AvePoint ramps up partner play under new channel leadership

Tianyi Jiang (AvePoint)

Cloud software vendor AvePoint is on a mission to ramp up its channel business and enhance its partner program under the leadership of Jason Beal, who was recently made the company’s global channel and partner ecosystems senior vice president.

Beal stepped into the newly created global role, which sees him focus on expanding the company's relationships with managed service providers (MSPs), solution providers and systems integrators, late last year.

As well as working to accelerate AvePoint’s global distribution networks and cloud marketplace presence, Beal also hopes to notably increase the headcount within the company’s global channel organisation in all regions in which it operates.

“In particular, AvePoint will make incremental headcount investments in roles to help partners grow their businesses, architect solutions, and build service practices,” Beal told ARN.

“These positions include channel systems engineers and partner success managers, for example. Another goal is to enhance our partner program. We have been asking, and will continue to ask, partners what they need and listen to their requests,” he said.

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Services represent a big area of interest for Beal going forward, with partners increasingly looking at how to build a services economy around their vendor partnerships.  

“Some partners are building business models around being pure services models, demonstrating to us they aren’t interested in selling a product or being transactional, anymore,” he said.

One of Beal’s priorities for the year ahead is to help AvePoint’s partners launch and manage recurring security and configuration services for Microsoft 365 with the vendor’s solutions that prevent oversharing, manage permissions and plug sensitive data leaks for their customers.

“Also, last year hundreds of thousands of users moved to cloud collaborative platforms for the first time and somewhat hastily,” Beal said. “MSPs will need to work with their customers not just to back up, but button up, those collaboration environments.”

From Beal’s perspective, his appointment to the new role reflects AvePoint’s increased focus on the channel as one of its main growth drivers as the vendor moves toward becoming a public company.  

In November last year, AvePoint unveiled plans to go public via a merger with Apex Technology Acquisition Corporation in a deal which values the Microsoft specialist at approximately $2 billion.

Now, the Microsoft 365 data management independent software vendor (ISV) has clearly doubled down on its channel play, and it seems Beal is the person who will ensure the company makes good on its partner promise.

"There’s been a lot of great work with MSPs and VARs [value-added resellers] across the globe and now we are ready to take channel to the next level. It’s a key growth opportunity for the community and there is definite leadership commitment,” Beal said.

Beal joined AvePoint following senior channel leadership roles at Palo Alto Networks both in Europe and in the United States, where he led the cyber security vendor’s global distribution and commercial channel business.  

Indeed, he brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the technology sector with an emphasis on enterprise content management, security, and cloud technologies.

In January, the company also hired former Appetize marketing senior vice president and prior AvePoint alumni Tony Lanni as its new senior vice president of channel marketing.  

Lanni played a pivotal role in AvePoint’s early days as vice president of marketing and later brand evangelist. He returns to AvePoint after leading global demand generation and increasing revenue in the midmarket and channel sectors at BlackLine.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Jason and Tony to the AvePoint team. Accelerating our channel ecosystem will play an integral role in the company’s next phase of growth and with their leadership, we will continue investing in a world-class channel program,” AvePoint CEO Tianyi Jiang said.