ControlUp looks for channel growth after hitting ARR milestone

The boss of autonomous endpoint management vendor ControlUp is talking of channel investment and expansion as the firm breaks through $100m in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

The company has been moving from operating in a crowded digital employee experience (DEX) field to operating in the emerging autonomous endpoint management space and is keen to widen its market reach via partners.

Jed Ayres, CEO of ControlUp, has a strong channel background and is fully aware of the benefit the indirect model brings to those looking for growth and greater touch points with customers.

He talked of a clear opportunity for partners that recognised the technology shift and expanded their expertise beyond traditional DEX.

“The tech is providing probably a once-in-a-generation ability to intersect how we thought about managing endpoints for the last 40 years in a way that I think will radically change the number of tools, the number of people, the number of trouble tickets that are generated,” he said.

Ayres said it wanted the channel to take the lead in providing services to customers and saw that as an area where they could add value and reap the rewards.

“We want [services] to go to the partner community,” he said, pointing out that hitting the $100m ARR level showed there was a strong appetite for its platform and a base where the channel could add value.

“We’ve signed some very large relationships with global systems integrators recently,” he added. “We now have three partners – TCS, HCl and Tech Mahindra – that are actively working with us and building pipeline. We also launched a MSP [managed service provider] programme in Q1 of this year, so we have dozens of MSPs at our doorstep that are looking to deploy this.”

Ayres added: “As the MSPs and the large systems integrators start to run towards this, it gives them an ability to reimagine how to add value in a profound way. We see people already just chewing through huge portions of their recurring trouble tickets.”

The vendor recently held an event in London to get closer to partners in the UK and has hired a global channel lead to drive the indirect strategy and growth. Ayres is determined to expand the business that flows through its channel.

“I spent the first half of my career in the channel, so I’m also really trying to push towards as much of this to go through the channel as possible. When I got here three years ago, it was 50% channel. It’s now over 70%, and in Europe it’s actually over 90%,” he said.

Ayres said those moves were already delivering results, and this year had started strongly on the channel front and pipeline growth was up significantly, as was the volume of deal registrations being logged by partners.

“There’s energy in this, as people are bringing us into their customers, and you’re showing this technology,” he said.

As well as increasing the size of the channel, the business has also expanded geographically in the past year and now covers North America, EMEA and APAC.