eFolder and Axcient‘s merger late last month has created new value and opportunities for partners of both companies.

The combination of the two companies supports close to 4,000 channel partners globally. Near-term points of emphasis will include accelerating the development of Axcient’s Business Recovery Cloud (BRC) product, along with a strengthened account management team focusing on the base of MSPs.

Matt Nachtrab, eFolder’s CEO, tells Channel Partners that while the Axcient and eFolder platforms are industry-agnostic, the joining of the two companies will increase partner profitability, scale and reach.

eFolder’s Matt Nachtrab

“The joint engineering teams are already hard at work leveraging the best-in-breed features from each company’s products for inclusion in future product releases,” he said. “This approach reduces development time and costs, savings we can pass on to our partners. The combined product lines enable MSPs to service the smallest single-server clients all the way up to the larger midmarket enterprise.”

For the near term, the eFolder and Axcient partner communities will remain intact,” Nachtrab said.

“Over the next 30 days, we will be creating opportunities for each partner community to cross-pollinate where it makes the most sense for the partner; but this will be done on a partner-by-partner basis so as not to disrupt their business with any forced activity,” he said. “As we move into 2018, there will be an almost organic consolidation as our back-end processes, systems and business operations fold together. Our No. 1 priority throughout this process will be to not disrupt partner business, while at the same time offering up opportunities for growth and scale where it makes sense for each partner.”

The combined eFolder and Axcient product portfolios give MSPs “unprecedented reach up-and-down market, reducing the number of disaster recovery offerings an MSP must carry to service their respective clients,” Nachtrab said.

“Also, MSPs [that] have long desired to enter the midmarket enterprise, but lacked a viable solution, can now leverage the Axcient Fusion platform to penetrate that marketplace,” he said. “Additionally, eFolder’s robust suite of data-protection technologies designed specifically for MSPs will fill in where the existing Axcient solutions stop. eFolder’s suite of data-protection technologies include Replibit BDR, Anchor file sync and share, and Cloudfinder cloud-to-cloud backup. They all uniquely solve the challenges MSPs face protecting their client’s data.”

“Every eFolder partner just got stronger as a result of this merger,” said Alan Helbush, president, of Where To Start, a managed IT services firm. “And, in the end, we all win. There is minimal product overlap and an enormous amount of potential from the combined product families. I have every confidence that the expert eFolder and Axcient teams will blend the best of both worlds and create an incredible product family that will be second to none. I look forward to the opportunities this presents and cannot wait to offer these new solutions to my clients.”

Early this year, Axcient introduced its Fusion trade-up program that lets channel partners offer enhanced protection to their clients with virtualized environments.