KineticD’s Acquisition of ROBOBAK Offers New Market Potential

Earlier this month, KineticD, a Toronto-based online storage/recovery service for the low end of SMB, completed its acquisition of ROBOBAK, which offers hybrid-cloud backup software for MSPs and the remote offices of small to low midmarket companies. This move enables KineticD to scale upwards into a larger portion of the market that has different cloud backup needs.

As explained by KineticD CEO Jamie Brenzel: “ROBOBAK is an agentless client that allows you to install a backup client on a server and deploy it across the entire organization, backing up laptops, desktops, other servers, etc.  So at the end of the day, we end up with a hybrid cloud solution where you can have a local backup and then be able to selectively take things to the cloud. This is something that has been desired by both our larger customers and our channel partners.”

Brenzel expects the additional capability will not only expand its small client list beyond its current 40,000 customers, he believes the acquisition will open new alliances with MSPs, OEM partners, SMB resellers and small enterprise VARs. The company has about 20 white label partnerships at this time, according to Brenzel. “Now they can not only white label, but also host in their environment,” he said.

Supported vendors and technologies include vmware, and Microsoft Hyper-V, Exchange, SQL Server, and Microsoft Small Business Server.

Integration of the two product lines by the end of the month. Related channel programs are also in the process of being merged.

My take is that this looks like a solid move to expand their market potential. I look forward to seeing how the combined channel program evolves.

Why Juniper Networks Has a Good Shot

For the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve watched one networking vendor after another step forward with claims of being a clear-cut number two vendor.  And more recently, some have even discussed the possibility of unseating the incumbent.

While sitting on the plane on my way back from the Juniper North America Partners Conference, it occurred to me that I had been visiting with a company that had a solid chance of becoming a much more formidable player in the market than it had ever been before. Here are a few reasons why:

Juniper has very solid technology.  The company has long had a reputation for producing some truly screaming boxes that is covered away market share in switches and routers.  Most recently, its new Q-Fabric vision for switching ignited a great deal of industry dialogue.  And while the technology is currently in customer trials, feedback from channel partners at the conference was uniformly bullish.

While Juniper has been known for its engineering, the marketing side of the house has struggled through the years.  But that seems to be changing.  The new vision articulated by CMO Lauren Flaherty, America’s marketing vice president Peter Fincher, and channel marketing vice president Luanne Tierney appears poised to put plenty of wood behind the arrow.  And if they are even halfway successful with their stated intentions, the results could be a quantum leap in market penetration. So while the success of that promise currently hinges on successful execution of the plan, increased resources combined with the recent acquisition of talent suggests that the needle is about to move.

Meanwhile, Juniper’s larger rival, Cisco Systems, is revisiting its identity amid less-than-stellar performance acknowledged by none other than CEO John Chambers. While history has taught us to never count Cisco out of the equation, more changes, like the recent closure of its Flip camera business unit, are widely anticipated.

Juniper CMO Flaherty is casting the market as a three horse race, strongly implying that those three horses are Cisco, HP, and Juniper.  Personally, I think that the three horses are Cisco, HP, and an X-factor shared by a variety of vendors, including Juniper, Extreme, Brocade, and several others.  Each of the Brand X companies has a strong opportunity to attract customers and channel partners who decide not to choose between Cisco and HP.  This is especially true among the channel partners. By going with a third alternative, many of the partners feel they can avoid making an enemy out of either of the two big players. Juniper will be called upon to distinguish itself from the rest of this group of vendors. The others will be compelled to do likewise.

In addition to new technologies and strengthen marketing muscles, Juniper is also coming to the table with new initiatives to help channel partners develop software practices leveraging the three flavors of its Junos operating system.  As the channel seeks to reinvent itself in the face of cloud computing, this strategy will garner substantial attention at least, and substantial channel allegiance at best.  Many of the details are still to be determined, but the industry will be watching these developments very closely.

Will Juniper be able to make good on its intentions?  We will have to wait and see.  But the messaging at the partner conference, combined with the reactions from the partners themselves, puts Juniper’s destiny squarely in its own hands.

Juniper Focusing on Marketing, Partner Enablement

Following the successful recent roll-out of it Q-Fabric architecture, Juniper Networks chose this week’s Americas Partner Conference as the venue to expand its messaging around marketing, partner development, and channel profitability.

CEO Kevin Johnson teed up the subject by outlining the case to “Build a New Network” due to vastly increased network demands caused by cloud computing, the explosive growth of mobile devices, and the need to constantly upgrade and enhance security.

