I don’t have to back up my data - it is safe in the Microsoft cloud. The thing that they’re missing there is that most data losses occur due to user error not because of a hard drive failure.”
In Forrester’s view, the channel has a major role to play in driving the adoption of Cloud-based services: “We think the conventional VARs that are just reselling hardware without providing an underlying service are a dying breed. The channel as evolving to focus more on managed services. Any service provider that worried about all this movement to the cloud and sees it as a threat to their traditional business model because they have traditionally made money from providing local hardware to clients is going to face problems - that’s a losing business proposition from our point of view. They need to embrace the cloud and see that there is a huge opportunity we don’t see channels going away but there may be some consolidation. The market and annual growth rate will continue to increase. Resellers have a huge opportunity if they have the right strategy to increase their margins and to increase their revenues through adopting new services.”
“There are a lot of VARs and Systems Integrators that are hybrid – they have a managed services department, may find that they make more money by offering their services and we are helping those sorts of businesses transition their model.”
Asked where eFolder will go next in terms of Europe, Forrester is less certain and is aware of some of the challenges ahead the company will face. “There are certain markets that really appeal to us - Germany for example. It is a great economy but German companies like to keep their data in Germany. Data sovereignty in some countries is a big issue. We’ve got data centres in Amsterdam, Canada and the US. We also offer private cloud solutions. Certain service providers already have their own cloud and we can support that. In countries like Germany where we don’t have a data centre, we will pitch our private cloud solutions.