Commvault’s Metallic SaaS backup and recovery subsidiary’s new standalone channel partner program is being headed by a channel veteran who previously worked for Puppet, VMware and Tintri.

Metallic’s John Schwan

The new partner program recently hired John Schwan as Metallic’s head of global partner sales and programs to lead the effort, according to the company. The move comes five months after Metallic backup was created out of Commvault’s own tech incubator and made into its own subsidiary.

In his new role, Schwan will be focusing on the upcoming full launch of Metallic’s channel partner program as well as driving the company’s partner engagement and growth. Metallic’s creation was announced at Commvault’s GO conference in October 2019. Metallic is targeting its services to SMB customers that require fast, flexible and powerful data backup and recovery capabilities using a software-as-a-service delivery model. Customers can use the services to back up their data to Metallic’s cloud, to another cloud or to on-premises storage. The company uses a 100% channel-based sales program.

At October’s Commvault GO event, Metallic announced its first two distribution partners, Arrow and Ingram Micro, as well as several of its first VAR partners, including Insight, CDW and Sirius, Schwan told Channel Futures. “Partners are being added as the venture grows, with Zones being the latest addition. We’re currently working to build out and eventually launch an entirely new channel program.”

The company is preparing to launch its full partner program at scale in the next fiscal year, said Schwan. It will be completely separate from the parent company’s channel program, but it will be designed to be leveraged by existing Commvault partners, he said.

“I plan to expand Metallic’s partner program by providing partners with rich attack opportunities and a frictionless velocity sales model,” said Schwan. “My focus will be on empowering our partners to use Metallic to meet their customers’ evolving data protection needs, while at the same time growing their business.”

Schwan said he is excited to take on the new role after working on channel partner programs for a wide range of other companies in his career. “I am excited to take my learnings of global partner execution – most recently at Puppet, but also in roles at Tintri and VMware – to Metallic and to the hypergrowth SaaS market. The opportunity to lead the revenue execution for a 100% channel-based company and build a world-class team is something every channel chief dreams of.”

Metallic’s SaaS backup and recovery products use Commvault’s core technology to deliver its SaaS data protection capabilities. Metallic’s services are available in three tiers – Core, for virtual machine, file server and SQL Server backup; Office 365, for OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange and Teams backups; and End Point, for laptop and desktop data.

“This is a very exciting time for both Commvault and Metallic as we have the opportunity to leverage the award-winning technology that Commvault has created and provide our partners and their customers with a SaaS solution for their data backup and recovery needs,” said Schwan.

Interestingly, Commvault itself brought in a new channel chief last October at its GO event, hiring Mercer Rowe, who previously led partner organizations at IBM and VMware. Rowe’s official title is vice president of global channels and alliances for Commvault.