Cohesity hands MSPs pay-per-use option

Data management player Cohesity says its move to a pay-per-use model should benefit its growing managed services provider (MSP) base.

The firm has been building up an MSP network and now has more than 100 on its books, recording a 100% quarter-on-quarter growth in revenues from those partners.

Among those that have signed up are iomart, M247 and Vanquish Tech in the UK. Those channel players are among those able to offer a range of services, including backup and recovery, archiving, file shares, object stores, dev/test and analytics.

To make life easier for MSPs, Cohesity has added the pay-per-use option for mid-market and enterprise customers that are looking to keep control of the costs of data management.

Customers are looking for flexibility, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, and this offering will allow them to pay by use, rather than in capacity blocks ordered in advance.

“More companies are embracing a consumption-based approach in order to reduce capital costs and to make adjustments on the fly as business dictates,” said David Kosman, head of global cloud service providers at Cohesity.

“We are making it easier than ever for MSPs to meet enterprise and mid-market customers where they are and quickly evolve as the customer journey progresses.”

The reaction from some partners that have signed up with the vendor was positive, with many commenting on its ability to provide a more tailored service to customers.

“This is critical for us in terms of helping our customers manage, protect, recover, and do more with their data, making our relationship with our customers even more crucial and valuable to them,” said Steve Norman, general manager at iomart.

Chris Webber, research director at IDC, said more flexible payment models should be welcomed by Cohesity’s MSP community. “Pay-per-use in modern data management offers greater simplicity and efficiency for service providers while lowering TCO and increasing ROI,” he said. “It essentially increases the value of their offering while decreasing their total costs.”

Cohesity has been putting its shoulder to efforts to grow channel revenues and late last year introduced a wave of enhancements to its partner programme, adding tiers that made gaining rewards more straightforward.

“Last fiscal year, nearly 70% of our active channel partners grew their business by over 100% and many partners grew their business in excess of 200%,” said Bill Lipsin, vice-president of global channels at Cohesity, back in November.

In the last three quarters, the firm has kept that momentum going and has seen the number of MSPs signing up to the programme more than double. Service provider revenues in fiscal 2020 increased by 100% from the first to second quarter and by a further 87% from the second to the third quarter.