Meet the channel manager: Commvault

Commvault’s vice president of indirect business, Mark Velthuis, is just six months into the job, but explains to CRN  how he has already started to shake up the channel.

Joining Commvault

I was looking for a software company specifically in data management, because data is growing exponentially. I’m thinking towards the future.

Another motive was after having a conversation with Owen [Taraniuk, Commvault Asia-Pacific & Japan vice president]. His vision and strategy for the region was compelling. Plus, Commvault’s product is the best in the industry for data backup and recovery.

If you get into a new job, the one thing you can’t change is the product. The fact that the product is number one allows me to work on the things that are broken and need to be fixed. Knowing there was a strategy and that we had all the ingredients to be successful made me decide to join. 

Channel consolidation

The way we’ve reorganised indirect partners touches upon three pillars. One is resellers and distributors, typically very programmatically driven, sold in high volumes. 

The second pillar is service provider partners. With those two pillars, we can address what the customer wants from us. They either want to consume our product as-a-service or through a traditional capex model.

Then there’s the group of partners we call alliances. If we were to combine the assets of Commvault with a third party, another vendor, would we create a value proposition to the end user? Being able to have a software solution that functions on 24 different storage arrays makes us very versatile and leads to a higher penetration in the market.

We’re not a SaaS company, we’re still a traditional ISV in that sense, hence our service provider relationships are crucial – specifically here in Australia, where the consumption model is number one globally. So we see a very strong service provider business here.

Future

There are still things we have to tell the market. Where we want to go is to become the platform of choice for the enterprise. We want to change the story of Commvault as backup and recovery to being a data management suite that’s all driven by a single code base. 

The way we describe what some of the other vendors are doing in the market is: don’t let your vendor acquisition strategy become your implementation nightmare. What I mean is, we compete on many levels with a lot of point solutions from other players, but nobody else in the industry has got a single code base developed that covers all these solutions. That story needs to go out into the market, that’s what I want customers to default to when they think Commvault.

Lessons learnt

At the start of a relationship you need to start with trust, and that can only be damaged. Once it’s damaged it takes forever to rebuild. That’s the way I look at partnerships. When I work with a partner, I start with trust and a lot of the stuff we do in this industry is about volume, shaking hands and walking away. 

With ownership, if we build a relationship, I owe it to partners to give them everything they need to be successful. It’s a bit visionary when it comes to day-to-day operations, it’s never going to be perfect scenario but it’s definitely what I strive for.  

RESUMÉ

• Jan 2016 – present Vice president indirect business, Commvault
• Jan 2014 – Oct 2015 Senior director strategic alliances, EMC
• May 2012 – Dec 2013 Managing director Asia, Axiom
• Jan 2010 – Apr 2012 Managing director China, BT
• 2006 – 2009 Head of outsourcing, BT
• 2002 – 2005 Strategic alliance manager, BT