New channel boss Jan Ursi talks up plans to introduce bespoke business plans to high performing partners
Rubrik is drawing up a list of so-called ‘double-down partners' across EMEA as the backup vendor looks to accelerate its business with its key channel partners.
The vendor claims that it has invited key partners across the region including in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany and the Nordics to put together joint business plans with Rubrik in order to "double down" on their investment with the vendor.
The bespoke business plans will run in parallel with Rubrik's existing Velocity Partner Programme.
Speaking to Channel Partner Insight, newly appointed EMEA channel boss Jan Ursi said he wants Rubrik to become less "robotic" in how it engages with partners by relying less on partner programme-based reward models.
"We don't want to create a general purpose channel like VMware or Veeam has done. We're not interested in that; we don't want to have 10,000s of partners that all fight to get a piece of the cake in a programme that is doing everything in a robotic kind of way," he said.
"We want to create associates, not partners, so when we're selecting our double down partners, of course we will look at who can give us access to large enterprises and a large customer base, but we're also going to look at the associates that have a specific skill that is very relevant to what we do."
Ursi said that large national resellers will more than €100m in revenues as well as smaller partners with specific in-demand skills are being considered in Rubrik's list of "double down" partners.
"It is something new for us, but putting the right modelling in place, I'm sure we can make some exponential growth happen with the significant double down partners that see the opportunity presenting itself right now," he said.
"These will be bespoke, customised plans that are not something that we came up with and that rains down on the partner community - which is usually the case. But really something that is built by the partner where they're laying out what they want to achieve, and how they're going to get there, and what they expect from Rubrik if they are successful on that trajectory.
Ursi spent almost six years at Nutanix, where he built and scaled its EMEA channel from scratch, before moving to UiPath.
The channel boss frequently pushed back against traditional partner programme-led strategies during his time at the hyperconverged vendor.
Founded in 2014, Rubrik emerged from "stealth mode" in 2016 and began to build out a channel to help it expand across Europe.
Rubrik was recently ranked as a leader in Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for datacentre backup and recovery solutions.
