Barracuda sees potential in non metro cities

The security solution provider Barracuda emphasizes more on channel front to make a strong foothold in the country. The company is aggressively building up channel community and end customer market to address the needs of the end user. In conversation with Murali Urs, Country Manager, Barracuda Networks, Bhawna Satsangi finds out the channel strategy for non metro cities.

Please throw light on Barracuda’s partnership with Redington and what will be the distribution model?

Barracuda recently appointed Redington as our National distributor. As a part of this alliance Redington will be distributing the complete Barracuda product portfolio through its network. Through this alliance Barracuda Networks would leverage Redington’s 33000+ partners across the country. The primary intent is to engage with new partners in larger cities as well as strengthening reach in high growth Tier – 2 and 3 regions.

What is the present focus of Barracuda Networks?

 Barracuda designs and delivers powerful yet easy-to-use security and storage solutions. We offer cloud-connected solutions that help our customers address security threats, improve network performance and protect and store their data. Our solutions are designed to simplify IT operations for our customers, allowing them to enhance their return on technology investment.

What are the solutions you offer?

 Our security and storage solutions are connected to our cloud services which enable continuous software updates, offsite redundancy and distributed capacity, and are offered on a subscription basis. Our solutions are delivered as cloud-connected appliances and virtual appliances, as well as cloud-only solutions. Our security solutions are designed to protect and optimize the performance of the most critical points within our customers’ IT infrastructures, including email servers, web applications, data centers and core networks.

Our storage solutions are designed to backup and archive business-critical data and make such data accessible for purposes such as compliance, disaster recovery and business intelligence. Our storage solutions also allow users to securely and quickly access, share, synchronize and sign files from Internet-connected devices. Our solutions can be managed centrally in any size or type of deployment through integrated, easy-to-use web interfaces that support configuration, monitoring and reporting.

What are your expansion plans geographically and technologically?

 Our future plan for Barracuda is to continue building the Barracuda brand, end customer market and the channel community. We also want to continue building a team to focus on a hybrid model which will work with the partners and with end customers. Going forward our focus will be on to sell strategic solutions like WAF, Message Archiving and Next Generation Firewall to large enterprise businesses. We want to power out channel community even further. India is a high potential market for the entire portfolio of products and we will continue to invest locally as the business grows.

What is your channel strategy?

The channel is one of the key pillars of Barracuda’s strategy for India that help support the customer’s product, services, and support needs. Channels are closest to customers and help us get a better appreciation of customer challenges and their requirements. We are committed to helping our partner ecosystem evolve in keeping with the changing customer needs and technology trends. We have a deep understanding of the challenges that the ecosystem faces, and equip our partners to survive the change in technology paradigms. We have a comprehensive channel program that empowers partners and offers a win-win situation to both Barracuda and partners.

On what criteria do you select your channel partners and how important are channels for Barracuda?

Barracuda engages with all kinds of partners as we believe that every partner is part of our business. Each partner has a role to play in the market. Barracuda eco-system supports partners’ growth through its high-velocity, primarily inside sales-driven model. Also, Barracuda strong ecosystem offers tremendous value to its partners through its world class support & services – Our channel partners are critically important to us and specifically in Asia Pacific, we try to transact all of our business through the channel.

We engage with partners who are ready to invest into our business with their manpower, effort and time. We work with these partners closely to develop business plans, joint marketing plans and share leads. And with a support centre and a warehouse in India, we ensure quick customer service and immediate replacement where needed.

What are the schemes/initiatives you are running for the channel partners?

Barracuda is fully committed to helping its partner resellers succeed. The 5-Star Partner Program rating recognizes an elite group of vendors that give solution providers the best partnering elements in their channel programs

The Barracuda Partner Program encompasses a number of rich benefits and services to help partners enhance their businesses. Depending on a partner’s needs, different levels of participation in the program are available. Benefits of membership include marketing, training, lead generation, support, and special incentives.

Are these schemes differ from city to city for the channel partners?

Barracuda works closely with our partners around the globe to ensure we deliver the right program, initiatives that fits the local market needs. We understand that each market is different, through the partner on boarding process, a business plan is built together with the partner, to ensure that the partnership goals and objectives are defined, this is one of the key factor for a successful partnership.

 Please throw light on channel strategy for tier 2-3 cities?

The technical issues faced by customers in Tier 2-3 cities are similar to those in the metros but probably of lower magnitude – hence for Barracuda the Tier 2 and 3 cities are potential markets from two viewpoints. Firstly, skilled Manpower – Barracuda offers a great value to these markets because of the simplicity of its solutions and the value it brings to their investments. Barracuda’s cloud based management solutions offer a lot of flexibility in providing support to our partners which can be utilized to serve their customers. The second aspect is the connectivity issue – this is a major challenge and Barracuda solutions help the partners to provide their customers better service as the partners can trouble shoot from a single location.

There are well established partners in each of these key Tier 2 – 3 cities and Barracuda engages with these partners through our extensive distributor network. We intend to start with electronics marketing, following up with in-person visits to establish and increase relationship with the partners in smaller cities.

Do you see potential in tier 2 and 3 cities more than metro for your solutions?

 While we definitely see Tier 2 – 3 cities as potential markets – we still find that the large metros is where the “values” will come from – the big ticket deals will continue to come from the metros. Typically the decision making process in the tier 2 – 3 cities is faster which helps on the speed of business. This trait will enable our objective to increase our volume and velocity of business in these regions.

Cloud is another area where we expect a spike in business. Cloud is the most viable option for the smaller businesses as it addresses the challenge of setting up, managing and maintaining an extensive infrastructure apart from its other inherent advantages that are best suited for smaller businesses. This is where Barracuda can play an important role as most of our solutions excel on the cloud.