“The data deluge is ramping up,” he told 400 partners gathered at this week’s even in Phoenix, Arizona. “This is a massive opportunity for you and for us.”

While a substantial portion of the messaging focused on Q-Fabric as well as the three permutations of the Junos operating system, the remainder of the morning session conveyed the message that Juniper intends to help partners leverage its disruptive technology toward enhanced competitive differentiation and higher profits. Details were notably thin, but the conference still continues for another day. Also, the company is clearly deepening its bench when it comes to marketing and channel marketing expertise. Two months ago, Juniper named Luanne Tierney as vice president of worldwide partner marketing, luring her away from a similar role at arch-rival, Cisco Systems. More recently, Juniper hired Brad Brooks away from Microsoft and installed him in a worldwide marketing vice presidency. A number of other appointments have also been made.

The common denominator appears to be an emphasis on marketing and partner enablement intended to help Juniper build momentum at both the channel and end user levels. In the words of CMO Lauren Flaherty, Juniper intends to leverage the forthcoming efforts in a way that “drives a conversion from mind share to market share.” A wide variety of programs, tools, and incentives are planned.

Cisco Moves to Jump-Start SMB Position

Day Two of Cisco Partner Summit 2011, live from the great city of N’awlins!

More color around the market conditions by CTO Padma Warrior and board member Michael Capellas. But today was also the SMB team’s day to shine.

Although Cisco has long been networking’s big kahuna in the enterprise space, the SMB side of the house has never been such a big fish. So today the company rolled out two new low-end unified communications systems and unveiled a new initiative for phone-based sales support. Up to now, sales support has primarily been available over the web, but the new Cisco Partner Advisor is designed to answer the partners’ appeals to talk to over the phone with actual breathing humans. Based on two call centers, one in Raleigh, NC and the other in Lisbon, Portugal, the teams will provide sales coverage and assistance with products and program requirements to 24,000 eligible channel partners worldwide.

According to vice president Andrew Sage, the SMB team sees 10% quarterly growth in its partner base, “and some of them have been a little slow to ramp.” This call center resource is expected to accelerate that process and yield hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental growth over time.

On the product side, Cisco announced the UC 320, providing voice, voicemail, voice-to-email conversion, and contact synchronization for customers with less than 24 seats at price points of approximately $165 per head. Meanwhile, the Cisco UC Manager Business Edition 3000 provides voice, voicemail, softphone, auto attendant, extension mobility, and other features for 300 users and below.

All of this is clearly intended to further demonstrate Cisco’s commitment to the SMB space; a market that has been somewhat reluctant to move in Cisco’s direction, partly due to fears about cost and concerns about whether the products are truly optimized for SMB.

“We’re hoping that these announcements fully demonstrate that we’ve got purpose-built products that are affordable and easy to use,” said Sage.

Earlier in the day, Michael Capellas said the cloud transition is a virtual certainty. As the morning keynote, Capellas described the cloud as “the culmination of seven to 10 years of development. There is no part of this trend that can be reversed.” He also predicted a $50 billion converged infrastructure market in three years, the emergence of productivity gains in excess of 50%, and the emergence of cloud standards.

Interesting tidbit from the Warrior presentation: Every second four babies are born on planet Earth. And every second 40 mobile devices are sold. Hmmmm.

Cisco Rolls out Cloud Channel Strategy

Although Cisco Systems has been talking about the cloud for a long time as relates to the enabling technology, the San Jose-based technology giant chose its 2011 Partner Summit as the venue to unveil its go-to-market approach.

Approximately 10,000 people are gathered in New Orleans for the event this week. Each year, Cisco hosts its worldwide summit, typically in a US city, in order to give channel partners a full briefing on its plans for the forthcoming year. I’ve been to 12 of these already. Time does fly.

Though a number of programs and initiatives were covered, the new Cloud Partner Program was the centerpiece of Day One. Though many of the finer points have not yet been determined (in large part because they want to see how the market evolves), Cisco is recommending that partners make a play in any or all of three categories:

“Cloud Builders” handle the infrastructure part of the equation, including virtualization and applications related to cloud management, provisioning, metering, etc. Building upon existing Cisco specializations, partners work towards a Cloud Infrastructure badge and a Cloud Builder badge through training and demonstration of competency. This track is probably most in line with the basic network VAR who is able to address compute, networking, storage, and virtualization.

The “Cloud Provider” track is aimed at partners offering public cloud services. The “Cloud Services Reseller is for partners who would resell or function as agents for the offerings of cloud builders.

