The 'Perfect Storm' For Fiberlink Partner Program

Francois Daumard, former mobility channel development manager at Apple, said he jumped ship to mobile device management company Fiberlink in the midst of an MDM "perfect storm," fueled by the adoption of cloud in the SMB marketplace and the boom of mobile devices.

CEO of Fiberlink Jim Sheward revealed a new partner program to UBM Channel's XChange 2013 attendees at the Fiberlink breakout session on Tuesday. And Daumard said he expects "thousands" of partners to be added to the company's new partner program by the end of 2014.

Speaking at the XChange event in Washington, D.C., Daumard, who joined Fiberlink late last month, said he was presented with a flood of partners asking him for a more inclusive option while working with Apple.

"It started to obsess me," Daumard said, "They were asking, 'What about Android? What about the remaining BlackBerrys?' Apple was not a holistic option for me to manage my partners."

According to Daumard, the overwhelming trend he saw from partners was the desire to be embraced by an MDM vendor. That vendor, according to Daumard, needs to have the ability to have relevancy with devices and operating systems across the spectrum.

"Mobile computing is going to be the next Internet," CEO Sheward told CRN, and "it's going to shift how things are done." Though Fiberlink has more than 20 years of experience in the mobile management space, Sheward said now is the time for partners to embrace the mobile movement.

In addition, May Mitchell, vice president of channel sales at Fiberlink, said mobile device management simply "is not there yet in the SMB space," an issue Fiberlink intends to solve through its MaaS360 platform, a platform designed to "help the channel monetize BYOD."

[Related: BYOD And MDM: 10 Vendors That Get It ]

"Our solution is plug-and-play," Sheward said, adding an IT department can gain control over the enterprise functions of a personal device in under 12 minutes. MaaS360 is also scalable, works with all operating systems and delivers automatic upgrades.

"In one year, we delivered 51 upgrades," Sheward said, "and neither the partners or IT was ever required to do anything -- it was automatic." Sheward went on to say when a new operating system hits the end users, so does the upgraded MaaS360 platform, nearly immediately.

Phil Poje, CEO of Overland Park, Kan.- based solution provider Tech Orchard, said of the three MDM platforms his company uses, Fiberlink was its first choice.

"We made a decision we would only work with companies that were the best of breed," Poje said. "Fiberlink is by far the easiest to manage up front, and they are cloud-based. They also have outstanding customer service."

According to Fiberlink, partners are able to purchase the MaaS360 platform up front at a per-license rate, multiplied by 12 months. Fiberlink recommends partners resell the solution at 25 percent margin.

Sheward said every customer grows 50 percent by the end of the first year using the MaaS360 platform, organic growth that also allows growth in existing practices such as wireless, storage and networking.

NEXT: Future Of The MDM Market: The Numbers

MDM itself, according to Sheward, will be a $2 billion market by 2016. MDM, along with areas that will naturally grow with the MDM market including NAC, MAM, MCM, productivity and containerization, will be an $11 billion market by 2016, he said.

"82,000 mobile devices are lost or stolen in the United States every day," Poje said. "There will be more devices bought today than there will be babies born in America today. That's part of our culture and that's not going to change any time soon."

Poje said proper device management begins with managing and securing a device. Secondly, MDM equips customers with apps and training that make them more productive. Lastly, MDM can be used to better market a customer's entire brand.

"The reality is, with all that cool stuff comes a huge amount of risk. Now sensitive data sits in our hands and our pockets," Poje said. "There are a lot of organizations walking around naked and they don't even know they are."

Proof of Mitchell and her channel team's success is the zero to 40 percent growth in channel sales over the course of one year. With the addition of Daumard and the announcement of an expanded channel strategy, Fiberlink expects to grow its enterprise sales exponentially in the coming year.

According to Mitchell and Daumard, Fiberlink will be announcing a partner certification program with additional partner benefits by the end of 2013.

"Are we the future Microsoft of MDM? I hope so," Daumard said.

PUBLISHED AUG. 22, 2013