Less than a year after launching its AvePoint partner program, the company plans to invest more in it this year. During an all-hands meeting” event, AvePoint revealed on Tuesday that it will increase its investments in the program

During the event, which AvePoint held as a webcast, the company launched a technical and sales certification program for partner engineers, pre-sales teams and product specialists. AvePoint also announced an improved process for renewals and the formation of its Partner Technical Advisory Council (PTAC). For MSPs, the company said its multitenant platform, Elements Pro, is now live.

AvePoint, which offers governance, security and data protection for Microsoft Teams and other collaboration platforms, launched the partner program last summer. It’s the first such program in AvePoint’s 20-year history, which until recently sold primarily to customers directly. The launch coincided with AvePoint’s special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) IPO.

Since its launch, AvePoint said the partner program has grown to more than 2,800 partners — as of Dec 31. Among them, more than three-quarters are MSPs, while the rest include systems integrators, VARs, cloud consultants and DevOps partners. AvePoint’s solutions are also now available from more than 100 cloud marketplaces. The company also said it works through leading global distributors including Ingram Micro, Arrow and TD Synnex.

As part of its decision to expand its addressable market, AvePoint decided to create the partner program last year. AvePoint co-founder and CEO Tianyi “TJ” Jiang said growing its partner channel is one of the company’s key priorities. Speaking during the webcast, Jiang said: “2021 was a landmark year for AvePoint and our partners.” With the new program, Jiang emphasized the introduction of field resources, a deal registration program, channel rules of engagement and go-to-market tools and content.

Doubling Down on MSP Business

Jiang said AvePoint plans to invest more in the partner program.

AvePoint’s TJ Jiang

“This year, we will continue to double down on our partners’ managed service business,” he said. “In 2021, we brought significant innovation to our Elements platform. The expanded capabilities in the new Elements Pro have helped our MSPs to improve operations, increase their RPU [revenue per user] and lead the way with partner services.”

Touting growth of the AvePoint partner program, channel chief Jason Beal said business from its MSP Elements program grew more than 100%. The pipeline submitted by AvePoint partners in the deal registration system from its July launch date through the end of December reached $12 million, Beal added.

Partners were responsible for more than one-half of revenue from new customers last quarter, according to Beal.

“For the first time in our company history, more than half of all AvePoint’s new customers were partners sourced,” he said.

Elements Pro and Partners

The launch of Elements Pro promises to draw more MSPs, Beal indicated.

AvePoint’s Jason Beal

“Not only do we want to offer all of you a single pane of glass to manage your operations, mitigate risk, manage multitenant capabilities, but we want to invest in that to help you streamline and grow your business,” Beal said. “Elements Pro helps you do just that.”

Elements Pro lets MSPs create a template solution across a specific customer profile. It could include template provisioning settings for Azure AD, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange.

“All of these provisioning settings and all of the workflows that you need to go through, we are now allowing you to create one template against one customer profile, and leverage that over and over,” Beal said. “So, build that template once and then apply that to any customer tenant you want.”

Looking to this year, CEO Jiang said AvePoint is promising expanded investment in R&D to develop added multicloud capability. He said he sees continued market growth for AvePoint’s new offerings including Confide, Cense and EduTech.