Each track has its own set of requirements and benefits. Cloud Builder and Cloud Provider each include branding, reference architecture support, financing, and market development funds. There is clearly a lot left to be fleshed out in this program, but Cisco partners now get to see the framework upon which further enhancements will be built.

Personally, I think Cisco is very much on target regarding the way it has crystallized the separate roles that channel partners might choose to take. But today’s announcement is merely the formal kickoff of a lengthy program development phase.

Look for Cisco to rely heavily on its channel partners for the sale and deployment of cloud-related products and services. According to senior vice president Edison Peres, “Cisco does not intend to become a broad-based cloud service provider.” That sounds to me like the company intends to mitigate channel conflict by not competing with cloud service providers who will also be Cisco’s partners and customers. No doubt they’re hoping this promise will rally a substantial chunk of the market to their side at the expense of key competitors.

Cisco Takes WebEx Training to a New Level

Teaching customers how to use products is often something of a lost art. And while some companies do a better job of that than others, Cisco has rolled out a new program aimed at helping customers truly maximize their investment around its WebEx conferencing software. And if a company spokesperson were sitting over my shoulder right now, they would add that the curriculum is almost equally well-suited to any other conferencing platform on the market. Probably true, but we also recognize that certain practical matters were certainly in mind when the curriculum was developed.

I think it’s fair to say that everyone has, at some point, purchased a product and learned how to use it at a basic level without delving into the full functionality. Yes, we know that additional features are there, and we intend to use them. But somehow nothing drives us to delving more deeply into the capabilities. Cisco’s Learning Virtual Classroom Instruction (LVCI), and its related career certification, is designed to fill-in those gaps as relates to WebEx, but it also shines a whole new light on course development.

At any given point in time, somebody is using a conference platform to deliver information. The recipients are listening intently. Or perhaps their getting coffee. Or maybe they’re on the phone. Or doing email. Or Facebook. A large part of the LVCI curriculum is about how to engage your audience and keep them among that group that is listening intently, and thereby getting the most out of the presentation.

“There are certain things you can do to keep people engaged,” said Lora Haver, Product Marketing Manager at Cisco. “For example, you can call them by name, discuss things as a round robin, discuss what to add to slides, and develop scenarios around the point you are making.

Developed and taught by Cisco instructors, the main areas of focus include how to engage with students both inside and outside of the classroom, re-think materials to engage hands-on activities, build in relevant interactions, and create a sense of community that in many respects can have greater longevity than the sense of community that is achieved in a temporary classroom environment.

The five-day class includes 17.5 hours of virtual instruction and 6 hours of presentation culminating in a pair of examinations used to support a three year career certification. The price is $1395 for the five-day track plus $150 for the exam, which is administered by a third party organization. Pricing on the lab portion of the exam is still TBD.

Additional details can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/virtualclassroom

Cisco’s Luanne Tierney Joins Juniper: A Few Thoughts

Juniper Networks announced the appointment of Luanne Tierney as vice president, Global Partner Marketing. She will report to chief marketing officer Lauren Flaherty. Most recently, Tierney served as vice president of Global Partner Marketing at Cisco, where she was responsible for marketing efforts aimed at more than 13,000 partners, distributors, re-sellers and other channel partners.

My take is that this is a great hire for Juniper. Tierney is a solid marketer and a good communicator. Much of her claim to fame is based on Cisco’s ongoing Velocity programs, which are geared toward helping channel partners better market their own companies. I’ve been to a few of these over the years, and there’s always been a lot of good content. And the partners were pretty much eating it up with a spoon because the messaging had a great deal of entrepreneurial appeal, and was not couched in terms of how badly the partners needed Cisco in order to strengthen connections with their shared customers. The programs helped to build credibility for both Tierney and Cisco, itself.

We look forward to seeing how she evolves the Juniper programs.

The complete announcement from Juniper is located at http://www.juniper.net/us/en/company/press-center/press-releases/2011/pr_2011_01_20-17_30.html

HP Networking Rolls-out Cisco Trade-in Promotion for Qualifying U.S. Customers

HP Networking has announced a new program that provides an incremental 20% discount when customers trade-in comparable Cisco hardware.

The “Catalyst for Change” trade-in promotion targets HP’s A-Series and E-Series switches as replacements for Cisco’s Catalyst 2960/S Series, 3560/E Series/X Series, 3750/E Series/X Series, 4500 E Series, 4900 Series or 6500 Series, as well as Cisco Nexus 5000 Series or 7000 Series switches.

HP is claiming as much as 66% reduction in total cost of ownership, and estimates that nearly $9 billion in Cisco networking equipment is approaching end of life or service in 2011.

