Druva’s New Channel Chief Aims To Add As-A-Service Partners: Exclusive
‘We are a channel-centric company. We want to push 100 percent of our opportunities through our resale routes,’ Druva’s Robert Brower tells CRNtv.
Recognized as one of CRN’s 20 coolest identity management and data protection companies of 2021 on the Security 100 list, Druva’s newly appointed senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances, channel veteran Robert Brower, is focused on bringing new partners into the fold to expand the company’s partner network and drive future growth.
“We are a channel-centric company. We want to push 100 percent of our opportunities through our resale routes,” Brower told CRNtv.
Brower joined the company in the summer of 2020 as vice president of strategic operations and chief of staff, “which has really opened the door for my insight in terms of being able to lead our channel partners, lead our channel organization and create great value for our partners, our alliances and ultimately for our global customers,” said Brower.
Here’s a look at some of CRNtv’s virtual interview with Brower:
What are your top priorities for the channel in 2021?
There’s a new ecosystem of partners that we want to engage.
So if we’re enhancing the engaged partners that we have today, we want take that next round of partners, those that are looking to say, ‘You know what, I don’t want to keep buying hardware, I don’t want to keep doing capacity planning, I don’t want to keep going back to a well that is continuously drying out of customers with data centers.’
What’s the next business model that I can offer—an as-a-service business model with highly predictable economics, extraordinary resiliency, global availability and simplicity of working with Druva—that’s the value that we want to take on with that next wave of partners that we will engage to enhance and lift up to the level that we have with our current partnerships.
Now what are the biggest opportunities for solution providers to grow their business and find profitability with Druva?
I think the best way for our solution provider partners to find profitability with Druva is by executing a model that allows for them to be able to buy what they need, consume at peak and then wind it back down.
Our consumption-based pricing allows for our partners to be able to essentially create pricing profiles for their customers that are fully predictable on our side and can have degrees of variation on their side.
And what can partners look forward to with you at the helm of Druva’s channel community?
The thing that I really will enjoy about working with our partner community as we go into the years ahead, we together have an opportunity to really rapidly modernize what our channel providers can offer to their customers.
And I want to hear this from our partners, so I will be learning, I will be listening and I have been spending a lot of time talking with them as we think about getting out of that classic, ‘I will order boxes and I will install boxes, and then I will have people that understand how to install the software and maybe know how to raise a support ticket effectively [and so on].’
I want to get people out of that lower-value, higher-commoditized service model that they’ve had to operate in—because we’ve all had to operate in there—and start to really lift the value up in terms of the digitalization of their practices and for their customers.
Partner Perspective
Druva partners John Galatea, vice president of sales at Dasher Technologies, as well as Giles Westie, president of DataPivot, told CRNtv they’re excited to have Brower lead Druva’s partner ecosystem.
“Robert’s addition I think is going to be fantastic,” said Galatea. “Druva’s been a channel-first organization from the get-go, so the relationship with Druva has been great.”
“And based on my experience with him, I know that he is going to keep our customers happy and treat us like customers, so it’s exciting,” added Westie.
Learn more about what to expect with Brower as Druva’s new channel chief only on CRNtv.