Auvik Networks Unveils Official Partner Program To Capture $16B Enterprise Opportunity

‘We want to be a channel-led company. About 20 percent of our business goes through channels right now and that’s not enough. We want about 80 percent of our business to go through channels. We feel like that’s the right mix,” Bob Gault, Auvik’s CRO, tells CRN.

Auvik CRO Bob Gault

Network management provider Auvik Networks Monday launched its first official partner program aimed at significantly boosting its channel business and going after the enterprise.

The Ontario, Canada-based company historically has gone to market directly, a strategy that’s worked for the company for its first decade in business. But over the past year Auvik has experienced dramatic growth across its partner community marked by an increase in new partners and 150 percent more business coming in from the channel.

Now Auvik wants to ratchet up the roughly 20 percent of business it does through the channel to 80 percent.

“We want to be a channel-led company. About 20 percent of our business goes through channels right now and that’s not enough. We want about 80 percent of our business to go through channels. We feel like that’s the right mix,” Bob Gault, Auvik’s CRO, told CRN.

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The company has experience working with systems integrator partners and has treated MSPs as customers rather than partners. But now Auvik’s plan is to grow its MSP partner business by leaning into what the company believes is an untapped $16 billion enterprise market opportunity, Gault said.

“The best way for us to do that is by partnering with the channel community … just having a few partners wasn’t going to cut it,” he said. “What we’ve noticed over the last year and a half is that MSPs also see an opportunity where they’re talking to customers who actually want to manage and maintain and monitor their own networks. So, there’s an opportunity for the MSP to branch out build a practice around systems integration, as well as reselling the Auvik platform.”

The Auvik Partner Program will help partners serve up network assessments using the Auvik Network Monitoring platform. The network assessments give partners expanded revenue opportunities including services, software and hardware, while giving end customers a more complete view into the state of their network, the company said.

The value- and volume-based Auvik Partner Program will be structured in three tiers. The first rung of the ladder is Silver, which offers partner discounts, free sales and technical training, webinars and community access. The Gold level provides deeper partner discounts, a best practices library, lead sharing, virtual and in-person training, a dedicated account manager, customer success manager and assigned account executive, network assessments and proposal-based MDF. The Platinum level offers Gold-level benefits along with the deepest partner discounts, quarterly business plans and reviews and a best practices library.

“Because we have a broader portfolio of products for partners to sell—not just network monitoring and management but also SaaS management, discovery, control and governance, and endpoint management—as partners make a deeper investment across the portfolio, they’ll earn additional badges, which will give them additional benefits and programs,” Gault said.

Auvik is demonstrating its dedication to its channel focus by paying its internal teams more to transact business with a channel partner—something that many vendors won’t do, Gault said. The company is also working to link up the right partner to new leads, he said.

“There’s a lot of partnering that is happening in the field right now between our account executives and the partners in their territory where our account executives are bringing our partners into opportunities that came in from some of our marketing events and marketing campaigns.”

To support the new channel program, Auvik has already increased its head count by 300 percent over the last two fiscal years. The company is also planning on adding additional resources as needed, Gault said.