Dropbox Australia signs Ingram Micro as first distributor

Ingram Micro has become the first distributor in Australia for Dropbox for Business.

Dropbox head of global channel sales Hank Humphreys told CRN that the company would grow Dropbox for Business through the channel, while the consumer Dropbox products continues to be sold direct.

“We want to grow our channel into a massive ecosystem; we want it to be very significant for our revenue,” said Humphreys.

“We’d be happy if 100 percent went through the channel, we just don’t want to have a situation where we compete against our own channel.”

Ingram Micro signed a global deal to distribute Dropbox for Business licenses in November. Ingram Micro Australia is still integrating Dropbox into its cloud portal, and is expected to go live this month.

“We really wanted to go large with the channel, so we wanted to get the right partners and distribution,” Humphreys said.

“Going multi-tier distribution is a common strategy, but we didn’t want to dilute ourselves or lose focus. We realised not all distribution partners are equal in their SaaS offering. This led us to Ingram Micro, who is a very strategic partner for future revenue streams.”

Newly appointed Dropbox Australia channel manager Greg Kieser told CRN the ultimate goal was to have two sales teams in Australia - one selling direct and another for the channel.

“We’re structured so the sales team can sell through partners, but there’s no incentives [for us] to go one way or the other,” he said.

"They’re route-agnostic because it’s more about aligning to customer values as fast as possible. If you talk about the channel model, we will service our partners through distribution.”

He added that Dropbox will be sold like a traditional software-as-a-service offering with a resale margin on top.

In 2014, Dropbox’s US head of revenue partnerships Adam Nelson told CRN that Australian partners could expect margins "anywhere between 15-25 percent”. Humphreys said now that figure has been updated “significantly”.

While only two weeks into the new role, Kieser said he’s very excited for the potential Dropbox has in the Australian channel.

“I’m firmly of the belief that the Australian market is absolutely ready for a comprehensive information management and collaboration managed service like Dropbox,” said Kieser.

“That tipping point has been reached and that’s why I’m here. I think it’s a tremendous offering and it’s what the market wants.”

Prior to joining the cloud storage vendor, Kieser was channel and alliances manager at Infor, which he joined in March 2015. Before that, he was head of ANZ partners and alliances at Amazon Web Services for four years.