Pete Murray (Veritas).
Veritas Technologies has opted for a single distribution model in the Australian market, selecting Dicker Data for the job and dropping its relationship with Tech Data.
This arrangement will come into effect on 1 October as the data management vendor aims to provide improved inside sales and marketing support for resellers across the country.
Veritas A/NZ managing director Pete Murray said Dicker Data was chosen for its expertise and reach in Australia, which has been proven through a relationship that has lasted between the two businesses over two decades.
The decision to opt for a sole Australian distribution model came down to two factors - focusing its investment with one distributor and its move towards a subscription, multi-cloud model, Murray said.
"All of our software is available through Microsoft Azure and Dicker Data is a large Microsoft distributor in Australia. We need to unlock that market potential because it's the first time that everything we sell, is available through Azure," he said.
Murray pointed out this was a new phase in its partner-centric model in Australia, which will provide incremental focus and investment to its channel community.
“This relationship gives Dicker Data and Veritas the opportunity to accelerate our business in Australia together, not only for our traditional products but also, given Dicker Data’s strength in the Microsoft channel, to a new cohort of partners,” he said.
Dicker Data will be distributing Veritas' full portfolio of solutions, including its cloud-based services, such as NetBackup SaaS Protection and Recovery Vault.
The move follows a similar decision in New Zealand with Veritas opting for a single-distributor model with Westcon-Comstor, where Murray said it achieved strong double digit growth and it sees similar opportunities from replicating this approach in Australia.
"We want to get the same level of focus that allows us to put all of our investment dollars into one place rather than splitting it across two and allows Dicker Data to make investments in their own right knowing they're going to control the return on that investment much more than if they had another competitor in the market," he said.
As a result, Dicker Data will amplify its investment adding further Veritas-focused technical and inside-sales support roles as well as increasing marketing activities to fuel the partner pipeline.
Murray explained a while ago, Veritas decided to take on clients direct, bypassing distribution, but has since backed down on that approach.
Plus, its subscription model has seen it change its first year, entry point price down by about 75 per cent, along with introducing a concept called 'true forward' where a client that signs up for three or more years can safely grow their backup posture up to 10 per cent and not get invoiced until the second year commences.
"The channel adds more value to a data protection strategy than Veritas can offer," he said. "For our partners, the only thing they're going to see is incremental investment from Veritas via Dicker Data."
In June, Veritas struck up a partnership with Kyndryl to deliver the security vendor’s data management portfolio to enterprise customers as a managed service under the title “Protection and Cyber Resiliency, Powered by Veritas”.
It anticipates expanding its cyber resiliency services and solutions, developing its security assurance, Zero Trust, security operations and response and incident recovery services.
