Service provider partners in the Acronis CyberFit program no longer need to meet minimum revenue thresholds for gold designation. Instead, Acronis will determine their partner status based on its new CyberFit scoring system.

The change is among several updates to the CyberFit Partner Program for 2021. Acronis also increased upfront financial incentives and extended account management resources. The company also promises faster response times from technical support agents.

Smaller partners and those transitioning to cloud and managed services may welcome Acronis’s elimination of revenue quotas for gold status. Acronis believes that measuring CyberFit scores will provide a better gauge of service providers with the technical and business readiness.

Acronis’ Alex Ruslyakov

“It’s a newly introduced scoring system that basically allows us to evaluate our partners’ focus on Acronis,” said Alex Ruslyakov, a 14-year company veteran who became the company’s channel chief in December. “At the same time, it allows the partner to see areas where they can focus and where they can improve to grow their business with us.”

How Acronis Measures Partner CyberFit Scores

Ruslyakov told Channel Futures how Acronis is measuring CyberFit scores of its managed services provider (MSP) partners. Acronis has 11 metrics, and each metric has a maximum score of three.

“What we look at is the breadth of offerings and how many services of Acronis the partner is offering,” he said. “We’re looking at penetration of Acronis services into partners’ customer base.”

Acronis also measures joint marketing activities with the partner, such as how recently the partner engaged in joint marketing campaigns.

“We look into joint sales activities, whether or not we have joint business plans, whether or not we have joint QBRs and whether or not we can see the pipeline for the partner and help them develop the pipeline,” Ruslyakov said. “We look at the completeness of partner’s profile. We want to be more interactive with those partners that really want to focus and grow with Acronis. And we offer capabilities and benefits that that enable them to grow.”

The Acronis CyberFit scores determine whether a partner is authorized, gold or platinum. The highest-tier platinum partners still have minimum annual quotas between $50,000 and $150,000 for resellers, and $48,000 for MSPs. Partners with CyberFit scores of at least eight are authorized and must reach 15 to achieve gold. The scores for platinum partners must exceed 22.

A key to achieving scores is the number of trained and technical service people on staff. Authorized partners must have at least two certified technicians, three for gold and four for platinum.

New Partner Program Benefits

The new financial incentives include more market development funds and increased rebates for hitting targets. The rebates could reach 10% for gold partners and 15% for platinum.

“This basically means that they should have business plans with us,” Ruslyakov said. “They should have at least two action items that we jointly complete with the partner.”

Next month, Acronis plans to launch its new partner portal that will enable new go-to-market kits and access to new marketing automation tools. Partners will be able to integrate campaigns created by Acronis into their own websites.

“It’s a set of tools that they can leverage that makes it easier to run those campaigns for the partner,” Ruslyakov. said.

The latest update to the Acronis CyberFit program addresses the company’s cloud partners.

“The key focus is increasing cloud sales and around service providers who are willing to sell our cloud service,” Ruslyakov said.

Service Provider Growth

The partner program updates reflect Acronis’ expanded focus on service providers. Last year, the company launched Acronis Protect, which lets MSPs offer backup, disaster recovery, antimalware, security protection and endpoint management tools as an integrated service.

Overall, growth in the number of new service providers selling Acronis products increased 30% in 2020, according to the company. One Acronis partner who is selling the company’s cloud services is Scottsdale, Arizona-based GHA Technologies.

As a VAR, GHA relies on MSPs and vendors to deliver managed services. The company’s founder and president, George Hertzberg, explained how companies such as Acronis have enabled his company to offer managed services without hiring its own technicians.

“Because we’re decentralized across the country, hiring service personnel on staff at GHA doesn’t make sense for us,” Hertzberg said. “For example, if I hire a professional services guy for level-one or level-two tech support out of Phoenix, but then I get an order out of Atlanta where a customer wants local support, the way we’re structured, that’s just not going to help us. But with Acronis, I’ve got instant national level-one and level-two support, all across the country at no extra expense.”