Where’s the Money? Commvault Points Partners to New Channel Program

Commvault, the data protection and management vendor, on Monday unveiled changes to its Partner Advantage Program that focus on financial incentives, enablement and tools designed to simplify doing business with the company.

With several new hires brought in this past year who sit at the top of the Commvault executive chain – Carmen Sorice III, vice president, global partner success, CEO and president Sanjay Mirchandani, and Richardo Di Blasio, chief revenue officer – the vendor is attempting to distance this year’s partner program updates from those made the same time last year.

“With new leadership comes new thought processes in continuing to evolve our channel program and go to market business,” Sorice told Channel Futures. “Specifically, what we’re announcing today are enhancements to our solution provider and distributor programs.”

Commvault’s Carmen Sorice

While last year’s revamp of the Commvault Partner Advantage Program focused on taking the complexity of the business, this year the company is adding simplicity in the form of enablement and tools, and financial incentives.

“Our mantra is that we want to work with partners so that we, together, can win again, and then win some more,” said Sorice. “It’s not about a point solution that we’re going to win one deal and then the partner has to move on to the next client. We win a deal with a partner; we expand that deal with our broad portfolio and then we help the partner get better positioned in the account so that they can win bigger accounts and they can win more.”

The program changes fall into three buckets: simplification, innovation and execution.

Here are the three areas of new or improved changes in the program:

• New customer rebates: Partners will get a rebate for new customer logos that Commvault and partners identify and win together. There’s a front-end rebate and a back-end rebate on the new logo. On the back end, the vendor is giving partners six months from the time the first deal is closed to expand that logo and will continue to give the partner the back-end rebate as if it were a new logo.
• New year-end bonus: The new year-end bonus will be given to partners in the form of a back-end rebate. At the end of the year, Commvault will look at where the partner is in relation to its quota, and if they hit 120% of the quota, they get an accelerator, and if they hit 150%, they get another accelerator.
• Increased business development funds (BDF): Commvault will increase the percentage its paying for BDF to partners to make it more attractive. There’s also a new element to BDF for higher-tier, midmarket partners who help Commvault penetrate the midmarket. The higher BDF will go to partners who meet certain criteria.

On the simplification and enablement side, Commvault rolled out a new portal and enhanced deal registration. It also has added new sales tools, including new sales plays. The sales plays are in three areas: multicloud and cloud ready; recovery readiness; and infrastructure modernization.

“We’re packaging this material in a way, so that when a partner engages a client around cloud or multicloud, they have a sales play from Commvault that helps them understand how to position data management and data backup [to that customer],” said Sorice.