“WE LIKE TO SAY 2023 is the year of the channel for Auvik,” says Stacey Tozer, director of channel at the cloud-based network and SaaS management software company.
In July, Waterloo, Ontario-based Auvik launched the Auvik Partner Program, a three-tier program for resellers that includes partner discounts, sales, technical training and certifications, customer support services, network assessments, marketing resources, and access to new product offerings.
Founded in 2011, Auvik sold its network monitoring platform solely to managed service providers for most of its history. “This is really our first true partner program for resellers, Tozer says. “Auvik has been aggressively growing in the commercial, SLED [state, local, education], midmarket space and we want to engage partners to be able to be where customers are buying their IT software and their technology and ensure that we can meet our growth objectives in the fastest way possible, which is through partners.”
Today, Tozer says, channel business represents about 20% of revenue. “We are looking to grow that in the next few years to 80%.” Auvik is currently working with about 68 partners already.
A benefit of the program, Tozer notes, is that Gold-level partners who become certified will be able to use the Auvik platform to deliver network assessments. “One of the big things that we’re excited to bring to the market … is that we’re going help our partners to create service-oriented revenue streams beyond just selling our product.”
Sales and technical certifications will be available later in the year via the partner portal, she says, along with training and marketing materials. Some MDF will be available as well.
In addition, last month Auvik, announced a partnership with Jenne, a value-added technology solutions distributor and cloud services brokerage that Tozer calls a strategic partner. “They serve both VARs and MSPs, two routes that are critical for Auvik’s go-to-market strategy and overall growth.”
SaaS Management for MSPs
On the product side of the house, Auvik has been busy as well, with the announcement of Auvik SaaS Management (ASM) in July. ASM incorporates and builds on the 2022 acquisition of Saaslio, a SaaS discovery solution for MSPs to securely manage applications and address shadow IT.
“Auvik is expanding its portfolio to become more than a single-product business, and SaaS is that first key piece that we believe is super valuable, especially in the market today,” says John Harden, senior product marketing manager at Auvik and founder of Saaslio. “All those SaaS tools traverse the network and so having visibility and monitoring and managing of the network is a perfect and easy segue … for managing and monitoring all the SaaS.
“The heart of the issue is employees are signing up for their own tools,” Harden continues. “They’re putting their own data into it. And at the end of the day, as managed service providers and IT shops really look to secure their organizations better, they need visibility into where that data is and what those systems are that are being adopted.”
ASM is built for the channel and offers multitenancy. “We are seeing the managed service providers that adopt our technology are really benefiting from having that visibility in their clients’ environment,” says Harden. “Most managed service providers are doing questionnaires or checklists or surveys to figure out this data, and they have their RMM, which maps all the software on the computer, but the minute that user touches the browser, they have no visibility. And that’s where all the data is today. So, we map all that automatically for them.”
Auvik SaaS Management is licensed per user on a monthly basis.
On the roadmap for SaaS Management is more automation, making it easier for MSPs to onboard/offboard their customers’ employees from all the desktop, SaaS, and business applications they use, Harden says. He expects a rudimentary version of the automation to be available in the fourth quarter of this year, with a full-fledged feature available in 2024.
