Distribution-led strategy expands into Europe
Datto, the vendor of data backup, recovery and business continuity is preparing to spend the $75m raised from backers recently on channel expansion in EMEA.
Andrew Stuart (below), EMEA MD of Datto tells IT Europa: “We have been focused mainly on the UK and Ireland. We wanted to bring the products to the wider EMEA market, and we decided six months ago to do this through distribution.”
Datto has already signed up seven distributors covering 24 countries, with the the view that they have the in-country knowledge and have relationships with resellers already. And have a mix of complementary products, he adds. The funding will be used to increase the marketing efforts in support of the channels, looking at a 250% jump in marketing funds, to help existing partners to grow and allow distributors to build channels.
“With their growth comes our success; we have just hired a new partner marketing manager to work exclusively with them on remarketing.”
The regions signed so far are Benelux and Nordics – the easy ones from an English-speaking perspective, and then Italy, France and Poland. The DACH region is also a key target; a new data centre in Frankfurt is part of the plan there; this should be available next quarter.
“We feel that it is important that Europe is an autonomous business, with its own marketing departments, development and software engineering etc. We will double headcount next year and triple the office space. We are building a new partner briefing centre here as we believe it is not enough to just have sales people in-country.” All the support investment should make the partner experience the same as in the US, he says. It is important to have people on the ground, not just rely on having distribution in place.
Datto has historically concentrated on the MSP market, but expertise acquired in the last year will allow it to move into new markets. There will be further consolidation next year, he says, “we have found being a single vendor from a data protection perspective to be a strong idea. We are looking to push that into new areas such as networking.”
The partner programme will also see some changes, to emphasise and reward those partners prepared to accelerate. The programme, now two years' old needs a refresh and the investment will support education and training.
