Technology Reseller v42

doing, which he says is sometimes just to replicate the mainstream distribution sales acceleration function that is rarely appropriate for vendors’ high growth, early investment phase. “The second point I would make is that a lot of other companies in this space work on a very shortened ROI cycle,” he said. “They need to see returns in 6 to 12 months, and with an emerging technology vendor it is almost impossible to recognise significant revenue in 6 to 12 months. With Frontier, we have moved it out to an 18-24 month early adopter cycle and the sales teams are compensated accordingly. They only get compensated on Frontier vendors, so they are 100% invested in them. “Thirdly, a lot of our competitors in this space are very focused on getting upfront investment from an emerging technology vendor – ‘We need MDFs , we need funded heads to manage all these programmes’. That tends to be an exorbitant and prohibitive cost for emerging technology vendors. Yes, they might have $15 million in funding, but they need to make it to the next round or they will be bankrupt, and they don’t necessarily want to commit $100K per country they want to go into without a lot of value back. “The last thing I would say is that we are very data-driven at Nuvias. We make good business insights based on hard data – we have a lot of BI – and that’s why we can build not just a channel for emerging vendors but a complete route to market. Based on what we see and hear from our partners, from our end customers, we can say this is what success looks like in each country, this is what you should be doing, this is what you shouldn’t be doing. That kind of advice is typically consultant- led and expensive, and we give it away as part of Frontier.” 12 in the wings that might not be ready for Frontier right now but could become so in the future. “It is often the case that a vendor might not meet all of our core criteria just yet. For example, they might be looking to expand into the UKI first. By mutual agreement, we might say we will work with you in UKI, but we don’t need you to be part of the Frontier programme yet. You could be part of Nuvias mainstream or you could be part of Cloud Distribution non-Frontier. As your aspirations and your revenues increase and you want to expand on a pan-European basis, it might be time for the Frontier programme. “A second ‘in the wings’ example might be a company that has had a large Series A funding round. They might have been given a load of money, but not yet be sure how to spend it and are evaluating their options. In this case, we might say ‘Once you have decided what your strategic priorities are and which countries you would like to go into, we will be very happy to help you build a complete go to market offering in those countries’. But that might be in 6 months’ time. “The last thing is that companies change, their products and solutions and offerings change, and we need to make sure there is very minimal competition and overlap between the vendors we bring onto this Frontier programme. We want to make sure that they do not become more and more competitive with each other as their technology strategy and roadmaps change. So we might just press pause while they decide what they would like to pursue in the future.” Learning from the past Nuvias is far from the only distributor to target emerging technologies and emerging technology vendors, but Chandaka is confident that, with Frontier, it has a programme that offers something genuinely different to what others are technology set that also want to grow emerging technologies to replace those mainstream technologies, which in the future will become the new growth areas.” The first vendors To date, Nuvias has signed two vendors to the Frontier programme – Deep Instinct and Cynet – with a third at an advanced stage of negotiations. Overall, Nuvias is looking to attract six vendors, with a focus on building a complete hybrid cloud stack for end user customers, with significant cross-sell opportunities. “We want vendors that complement each other, with no competition between them, and we want vendors that, when we find an opportunity for that vendor, make it very easy for us to cross-sell and pull through the other vendors in our stack. From a hybrid cloud perspective, we have clearly defined areas, and we believe the right number of areas and vendors for us at any one time is six. “We have a few core criteria when we evaluate vendors. We want to have emerging technology vendors that are between Series B and Series E in terms of funding rounds. Series A tends to be a little bit too long for the two-year cycle we are looking for; and Series F means that they are most likely going to IPO or will be acquired and don’t need go-to-market or channel enablement and scaling. “We are looking for vendors that by the end of year one give us sight of an ARR of around $3 to $6 million – and that means sight. If we are doing $200K of recurring revenue in month 12, that’s a pretty good sign that we are going to be successful with a vendor. And we need vendors to have a local presence in every country in which we are launching.” Future candidates Chandaka says that in addition to the half dozen vendors that do qualify for the Frontier programme, Nuvias may have 6 to technologyreseller.co.uk 39 DISTRIBUTION