Cohesity Adds Specializations, Expanded Profitability To Its Aspire Global Partner Program

‘Areas around security and AI are increasingly becoming top drivers for customer decisions. We’re ensuring that we’re engaging with partners to help them invest, giving them the capabilities to learn, enable and grow to meet those customer expectations. We’re changing incentives in mind with that,’ says Kevin Blair, Cohesity’s vice president of global distribution partner program and partner experience.

AI and data security and resilience technology developer Cohesity Thursday unveiled an update to its Aspire global partner program the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said expands partner rebates, introduces its first partner specializations and streamlines training requirements.

The expansion builds on Cohesity’s introduction last year of its Aspire program, which was released in the wake of Cohesity’s 2024 acquisition of Veritas’ enterprise business, said Kevin Blair, vice president of the company’s global distribution partner program and partner experience.

“A year ago, when we brought together Cohesity and Veritas, we unified our partner ecosystem that laid a foundation for the Aspire program,” Blair told CRN. “We launched a program with three tiers, role-based tracks, and one platform, one ecosystem, one program, bringing that together. What we’re announcing now is really building the momentum around Aspire. We spent the last nine months listening to partners and distributors and our own channel teams, really trying to understand areas that we could continue to evolve.”

Since Aspire launched last year, more than 800 new partners have joined the Cohesity ecosystem, Blair said.

Cohesity is making sure it continues to evolve Aspire in the direction where customers and partners are headed, and so it is shifting from a focus on volume-based rewards to focus on a number of things based on the value deals provide to customers and partners’ profitability, Blair said.

The first is driving the rewards around more strategic product growth, he said.

“Areas around security and AI are increasingly becoming top drivers for customer decisions,” he said. “We’re ensuring that we’re engaging with partners to help them invest, giving them the capabilities to learn, enable and grow to meet those customer expectations. We’re changing incentives in mind with that.”

Cohesity is also moving some of its partner rewards closer to the front end of the deal and closer to the opportunity, Blair said. Simplification is another key area to reduce friction associated with how partners execute in the market, he said. Cohesity is also optimizing its partner sales and technical accreditations to cut the time needed to get them by up to 50 percent, he said.

“It’s a simple model with a ‘grow more, earn more’ approach,” he said. “Partners have real transparency to how they maximize the profitability in the program.”

With the expansion of Aspire, preferred-level partners could earn four to five times the profit on an eligible opportunity involving strategic products such as DataProtect Enterprise Edition or Gaia when using teamed deal registration, Blair said. A premier-level partner could earn as much as seven times the profit on a comparable opportunity. For renewals, a partner that upgrades a standard renewal to include additional cyber-resilience capabilities could see more than six times the profit opportunity when using teamed deal registration, he said.

The launch of specializations is especially important, Blair said.

“While specializations aren’t necessarily new to a lot of partners, they are new to Aspire,” he said. “What’s important is how we’re approaching specialization and what that will enable for partners. We’re launching the first specialization around professional services, and that allows partners to build practices to deliver Cohesity solutions. And for partners that don’t have a service bench or may not have expertise in certain parts of the portfolio, our professional services organization is the engagement model.”

Professional services is an enabler for Cohesity and its partners to help scale, Blair said.

“If we’re approaching that with a partner-first motion, then it’s good for Cohesity and it’s great for partners because of the incremental profit opportunities for them,” he said.

Cohesity specializations are new for partners, Blair said. The company previously had a PS Authorized program around professional services, but the new professional services (PS) specialization is a significant change to that, he said.

“Our PS team will engage with partners in the PS specialization around mentoring,” he said. “We’ll have a deployment desk that partners in the specialization will be able to access for assistance and support as they’re doing their deployments. There will also be established special pricing for those scenarios where a partner wants to prime while subcontracting some component back to us. There are also established favorable terms for partners on that basis.”

Cohesity also unveiled its road map for specializations and is slated to roll out three more this calendar year, Blair said. These include specializations related to cyber resiliency, support services and AI Insights, he said.

“We’re helping partners that are investing in the early adoption of AI as a part of our solution set,” he said.

Blair said Cohesity also is changing its Aspire incentives to reward partners based more on the kind of value they bring to a deal and the strategic importance of the products they sell. The company is adding rebate incentives for teaming deals, where partners help drive and close opportunities even if they did not source them, and it is replacing tier-based opportunity rebates with rebates tied to product categories such as data protection, security and AI Insights.

For instance, Blari said, Cohesity previously tied rebates to deal registration and had no rebate incentive for teaming, which is new to Aspire.

“We’re shifting from that tier-based rebate to a rebate aligned to the strategic nature of the product in terms of where it falls in the portfolio,” he said. “Sales of our Data Protect product category will receive a 4 percent rebate for sourced opportunities. If it’s a part of our security product category, they’ll receive a 6 percent rebate. And the highest rebate comes from selling from our AI Insights part of the portfolio.”

The expanded Aspire global partner program went into effect Aug. 1, Blair said. Partners are just now learning about the new program, and its benefits will be applied retroactively to partner sales from that date.

The program is slated to roll out in two phases, Blair said. The first phase, which is currently being previewed, focuses primarily on resellers and includes new specializations, incentives for strategic products, and a simpler deal registration process. The second phase will include the introduction of additional specialization categories, an expanded focus on managed services and go-to-market support, and adding more AI capabilities to the partner experience, he said.

Cohesity currently counts on TD Synnex as its largest distributor in North America, along with Carahsoft Technology for sales into the federal and some state markets, Blair said. The company has a pilot program with Ingram Micro for its North America market, he said.

Sandy Salty, CMO at Trace3, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and Cohesity channel partner, told CRN that the Cohesity Aspire global partner program is addressing the kind of business that her company built.

“Deep technical expertise, an engineering and consulting-led model, the ability to carry clients all the way from advisory through delivery is what they’re redesigning the program for,” Salty said.

That continuous thread is what clients—particularly in the enterprise space—need, especially when it comes to resilience, including security, backup and recovery, Salty said.

“Today, it’s more complicated than it’s ever been,” she said. “It’s probably one of the most complex parts of the IT landscape for our clients to navigate, and we have invested really heavily in the technical talent to help our clients navigate. Technical, engineering and consulting talent is where the value lives. And Cohesity is making strides to push the program to partner-led delivery, which aligns with us as well.

“Services is where firms like us are held accountable for outcomes,” she said. “That’s when we really get to deliver outcomes and value to the client. So I think Cohesity is making the right moves.”

Tina McNulty, CMO at Presidio, a New York-based solution provider and Cohesity channel partner, told CRN via email that the enhanced Aspire program will help with partners’ services focus.

"Programs like Aspire make it easier for partners to lead with services, and that’s where the real value shows up for customers. As Presidio deepens its cybersecurity and AI Platforms practices, simplified partner programs allow us to move faster. That means putting more of that expertise directly in front of the customers who need it,” McNulty said.