Acronis adds Ingram Micro to distribution network in North America

Acronis, which makes backup and recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, has broadened out its North American distribution with an agreement with Ingram Micro.

Woburn MA-based Acronis has been around since 2002, and makes backup and recovery software for the whole breadth of the market — from consumer through the SMB, to the enterprise. Over 80 percent of their business is corporate, and most of that is SMB.

The company started with direct sales, and then gradually moved into single tier distribution. In 2007, it moved to two-tier distribution, with Lifeboat, a software specialist, and then with Tech Data. Those two remained their go-to-market channel, with about half their business being DMRs and the other half a blend of local and national VARs. They have also started selling to MSPs, which is a new and emerging market for them.

So why sign on with a second broad line distributor?

“Ingram is five times the size of Tech Data, so they will be able to cast a wider net for us,” said Izzy Azeri, senior vice president & general manager, Americas, at Acronis. “There likely will be a little share shift from Tech Data and Lifeboat, but our primary goal is net-new partner recruitment. We are continuing to plan to work with both Tech Data and Lifeboat as well. This year we are really focused on partner recruitment.

“We think we are really building out VAR network with Ingram,” Azeri said. “We signed an agreement late last year and have been working on a marketing plan. They have such good coverage on the VAR front. And they see us as helping grow their infrastructure business.”

Azeri said Acronis will leverage Ingram Micro’s datacenter infrastructure group to drive new sales to VARs and MSPs. They recently took part in the distributor’s Sales Kickoff event in California, and will take part in others like the storage boot camp event, to gain the maximum possible exposure to their resellers.

Azeri said he thinks Acronis’ value proposition will resonate with Ingram resellers, even in what has become a very crowded backup market.

“A lot of the other vendors say they do channel but many are also direct, and the channel doesn t appreciate that,” Azeri said. “We are a channel-only company. In addition, we are easy to use and easy to sell, without agents, or a lot of SKUs — so it’s easy to sell and easy for the end user to deploy.”