Technology Reseller v33

technologyreseller.co.uk CLOUD SOLUTIONS 47 All-in-one automated portal Use the Redstor Marketplace to: n support a wide range of environments and applications, including Microsoft 365 and G Suite n scale rapidly and infinitely as demand changes, without the need for hardware n manage a customer’s entire data estate from anywhere n take complete control of onboarding, provisioning and billing in a platform built for multi-tenancy, without having to rely on vendor support n automate backup and recovery, archiving and DR with a single, web-based control centre n drive margin-rich, repeatable revenue streams Click and collect partners in the first week of April. We then customised and changed the experience to the point where we are now ready to unleash it on existing partners,” he said. Faster business For Griffin, the main benefits of the Redstor Marketplace are its speed, execution and ability to scale, all of which can help a partner stand out from the competition. “If a customer phones and says I need to back up G Suite because I didn’t realise it wasn’t protected by Google, it takes no more than two or three minutes for that customer to be protected. That is a huge benefit for the partner, and it gives them control as well. It gives visibility over all customers and their team, so they can see who’s doing what with which customers.” It is also, suggests Griffin, very easy for resellers to sign up and use. “A reseller comes to the website, fills in a form and triggers an email for simple sign-up. To create an account, they enter some basic details. We use two factor authentication, so they have to put in a telephone number to receive a text message for verification. They can then log in as a partner of Redstor’s. “There are two sections: one is the reseller’s account; and the other is where the reseller can add and manage customers. When they add a customer a purchase button appears – all Redstor products are available to purchase, with the option of a free trial or a paid product. When you place the order, the customer receives an email to log into product and, if you choose to, you can talk them through set up.” Bruce McKnight, IT consultant at Baseline Data Services, one of the first MSPs to make use of the portal, backs up Griffin’s claims about its ease of use. He said: “For any business onboarding customers in their thousands, there has to be automation. What Redstor is doing is a game-changer. The Redstor Marketplace has been transformational in helping us to fully digitise our business operations. This will revolutionise the way we onboard customers, allowing us to scale more quickly than ever. This is an ideal solution for the new normal we all now find ourselves in, truly fit-for-purpose for today’s MSP." In addition to its Marketplace, Redstor has launched a new partner programme offering discounted buy prices and full sales, marketing and technical support as it seeks to broaden its customer base. “There are some new product innovations that are really designed to take us into new parts of the market and we want to encourage new partners to help us, so there is a partner acquisition piece and we also have a partner enablement team to work with existing partners,” explained Griffin. “We have a two-pronged approach: attract more partners and work those who want to grow with Redstor.” www.redstor.com To find out about some of the product innovations mentioned by James Griffin, read our interview with him in the next issue of Technology Reseller . Redstor’s new automated portal enables MSPs to secure margin-rich, repeatable revenue with just a few clicks Following a recent decision to become a channel-only business, Redstor, a SaaS provider of cloud data management solutions, has introduced an automated self-service portal that makes it quicker and easier for MSPs to deploy backup and recovery, disaster recovery and archiving solutions and to manage their customers’ on-prem and cloud data, including Microsoft 365 and G-Suite. The Redstor Marketplace, representing a seven-figure investment – the biggest non-product investment made by the company outside its acquisition of Attix5, is based on AppDirect’s multi-channel digital commerce engine and is designed to provide a smarter way of buying all Redstor products and managing customer relationships. Redstor Chief Product Officer James Griffin said: “If someone has a data management problem to solve and they are speaking to their partner of choice about it, why should it take weeks and months before that partner can solve that problem for the customer? “It seems it is very difficult to create an entire digital experience where it still feels personal, where a partner on the phone to a customer is able to fulfil the customer’s need and have them using that product by the end of that phone call; and where the partner is able to log into that product and have oversight of the customers they provision and access a library of training content and marketing content that allows them to be really self-sufficient and scale. That’s what we think of as a smarter way.” Griffin found what he was looking for in the AppDirect platform and within a matter of months had created a beta version of the marketplace. “We assembled a team in Redstor, signed the contract on December 31 and deployed the platform to a beta group of 10 James Griffin