destra program to up cross sales

Hosting specialist destra has launched a new partner program aimed at consolidating partner relations and increasing cross sales.

The destra Business partner program now incorporates gold, silver and authorised tiers, an online partner portal, and opens up the company’s whole offering to its 500 strong partner base.

Previously the company’s channels were kept separate under the Priority One, ACP and Evolve programs.

These programs were inherited from subsidiary OzHosting.com and December 2004 acquisition, Techex.

With destra’s partner base growing at around 20 per cent a year, it was time for a new program, said sales and marketing director Mark Randall.

“Cross selling is also key,” he said. “Partners now have the ability to sell advanced dedicated hosting services, voice, data and other solutions to their clients.”

The new program was also a response to market demands for a one-stop shop approach to services.

“Companies who have hosting services also need things like network connectivity to link up branch offices,” he said.

For Randall, the inclusion of a partner portal was vital for training up destra’s non-specialist IT resellers, web designers and SIs looking to derive new revenue streams from IP communications services.

“The portal can also be rebranded by partners to provide them with the back-end services like provisioning and billing,” he said. “It’s all about letting them gain access to our services without them having to be experts.”

Looking ahead, Randall said destra would look to grow channel revenues up from 65 per cent through the introduction of several new services over the coming months.

A managed Exchange service was likely to be the first new offering early next year, with patch management and server monitoring services to soon follow.

A fixed wireless service capable of 10mbit/sec and entry-level broadband services were also on the cards.

“Mobile telephony is also a new area we’ll be exploring,” he said. “We really want to position ourselves as a one-stop-shop provider of data, voice and hosting services.”