Barracuda Networks
It’s also important for Barracuda to keep the channel happy. Toward that end, the company operates a 24-hour hotline for partners needing extra customer support, provides co- and joint marketing campaigns, and prides itself on lead generation. ’We create leads, develop them and then pass along hundreds of new leads every day,’ Drako said. ’It’s all part of communicating that we are devoted to the channel.’
Barracuda Networks is gobbling up the competition. With its laser-beam focus on channel sales, the maker of antispam and antispyware appliances has amassed an impressive 20,000 customers. Not bad for a two-year-old company funded solely by its three co-founders.
In that short time, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company has grown to 150 employees, opened eight international offices and established relationships with distributors in 35 countries. In the United States alone, Barracuda boasts 275 resellers, 75 of which have achieved Diamond status, the highest partner level. The company has been profitable since its second quarter of operation, said Dean Drako, president, CEO and co-founder.
The source of that success: The Barracuda Spam Firewall, among the first appliances to filter out nearly every sling and arrow fired at today’s e-mail servers. Barracuda wrote all of the software that stands between customers and unwanted onslaughts, bypassing the need for multiple software licenses. ’We did that because we didn’t want to have to have any per-user fees,’ Drako said. ’That was important because we want to make it easy to buy. So instead of 45-page-long price lists, like some of our competitors have, our price list has five items on it—for the five models of Barracuda.’
But Drako attributes Barracuda’s 100 percent annual growth to more than product and pricing strategy. He also believes Barracuda has benefited from the decision to sell purely through the channel. ’We didn’t want to have our own professional services organization. We are a product company. And we believe the channel is absolutely the best mechanism for delivering security, where customers are looking for people who know more than they do,’ Drako said.
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