OpsRamp, Already Big With MSPs, Introduces First Channel Program To Broaden Partner Relationships

‘Our goal is to really build a channel-driven sale,’ Denny Riley, OpsRamp’s global vice president of channel and partnerships, tells CRN. "All our executives ... are really channel-focused and want to build the business on the backs of the channel.’

OpsRamp has brought its hybrid cloud management platform to market through partners in the past, but now is looking to broaden those relationships with the introduction of its first channel program.

The San Jose, Calif.-based startup sells mostly to MSPs, which gravitated to a platform spun out of IT services powerhouse NetEnrich.

OpsRamp's channel push got started in earnest last year, when Mike Munoz joined the company as its chief revenue officer and proposed a strategy of opening the platform to a broader base of partners, said Denny Riley, global vice president of channels and partnerships.

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Munoz emphasized building out a solution provider channel with sales teams, and "dubbed me as VP of channels and tasked me with getting a channel going," Riley said.

The company wants to sell as much as possible through solution providers, he said, with a current goal set of reaching 50 percent.

"Our goal is to really build a channel-driven sale," Riley told CRN. "All our executives, including [CEO] Varma [Kunaparaju] are really channel-focused and want to build the business on the backs of the channel."

The program, at least so far, is meant to be simple, with a single tier.

"What we're really trying to do is make it just easy to work with us," Riley said. "We'll go on calls with you, we'll take the lead."

OpsRamp was born out of a tool NetEnrich built to make it easier to manage environments for its own customers. That ultimately evolved into the commercial product.

MSPs still deliver almost 80 percent of total revenue, but large enterprises are increasingly adopting the OpsRamp platform for their internal operations, he told CRN.

The platform helps IT teams discover assets across hybrid environments, then manages, monitors and automates service delivery.

Since Munoz joined the company in April 2018, OpsRamp has gone from working with a handful of solution providers who were also MSPs to about 20 partners.

One of them, GreenPages, started using the startup's platform close to six years ago.

Back then, the Kittery, Maine-based solution provider was reinventing its managed services portfolio and looking for a hybrid management platform that could impart greater operational maturity for monitoring and remediation, said Geoff Smith, GreenPages director of managed client solutions.

"We looked at the market, evaluated a number of tools and platforms, and settled on OpsRamp as the most comprehensive solution set we could find," Smith said.

The platform's many features checked all of GreenPages' boxes: cloud-based, multi-tenancy, auditing and control features, remote session recording, role-based access controls.

GreenPages not only used the platform to manage its customers, but also became a reseller—at least to some degree.

But with introduction of a formal program, and the work over the last year in building out a sales channel, a deeper partnership is worth exploring more, Smith said.

"It's been a bit less formal and more ad hoc as they've just been getting into this market. It will be interesting to see how the program morphs and whatever benefits GreenPages gets out of it," Smith said.