Former Fortinet Vet Building Globalscape Partner Base

Managed file transfer platform maker Globalscape is continuing to build a strong base of channel partners, according to Chris Cleary, senior director of channel sales, who said shedding the company's decades-long reliance on direct sales is a lengthy but important transition.

The mature market for file sharing software gives organizations myriad options for enabling employees to share files and collaborate on projects. The San Antonio-based company points to its track record of securing sensitive data and intellectual property for the government, including a contract to secure sensitive files for the U.S. Army's logistics program, which it has had in place since 2005.

"We're not in a sexy business but, at the end of the day, every company needs an environment to efficiently transfer files and do so securely," Cleary told CRN. "We have a lot of clients who have either outgrown their existing FTP environment or need a more mature, robust environment and want an expert to handle it."

[Related: GlobalScape Turns To Channel For Managed File Transfer Growth]

Cleary, a sales veteran, was named Globalscape's head of global channel sales and distribution last year. He spent six years at Fortinet overseeing the network security vendor's global strategic alliances.

Globalscape is eyeing growth in the midmarket is and educating resellers and system integrators on the additional opportunity to sell the company's EFT platform during server migration projects when companies move from on-premise Microsoft Exchange implementations to Office 365, according to Cleary.

The company's bread and butter is in securing the transmissions from server to server and being able to scale to handle large workloads and efficiently transfer massive, terabyte-size files for organizations. It also sells a hosted or managed FTP platform, secure email file sharing that integrates into Outlook, and wide area file services for file sharing between remote offices.

HIPAA regulations and the need for financial firms to comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act also are driving business, according to Cleary.

Users of the platform like its scalability and how it efficiently transfers large workloads, said Jacob Tukuru, founder and president of Tukuru Technologies, a New York-based IT consulting and managed services firm. Globalscape supports sharing large Autodesk Revit modeling files, a common file type shared by Tukuru's clients in the engineering, architectural and construction industries. Companies often struggle with sharing the massive files when collaborating with business partners, Tukuru said.

"There's a lot of collaboration going on among our clients, and we realized that Globalscape was the right fit for them," Tukuru said. "Globalscape has shown a tremendous amount of commitment in terms of working with us and delivering on supporting the partnership."

NEXT: Globalscape's Channel Investments

Globalscape is investing heavily in its channel initiatives and, in addition to Cleary, hired Matt Goulet, formerly a Kaspersky Lab sales executive, to spearhead sales and marketing activities. The company launched its partner program in January and has been constantly increasing its investment in channel activities. The channel program consists of Emerging partners, resellers, and Focus partners who commit to a sales plan, technical training and a weeklong certification offering.

Regional channel managers are engaging the most active partners. In North America, Cleary said the company has built up a base of more than 100 active partners, including 48 system integrators, 23 MSPs, and consultants and others.

"At the end of the day, these guys are on the street and selling the product; every single partner we're working with has gone through various levels of training and either has sales in the pipeline or already closed business," Cleary said.

Globalscape competes against Axway, Ipswitch File Transfer, Tibco, SSH Communications and DataMotion. Compliance requirements are a big driver for sales, say industry analysts, who recommend businesses evaluate each platform maker's reporting and auditing capabilities. IBM is also eyeing growth in the space, and acquired high-speed file transfer vendor Aspera last year.

"We're taking the heavy lifting off of partners and in each instance where we can identify a potential sale, we're doing the heavy lifting with them," Cleary said. "We identify what a sale looks like and ,in many cases, it's complementary with the products in the partner's portfolio."

The company is still fine-tuning its program and Cleary said he is speaking with partners to add the right support and communicate the feature set enhancements and other work the product engineers plan to roll out. Globalscape offers dedicated pre- and post-sales support and 30-point deal registration to weed out potential channel conflict during the transition to its channel sales model.

Partners that are clearly investing in the Globalscape business are getting active leads from the company and are participating in field marketing activities, Cleary said. The business model right now is dependent upon feeding the channel and building the ecosystem, he said.

"We have a co-dependent compensation model," Cleary said. Everyone on our team knows it is in everyone's best interest to work together collaboratively. And, as far as our partners are concerned, channel integrity rules the day."

PUBLISHED SEPT. 24, 2014