Interviews

Simplification of Technologies is Key for a Happy Customer

Wael Mustafa, the Area Vice President at Commvault, speaks to Arabian Reseller about the company’s regional strategies, its channel engagement initiatives and its plans for the rest of the year

What worked for the company in 2018 and how do you plan to cash in on it this year?
We did some changes in Commvault last year, in terms of becoming more agile, when it comes to our go to market strategy. We also put lots of thoughts into tackling the market we are covering, in a much optimum way. We simplified things from a licensing perspective, that has helped us in order to grow our region – Middle East, South Africa, and Turkey.

We have also simplified our partner program, which has helped us connect with our partners more engagingly. Thus, I believe a mix of all these activities and the new technologies we offer on the market have helped us achieve the various goals we had in place. We hence plan to continue doing that this year as well.

How do you engage with your partners in the region?
From a partner perspective, we align our people with certain partners we call “focus partners”. The whole idea behind the alignment is to develop our partners into getting them certified, investing into them to grow their business and help them expand into other markets. Over a period of time, the efforts start showing in terms of the value of the total number of leads generated, the conversions, coverage of the partners, their regional reach, and so on.

Tell us about your alliances in place.
Last year we announced multiple new alliances such as HPE, Cisco, and so on, and these alliances help us have big businesses in the region. This year, too, we will continue to grow our alliances.

What are the key pain points your customers face?
Simplification of technologies is key for a happy customer. Customers know that their data is very important. Everything they do today revolves around it. So in terms of data management and protecting the data, moving the data, analyzing the data, archiving the data – all those things are key for customers.

But the solutions available on the market should make their lives easier by automating certain areas. That is what we as Commvault do through our channel partners. Our strategy is to drive those points to the market and make them understand how we can help them achieve those key requirements.

Do you offer a partner program in the region?
We are always dynamic when it comes to our approach with our channel community. We do have a partner program in the region, and though we keep on evolving the overall program, the base of the program remains the same. We always seek to add ways into the program to incentivise our partners. We also offer what we call a “business development fund”, the sole purpose of which is to help our partners develop the markets they cover. In addition, we also offer a rebate program.

Do you plan to add new channel partners to your network?
We are always ready to welcome new channel partners. In fact, we run campaigns to hire new partners in certain markets such as Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and so on. We always work towards growing our partner base across the region. We are also frequently running a partner onboarding program. We did one in Bahrain recently and we will be doing one in Kuwait. This initiative is ongoing.

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Chris Fernando

Chris N. Fernando is an experienced media professional with over two decades of journalistic experience. He is the Editor of Arabian Reseller magazine, the authoritative guide to the regional IT industry. Follow him on Twitter (@chris508) and Instagram (@chris2508).

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