Egenera Recruiting Partners Focused On SMB Niches

Egenera, which offers an alternative to the major public cloud platforms with its Xterity Cloud Services offering, is launching efforts to bring aboard solution providers with expertise in specialized small and midsize businesses, the company told CRN this week.

For instance, Egenera has found that its managed private cloud is an ideal fit for SMBs such as dental offices, doctor's offices and accounting firms, said Rick Carbone, vice president for North American sales at the Boxborough, Mass.-based company.

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"We're very focused on the SMB space and trying to find partners that are niche, and not all things to all people," Carbone said. "What we've learned is it's not about recruiting every partner that wants to sell cloud. It's more about, let's go recruit a partner that's got a focus. I want an MSP that's going to take 50 of their clients to the cloud — not just one client."

That's how Egenera is aiming to achieve economies of scale even while targeting SMBs, he said. By contrast, "when we first started, we would sign up everybody that breathed," Carbone said.

Egenera, which counts 260 partners worldwide, says that its managed private cloud is fully isolated and secure — with Egenera-developed software and infrastructure running in data centers from partner Equinix.

Services include Infrastructure as a Service, Disaster Recovery as a Service, backup and cloud migration. Xterity also offers cost savings compared with public cloud providers while providing stronger margin opportunities to partners, according to the company.

Egenera's Xterity sales are channel-only, and in January the company launched the Xterity Partner Program with a range of tools and incentives for MSPs.

"If you as the MSP want to make 35, 40, 50 points of margin, versus single digits, then you need to come talk to us," Carbone said.

Egenera also differentiates itself by being "high touch," with free pre-sales and post-sales support, he said.

Preston Gant, project manager at AAA IT Services, an Egenera partner based in Memphis, Tenn., said his company specializes in health care and found Egenera's offering to be a great fit for clients such as doctor's offices.

"Not every environment is built the same," he said. "Tailoring [a cloud solution] to each person's needs and wants and pricing structures gives me the flexibility to develop a solution that works for the customer. It's not just one size fits all. And by doing that, I can use what's available with those resources to create unique and packaged solutions for each individual customer."

Ultimately, Egenera is "unparalleled" at offering the ability to maintain and control a customer's infrastructure as needed, Gant said. And the company is "very engaged with their partners," getting directly involved in architecting solutions when called upon, he said. "That's really what stuck out to me."