FrontRange Tapping Channel To Move Upstream

Dublin, Calif.-based FrontRange is determined to grow its partner base of 200 or so resellers by being the simple, less-expensive, channel-friendly alternative to CRM and help-desk products from rival vendors such as Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, and BMC Software, said Kevin Smith, vice president of products at FrontRange.

To achieve this goal, FrontRange just upgraded its Heat service management and Goldmine CRM products, introduced a new channel chief, strengthened its integration with Microsoft, and, on Nov. 4, announced its pending acquisition by private equity firm Francisco Partners for $200 million.

The acquisition will effectively take FrontRange off the South African JSE stock market, make it a private company and point it toward a possible future listing on the NASDAQ, Smith said. The acquisition also will give FrontRange more working capital to feed its channel programs, improve its products and possibly acquire other companies, he said.

Partners said they are seeing the impact of FrontRange&'s efforts to improve channel partnerships.

“FrontRange is definitely a channel-driven business,” said Mike Antonelli, president of Anton Systems, a FrontRange partner in Sunrise, Fla. “There is no question that three years ago there was a huge disconnect with the channel. But they pushed a number of reset buttons, and they know that to get scale they will have to use partners,” he said.

The change is evident in the vendor&'s numbers as well: Indirect sales revenue at FrontRange has steadily increased over the past four quarters and now accounts for 83 percent of the vendor&'s roughly $66 million in revenue. Since the first quarter of 2004, channel sales have risen 11 percent, according to FrontRange.

As its products improve, solution providers can play a key role in moving FrontRange&'s traditionally midmarket offerings up into enterprise accounts, Smith said.

“We are a midmarket player, yes. But we have enterprise-capable products. And because of that we are being pulled into the enterprise, and that upstream move will be a channel play,” Smith said. “The PeopleSofts and the SAPs that are trying to move downmarket have a problem because they have very heavy, complex applications,” he said.

Last week, FrontRange made what its executives called the most significant upgrade to the GoldMine product line with GoldMine 7.0 Corporate Edition. Key to version 7.0 is broader integration with other applications, said Greg Anderson, senior director of CRM product management at FrontRange. With version 7.0, FrontRange replaced GoldMine&'s traditional Borland Database Engine with ActiveX/HTML containers in an effort to increase the number of applications to which the product can connect. The net result is a better organized CRM system that can drill down deeper into associated applications, provide better overall visibility, and better reporting and scheduling, Anderson said.

Earlier this month, FrontRange also added inventory and knowledge management capabilities to version 5.04 of the IT Service Management (ITSM) module of its Heat product. The free modular upgrade ends the need to import inventory data into ITSM from third-party products while giving FrontRange partners the opportunity to reengage with customers, said Lori Samolyk, senior product marketing manager at the company. The upgrade also adds a Microsoft Outlook Calendar integration tool that produces a forward scheduling and alert system for future changes managed by ITSM. The result: improved network visibility, more consistent problem resolution and improved help-desk environment, she said.

Its relationship with Microsoft is both a key value proposition as well as a springboard for solution providers to begin working with FrontRange, said Vice President of Business Development Jim O&'Gara, FrontRange&'s channel chief.

O&'Gara, whose 28 years of channel experience include stints with Digital Equipment Corp. and Informix, joined FrontRange in February and commenced to strengthen the FrontRange-Microsoft relationship, he said. FrontRange resells SQL Server as part of its GoldMine product offering, and is a close .Net developer. “Microsoft realizes FrontRange&'s ITSM is a category that&'s growing and a category [in which] they do not offer a product,” he said.