Press Release
Actifio Expands Channel Relationships with New Leadership, Programs
July 24, 2013
Mike McClurg Joins Actifio as VP of Global Business Partners to Lead Worldwide Channels Organization Driving 85% of Sales, with 80% of Partners Already Ranking Actifio Support “Excellent”
WALTHAM, Mass. – July 24, 2013 – Actifio™, the radically simple copy data storage company, today announced the appointment of Michael McClurg as VP of Global Business Partners. McClurg is a 25-year veteran in building world-class channels.
Before joining Actifio, McClurg was the Vice President of Sales for IBM’s Global Midmarket and Managed Service Provider Sales team, where he was responsible for leading IBM’s company-wide focus on expanding sales and working with Managed Service Providers to deliver innovation and capabilities. McClurg helped establish the Business Partner organization at IBM XIV Storage Systems and was instrumental to increasing revenues over 400% annually and winning a CRN 5 Star Award. Prior to IBM, McClurg he held senior leadership positions in EMC’s US and Latin American Sales and Sun Microsystems and Sequent Computer Systems.
In addition, the company launched two new channel partners programs intended to better enable partner sales and services opportunities.
Partner Professional Services Program
The company’s “Partner Professional Services Program” will enable partner organizations to become authorized providers of Actifio value added services, including its Quickstart service, SOW-based service deployment option, and OnSite residency. The program will be supported through online training available through the online Actifio University, the company’s global knowledge management platform, and a formal mentorship program with the Actifio Services team.
Special Forces Program
Actifio also announced its Special Forces Program, which will focus on identifying individual representative and solution architecture teams within partner organizations and provide them access to the same training, tools, knowledge management platforms, and co-marketing funds available to Actifio’s internal reps. The program was launched at an event in Barcelona, Spain where more than 41 partners from across 14 countries were in attendance.
For more information on both the new Professional Services and Special Forces programs please visit www.actifio.com/partners/.
Actifio’s channel partners recognize that the Copy Data Storage market represents one of the largest business opportunity in enterprise IT market. IDC recently sized this market at $44 billion in 2013, and is expected to grow to more than $50 billion by 2016. Actifio’s partner program continues to thrive through a committed focus on innovation and quality service. A recent TechValidate survey showed that 64 percent of Actifio partners have solved their clients’ data protection challenges using the Copy Data Storage Platform and 80 percent describe Actifio support as excellent or better. “Actifio allows us to get into competitive accounts where we normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to do so,” said Dan Dougherty, Consultant at Champion Solutions Group. Steve Adil, Manager at Mainline Information Systems continues that “[Actifio] is a disruptive technology. It is going to change the way people manage data a great deal in the next few years. It’s exciting to be a part of that.”
Channel partners already embrace Actifio as the key solution to evolving their business through innovative offerings such as a utility “pay-as-you-grow” pricing, ability to deliver on-premise solutions and extend to the Cloud through MSP’s.
“The development of our relationship with our valued channel partners is critically important to our success around the world,” said Jim Sullivan, Actifio President. “We truly value their support, and want to make sure we’re doing all we can to make working with Actifio both a pleasure and a steadily more lucrative proposition.”
“It is very exciting to join Actifio amid the success the company is experiencing enabling partners to help companies tackle the copy data storage problem,” said McClurg. “Through my own experience, I have found that channel success is built on mutual commitment and focus. Actifio has built its channel with much of the same approach in mind. By providing knowledgeable expertise and establishing quality relationships, I am confident that Actifio will continue achieving international success and expanding globally.”
Amidst the channel growth, Gartner Inc. has positioned Actifio in the 2013 “Magic Quadrant: Enterprise Backup/Recovery Software” report in the “Visionaries” quadrant, making Actifio the youngest and fastest vendor to make the Magic Quadrant. Of the hundreds of vendors, only the top fifteen were featured in the report. This confirms Actifio’s vision to continue innovating in the storage industry and bringing valuable services to end-users and channel partners alike.
About Actifio
Actifio is radically simple copy data management. Our copy data storage platform lets businesses recover anything instantly, for up to 90 percent less. Actifio eliminates siloed data protection applications, virtualizing data management to deliver an application-centric, SLA-driven solution that decouples the management of data from storage, network and server infrastructure. Actifio has helped liberate IT organizations and service providers of all sizes from vendor lock-in and the management challenges associated with exploding data growth. Actifio is headquartered in Waltham, Mass., with offices around the world. For more information, please visit https://www.actifio.com/ or email info@actifio.com.
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Copyright © 2013 Actifio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.
Contact:
Danielle Millerick
fama PR for Actifio
actifio@fampr.com
617-986-5030