Johannesburg, 03 Jul 2012
As the market becomes increasingly competitive, the channel's needs for a true partner rather than a distributor are increasing, and Phoenix Software is filling that gap.
As part of its constant improvement in the products and services it offers its resellers, the company has introduced a South African StorageCraft managed services monthly subscription portal, providing resellers with a dedicated avenue through which to obtain information and grow their own businesses.
“With the breadth of products and services now available in the technology market, it is easy for the channel to keep adding partners to the ecosystem in order to increase reach. However, without a specialised approach, this can just lead to inefficiencies and confusion,” points out Phoenix Software CEO Simon Campbell-Young. “Through this portal, we are providing a unique licensing and installation model designed specifically to address the needs of our resellers who specialise in the StorageCraft range.”
The portal is intended for managed service providers (MSPs) that want to provide disaster recovery services to their clients. It boasts a Licensing Console that allows MSPs to purchase and manage their licences online, including the ability to remotely deactivate SP-MSP licences as needed, as well as a unique installer that lets an MSP install any ShadowProtect edition. It supports push install and allows licences to make a daily 'call home' to StorageCraft servers to confirm they are still active.
“The MSP portal provides a subscription-based licensing model that will make our customers' lives easier. It will allow our MSP partners to manage their licences directly, so they will be able to manage legacy ShadowProtect licences, new licences, and ShadowControl ImageManager licences in the same place. In addition, they will be able to view 12-month trends for ShadowProtect and IME licensing and generate new serial numbers for activating installations,” Campbell-Young says.
Other features include the organisation of licences into accounts and geographical sites to easily keep track of how and where each client uses their licences, and the view of the status of any licence. MSPs will also be able to generate activation and billing detail reports that contain detailed licence activity for a specified time period, or deactivate any licence with a single click.
Campbell-Young explains that qualifying for the programme is as simple as completing an online request form and reaching a minimum spend of R4 000 over three months. “We always try to ensure that we make out customers' lives easier where we can, and we believe the simplicity of this portal is a case in point. We provide training, support and the right offerings to ensure their businesses can continue to grow.”
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