Tech Data and Druva are joining forces for the first time. The distributor will offer Druva’s SaaS data protection platform in North America. The companies also are considering product launches in additional markets.

Druva’s SaaS data protection platform protects and manages enterprise backup data across the data center, cloud and endpoint workloads. It is delivered as-a-service and is built on AWS.

Tech Data’s Mike Heintzelman

“Druva complements our overall strategy of investing in next generation technologies, strengthening our end-to-end portfolio, digital transformation and optimizing our global footprint,” Mike Heintzelman, vice president of global vendors Tech Data, told Channel Partners.

Druva has about 500 channel partners worldwide in Druva Compass, its partner program. About 200 of those partners are in North America. Druva, which has a channel-first strategy, launched Druva Compass about a year ago.

Since then, Druva has expanded its channel reach to Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Druva’s Timm Hoyt

“Tech Data helps connect innovative vendors like Druva to relevant channel partners who are ultimately responsible for delivering change-agent solutions on behalf and together with their customers for the benefit of those business outcomes,” said Timm Hoyt, global vice president, sales, partners and alliances at Druva.

Partner Base Expansion

Hoyt said that Druva is looking to expand is partner base. The company grew 70% in the last year, prior to the pandemic.

“We had our strongest [first quarter] for the company, and that was smack in the middle of COVID,” he said.

Tech Data’s Heintzelman noted that 90% of Druva’s partners already work with Tech Data.

“This is a solid foundation to start on,” he said. “All of these partners purchase at least one of Druva’s alliance vendor products from us.”

Alliance vendors include companies such as VMware, Nutanix, AWS and Microsoft, to name a few.

The opportunity for partners is the ability to offer Druva’s comprehensive workload coverage, to ensure data security, compliance and business continuity as companies increasingly shift to the cloud.

“The business drivers that companies are facing right now – how they operate more efficiently, how they handle the work from anywhere workforce, how they respond to supply chain challenges – Druva has a very strong value proposition to address those concerns, particularly being delivered as SaaS,” said Hoyt.