Cloud Backup Reseller: Partner Opinions on Our Easy-to-Sell, High-Margin Service

When it comes to cloud backup, the end-user benefits of the best solutions are pretty straightforward – get your data back rapidly when fire, flood, malicious individuals or ransomware come knocking!

But what of Cloud Service Partners (CSPs), IT companies, consultants, entrepreneurs, resellers and hosting providers? How can they benefit from cloud backup?

What’s the cloud backup reseller opportunity, and what are the important choices they need to make to resell a service that is truly compelling, customer-friendly, and – most importantly of all – profitable?

We thought it would be helpful if you heard what some of our own partners, and other industry sources, have to say on the subject.

Rapidly boost your recurring revenues

Firstly, cloud backup is charged monthly to end-users – no setup or upfront fees – on top of which partners can flexibly add their own chosen margin.

This not only provides a recurring monthly revenue stream for the partner, it also means that, even with the partner’s margin added on top, end-users pay only for what they use – a transparent and cost-effective approach that is significantly more attractive than fixed fees or annual contracts.

For both partners and end-users, the business benefits can be immediate. As one of our own partners, Digital Medic Ltd., comments:

‘BackupVault is fantastic. We started rolling it out to our clients about 5 months ago, and haven’t looked back.’

 

Minimal admin, efficient support, greater profitability

Secondly, it’s important to remember that any service – no matter how attractive to end-users – will consume its own profits if it is labour-intensive to manage and support.

It is therefore critical that partners choose cloud backup that offers proven ease of use through a single, web-based cloud management console, plus accessible support that deploys rapidly, and without eating up internal resources, when needed.

BackupVault partner Pisys.net puts it like this:

‘The BackupVault software and overall service is second to none and the 24-hour UK support has been invaluable. Compared to our previous [Acronis] backup solution, we now spend very little time administering the backups for our customers.’

Expand your business – x 3!

Thirdly, the right choice of cloud backup delivers on the optimum strategy for growing a partner business: a service that is 1.) universally needed, 2.) easily combined with other services, and 3.) inherently retentive.

This adds up to a powerful, three-point competitive advantage incorporating a real opportunity for loyalty and upsell. As industry publication MSP Insights puts it:

‘Not only is there money to be made, but these services are sticky. Once the backup is working smoothly, customers are reluctant to switch. And as a trusted partner, you can sell additional and hopefully integrated services.’

Get the pain points right

Of course, it’s all very well to wax lyrical about the potential returns for partners, but the reality is that unless the proposition comprehensively addresses end-users’ pain points – both the ones they’re aware of and the ones they sometimes aren’t – and does so uniquely, partners are in a relatively weaker position against competitor solutions.

Here’s a quick look at what we know about how partner-delivered cloud backup needs to address those pain points, based on the many end-user organisations we deal with:

1. Everything available in one place – in the UK

Users need a service that is based exclusively in mirrored UK data centres and is ISO 27001- and therefore GDPR-compliant. But they also need the ease and convenience of being able to manage their backups and restores from a single, simple, web console – and they need expert human support in their own time zone, not simply a US online knowledge base!

2. True data protection – not storage!

Many end-user organisations urgently need backup because they are currently relying on cloud storage solutions like Microsoft 365 or G Suite to keep copies of their data – but this is not backup-standard and does not enable them to retrieve and restore deleted data beyond just a few days’ grace.

3. Protection against ransomware

Contrary to popular belief, not all cloud backup is immune to ransomware. For total peace of mind, end-user organisations urgently need cloud backup with immutable storage, as only this will prevent the backup system from being tricked into accepting ransomware as a legitimate modification to the data within it.

4. Fast and easy restores

Backed-up data is all but useless if it can’t be rapidly restored back into an organisation’s systems to enable immediate business recovery. Waiting for an entire backup data set to download can take hours or even days, so users need a smarter solution that streams the data back into their system but enables access to any part of it, on-demand, as it streams – in just seconds.

Are you our next cloud backup partner?

In short, if you’re an IT partner there is a compelling opportunity, a significant potential return, and a proven solution waiting to deliver on your expectations.

Get in touch today to find out how to become a BackupVault Partner.