The past 18 months have driven a period of profound change within the IT channel. Broader economic and business conditions have pushed organisations into IT transformation – McKinsey research suggests that it has been as much as ten years of acceleration for some companies – and now more data sits on cloud services in decentralised IT environments than ever before.
The stakes of data protection have been raised in the era of COVID-19. As a result, businesses have been forced to accelerate their digital transformation plans and initiatives. This important focus and shift are crucial and urgent steps needed to ensure business continuity and resilience.
At the same time cybersecurity threats have escalated rapidly, as attackers look to exploit the new environments and ways in which people are working. They’re also more expensive than ever, with cybercriminals having walked away with over $166 million from cyber-attacks from 151,000 cases reported to the ACCC in the past year. A data breach has been priced at around $3.35 million on average for Australian enterprises, and most businesses face potential breaches – statistics show that over half (51 per cent) of enterprises were targeted by ransomware in the past year. Cybersecurity is right at the top of mind for company directors now, and CIOs and CEOs need to have a clear and effective strategy to address those concerns.
With cloud data protection and management being core to delivering security in these newly transformed, decentralised environments, Arrow partnered with specialist cloud data protection provider, Druva, in May to bring the channel powerful new options for Cloud data security.
Druva was named a Visionary in the Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery – a critical component to building a comprehensive security environment. As Druva founder and CEO Jaspreet Singh, noted at the time: “This year’s report is the strongest acknowledgment of our vision yet, debuting an updated category that extends to the cloud, as well as the edge. This change in criteria reflects our new reality — in the age of SaaS applications and edge devices, the datacentre is no longer the centre of your data. Organisations need enterprise-level backup and recovery.”
The channel play for cloud security
Partnering with a solutions-focused and boutique distributor such as Arrow was essential for Druva to be able to deliver the kind of holistic and comprehensive solutions that local CIOs need to address their challenges. In recognising this, it has been undertaking a project to shift its customers from direct to in-direct, following the appointment of Arrow, to better facilitate the channel-first approach.
Now, Druva is a global channel-first company with over 90 per cent of sales either influenced or closed by channel partners. For partners, it offers a number of major benefits. With a 100 per cent SaaS approach, meaning no hardware or software, Druva offers a zero-touch sales motion, and consequently, the sales cycle itself is less than 60 days from registration to close.
Through Arrow, partners can also tap into comprehensive support, with a robust accreditation program, go-to-market investments, opportunities for industry-leading recurring margins, and a streamlined sales process.
Finally, it’s more profitable for partners to, with Druva claiming up to 60 per cent higher margins. When bundled with other security solutions available through Arrow, and accounting for consultancy and management services, channel partners can build a very healthy business around the Druva technology.
Druva in action
“What really excited us is that all aspects of Druva's platform are distinctly cloud-native, unlike competitors who seem to have integrated the cloud as an afterthought." This quote, from the International Infrastructure Manager and video game retailer, GameStop, highlights how the Druva platform is seen by those in the market. It is a solution to businesses, including those in more traditional sectors, as they look to modernise their business.
Closer to home, Ipswich Grammar School highlights the benefits that Druva is bringing to local businesses. The school was looking to make the move to the cloud, and having previously used Veeam on-premises for data protection, the school realised that it needed a new solution for its new Microsoft 365 environment.
“We did a trial of Veeam’s Microsoft 365 deployment and learned we would have had to purchase and deploy multiple products to manage datacentre workloads and Microsoft 365, as Veeam doesn’t provide a single pane of glass,” David Peace, Network and Security Administrator at Ipswich Grammar School, said. “Then we would have had to find a cloud partner to store our data offsite.”
Druva, meanwhile, provided Ipswich Grammar School with a cloud-to-cloud backup for Microsoft 365, as well as incremental backups for other data sources without ever needing to do a full second backup. For the school, this is delivering far more efficiencies than Veeam with faster performance (read more about this case study here).
Ipswich Grammar School highlights a story that is going to be all-too-common in the months and years ahead; organisations realise that they need to make the move to the cloud, but their incumbent backup solution is poorly tuned for that. Druva is a native solution designed specifically for these environments. In collaboration with Arrow, channel partners can deliver to their customers holistic and complete security solutions that meet the needs of modern IT, while also benefitting from a leading go-to-market and support.
For more information and resources on cyber resiliency, cloud data protection or the Druva solution, or to talk to Arrow about becoming a partner, click here.