To alleviate any concerns about successful transitions, the company is also pointing to proven interoperability with Cisco and other vendors as well as network planning/migration services, and also fast-track ExpertONE certification training.

More information is available at www.hp.com/networking/CiscoTradeIn.

PowerCloud’s Network-as-a-Service Offering Leverages Other Vendors’ Channels

A newly-emerging startup, based at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is giving the industry new ways to look at networking, cloud computing, and even the channel strategies that would drive its services into the market.

PowerCloud Systems, which is backed by Javelin Venture Partners and Walden Venture Capital, is offering the deployment and management of secure networks, leveraging the rapidly evolving “as-a-service” business model to establish lower costs and ease of use. The current iteration is based on 802.11n wireless technology, and features an impressive level of self-configuration.

“The basic premise is to move as much intelligence as well as the data into the cloud, while using less expensive gear at the customer premises,” explained CEO Jeff Abramowitz. “We’re also moving the paradigm from a focus on user management to one based on device management, given the wide variety of devices that access the network these days.”

Various interfaces give full reports at the customer level or by lists of customers, going down, to a certain extent, to the level of the end user.  “With the exception of physical interfaces, pretty much everything else is remote manageable, explained vice president Andrea Peiro.  “On top of that, you’ve got cloud applications that reside elsewhere, making everything else much more remote accessible.”  If desired, SMS alerts can be sent to smart phones, making network support even more mobile. Solutions based on the PowerCloud offerings can be made to be HIPAA-compliant or PCI-compliant.

This past fall, PowerCloud engaged an OEM agreement with networking vendor D-Link, which will provide wireless access points as well as access to their indirect sales channel. We’re also told we can expect additional vendors to be added to the mix in the coming months. Though company executives would not comment, I could personally envision PowerCloud to be a compelling acquisition candidate, either for existing networking vendors, or for companies seeking to build a solid foothold in the networking business through the use of this innovative business model.

The go-to-market strategy is a bit different from what I would have anticipated. Rather than building a network of channels on their own, the company intends to leverage the channels of their OEM partners. On one hand, this approach gives the channels and OEMs the opportunity to be creative and highly interpretive in their approach. On the other hand, the degree to which either group will focus their energies here remains an open question.

In either case, the key to an effective strategy from a channel point of view will be found in identifying successful ways to differentiate against other competitors within the channel. In many cases, this might translate to some sort of vertical strategy that includes the applications that would ride on top of the network. But without such differentiation and “stickiness,” the purchasing decision basically become inextricably linked to identifying the least-cost provider. In that case, the primary opportunity would likely belong to large service providers, distributors, and DMRs who can leverage economies of scale. But given the opportunity for channels to wrap the PowerCloud offerings into a comprehensive value proposition, I believe some of the key partners are likely to grab the ball and run with it.

Cloud or Prem: Where Does the Data Belong?

I’ve been spending a lot of time considering how channel partners can remain profitable as this whole cloud transition unfolds. There are a number of concepts being tossed around in this blog space. And today, I want to look at the question of where the data belongs.

I think we can pretty much assume that the key question is not about complete adoption or avoidance of the cloud. It’s fair to say that just about everybody has used the cloud in one form or another. And companies will use it for certain types of data while other types of data will be kept on the premises.

So I believe that one of the fundamental points of channel opportunity at this stage of the game will be found in helping customers not just adopt the cloud, but figure out the specific ways in which the cloud should be used.

Obviously there is a technical perspective here that runs down the well worn path of the channel. But there is also a non-technical business process consulting component that gets added to the mix. Despite the fact that most successful channel partners have become increasingly consultative through the years, adopting this strategy will force the partners to look at their customers through a slightly different lens.

The strategy forces them to take a comprehensive look at the data that’s sitting on the customer’s network, and rate the different types of data based on the relative importance of security and the relative need for pervasive access. There may be some commonalities within vertical markets, though there may be profound variables based on management styles. This process, of course, then needs to be combined with an assessment of customer attitudes, because a less empirical factor called, “gut check” also factors into equation, as well.

The next important question for the partners lies in identifying the extent to which customers will be willing to pay for this assistance. In other words, is the value proposition continued strong enough that this service can stand alone? Or will it need to be rolled into a larger project. Certainly, from the channel point of view, the partners would probably prefer to see it rolled into a larger project, but a point project might also be acceptable, once an effective methodology is nailed down.

The cloud will force everyone to re-think how Information Technology is used and delivered. But where good business sense is combined with high creativity, the opportunity can be quite substantial.