With new datacentre, Rackspace picks up momentum

Infrastructure provider recruiting New Zealand partners

By Simon Eskow, Auckland | Friday, 01 February 2013
Infrastructure provider Rackspace completed its first ANZ hardware implementation in December, and will look to expand its partner base in New Zealand this year.

The company has been stepping up its activity in the region for a year now, with a new ANZ channel manager brought onboard in April, and a re-vamped, two-tiered partner programme, with an emphasis on co-op marketing and lead generation.

Rackspace’s ANZ channel manager, Brendon McHugh, a New Zealand expat now based in Sydney, says the company wants to work with “like minded” resellers that believe in transparency, specifically around pricing. The company thinks its programme, support, brand recognition and global presence will help to win customers in New Zealand.

“One of the cool things about our channel programme is we have such a flexible marketing fund to use, in however way the partner thinks it can be best used,” says McHugh. “For example, some of our partners came to us and said they want a stand at a Gartner show, and could they use the funds to do that. And our presence there is not a massive logo but it’s there. So we don’t have to be there forcing the issue, because our partner will be there.”

The programme is tiered into member, silver, gold and platinum levels and uses a straightforward point-per-dollar system for sales and referrals to reward its partners, according to the company. Partners also receive training, co-marketing and tailored support.

Rackspace has been working with partners in New Zealand for a while. The company is currently targeting integrators, general systems integrators and digital agencies, which can choose to either refer opportunities or resell the product suite, according to a representative. New Zealand partners include LeftClick, Exceed and Catalyst IT.

Rackspace offers managed services such as public/private/hybrid cloud hosting, as well as SaaS, ASP and web hosting.

McHugh says Rackspace considers every customer engagement as “bespoke” and will consult to the degree that the reseller partner wants them to.

“Typcially a partner says they’re talking to the customer and they will give us an idea of where they are now. We will consult with them about how they want to approach their infratstructre,” says McHugh. “We can be in the background as just the hosting partner or we can be with them in meetings, or to do RFP support or technical support. That’s the kind of consultative process.we have and we’re flexible in how we work and every partner is different.”

McHugh is a native of Nelson, but has lived overseas for the last several years. He moved to Sydney in 2012 to take over Rackspace’s ANZ channel programme.