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Alex Ruslyakov - Building a Win-Win-Win Ecosystem with Acronis · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channext and this week I'm very excited to welcome my namesake, alex.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: How are you doing?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Doing all right, thank you, alex.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: How are you?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, really, really good.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Not only you, my namesake, but you also have a job that I aspire to have.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Maybe, for the uninitiated, you can give us a little bit of a background, an introduction to who you are and where you come from.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: My name is Alex Ruslikov, chief Channel Officer at Acronis.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I'm with the company for over 18 years now, been in different roles and different positions, and currently I'm in charge of our global channel management function, in charge of global distribution management function, as well as all our channel programs, promotions, tools that we create for our channel partners and projects that we do together with our channel partners and projects that we do together with our channel partners, and my main objective is to help partners grow and to help them grow efficiently and to help them grow faster than they would do without us Awesome, so everything channel.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Basically I just said channel channel, channel Nice.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Now what I find interesting.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I'm familiar with acronis as a brand and as a product.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: We've had guider on the podcast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: What I think, uh, who also is one of your executive team um, what I find interesting about your space is it's crowded, um, and so typically in a crowded space, uh, the winner gets all the spoils.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about how you're becoming a differentiator two-partner, three-partner what does that look like?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It is indeed a very crowded space.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Moreover, we are present in more than one discipline.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: We are in data protection, we are in cybersecurity, we are in remote management to a certain extent, in automation to a certain extent.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And it's super important for us to differentiate.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And it's all about how we build the strategy, how we develop our product and how we approach our partners.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: I think there are three main differentiators that we have.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: First, it's around the idea of simplicity.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: We live in the world where having access to information is not the key anymore.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody has access to the information.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Information is on the tips of your fingers.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: It's all about being able to filter the information, condense it and make use of it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And from that perspective, I mean there are obviously tons of different offerings, millions of different features.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Everybody claims to be the best.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: What we say is we're trying to make it simple for our customers and simple for our partners.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: And it's the concept of our product to make it simple for our customers and simple for our partners.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: And it's the concept of our product to make it unified, to make it a single agent, a single UI, single API for your data protection needs, your cybersecurity needs, for your device management needs, for your disaster recovery needs.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So basically, especially when we're talking about the MSP segment, it's super important for an MSP to be efficient.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It's super important for MSP to be scalable, and this is where we thrive.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: This is the message that we deliver to MSPs you can get your necessary tools integrated into a single agent and you can have your customers' environments protected with a single policy, single protection plan, and that brings a simplicity, and it's also the idea behind the design of the interface to make it intuitive, to make it simple, so that you don't have to read a ton of documentation.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And if you think of an MSP business and when you deliver different types of services, you need to provide backup, you need to provide industrial recovery, you need to provide data leak prevention, you need to provide endpoint protection EDR, xdr, all these type of services.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: You need to do the remote device management and monitoring.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You have to deploy five, six, seven different agents, configure different policies for different softwares, have six different support lines to work with.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: That implies additional overhead.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: This is something that we are aiming to eliminate for the MSP and for the customer.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So that's one thing.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Another thing is the commercial.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: The business model that we provide, that we deliver to MSPs is built into the product.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So what we provide is a platform.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously, we're not the only vendor providing a platform, but the key thing is that there is a set of integrated services on the platform, and the integration and the built-in cross-sell capabilities are the key.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So, basically, if you're an MSP and you are starting to provide a single service for your customer, it's very easy for you to add other services into the customer's service portfolio by just a click of a checkbox in the UI interface.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: You started with endpoint detection and response.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You got your customers' devices covered with the basic endpoint detection and response service and then you start adding on top.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: You can upsell and cross-sell functionality.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You can show them that you know what the NIST 2 guidance is to have a backup Aside from your cybersecurity protection.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You have to have a backup.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to recover.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So here is a list of your devices that are worth backing up, that have essential data that needs to be protected.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: You just click a button on the interface and here you go.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: You upsell backup solution to your customer and then, hey, there is a data leak prevention service that is available for you For your tier one servers.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: You can have disaster recovery in the cloud so that you can spin off a server almost instantaneously if something happens.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So this is the nature of the cross-cell built into the platform.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: And I think the third differentiator that we provide as a vendor is our approach to partners, and this is why I'm always saying that we are a very channel-focused company.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: We're 100% channel.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: We sell through the channel.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: We only grow when our channel partners grow and, from that perspective, we are looking to become an extended business development unit for our partners, development unit for our partners.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So the role of our partner success managers, and the way I see this role, is less of a support, more of a business developer.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Obviously, support is an essential part of the role being able to address issues, to answer questions that's important.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: But approaching the partners as a business developer, trying to understand their business, trying to look into the details of who their customers are, how they sell, what they sell, how they automate all these little details and nuances, understanding the business enables our partner success managers to understand, bring ideas, bring suggestions and, moreover, leverage the knowledge that we have from thousands of service providers that we work with.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Bring this knowledge over to a particular partner and help them grow faster.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Maybe to double-click on that last point, because I'm a VP of Re revenue.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: I run, uh, sales teams and you're constantly evangelizing sort of how can we become more strategic, how can we become more consultative, how can we really understand customer problems deeply, getting partner success managers to understand the unit economics of running a business and how to scale and sort of putting themselves as that managing director or CEO of that company.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: That's got to be quite hard one to recruit or to train or to enable and build and foster a culture where you're being that super strategic, super consultative person.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of partner success managers cams on this who listen to this podcast.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can talk about how you encourage and drive that sort of behavior.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: There are two things.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: One thing is the mindset.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Obviously, to be that proactive and to be able to put yourself into the shoes of a business developer and bring in the ideas and help executing these ideas, you have to have this entrepreneurial mindset but, at the same time, just having the mindset is not enough.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: You have to be equipped with the right tools.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: You have to have the information, you have to have the knowledge of the partner's business, which is why we have such a concept as a partner passport that's our internal name, we call it partner passport which is more or less a questionnaire that we store in our CRM.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And this is where you, as a partner success manager, you have to ask questions about partners' business, to acknowledge how they run, how they operate, how they run their business, what are the key priorities for them, what are the key challenges, all the little details about their business, so that you are in the position to advise.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, I mean, your ideas would be just either very generic or just useless.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: That's one thing.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: But second thing is the tools that you have at your disposal need to be efficient, aggressive and relevant for your partners, and that's where the aim of my organization is to create such tools for the PSMs to engage with partners and to help partners grow faster.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: We have various partner programs.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: We have a unique I call it sales development funds program, where we invest into our partners to help them grow faster.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: We have unique team-up programs with sport teams team-up programs with sport teams.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: We have a Sports Ignite program, which is a condensed version of a team-up partnership, which is where we help our service providers to connect with sport clubs and leverage their marketing sport marketing benefits to build their brand, to strengthen their brand awareness and to bring over new customers to their business.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: So these are the two core things having the right mindset and being equipped with the right tools.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I can imagine, maybe just to we'll touch on personnel.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Then I'm really keen to get into the sort of toolkit I imagine hiring for that sort of profile, that really sort of entrepreneurial, driving part of business forward.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I can imagine you get this sort of multiplicative effect as those people sort of grow within the business and become leaders within your organization.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: That's exactly the type of profile you also want, right?
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: And so it's almost a bit like a sports team, to continue your analogy, you bring them in at the academy and as they rise and they enter the first team or they enter leadership, right, it's great to have that profile of person because that's how you're going to sort of advance your businesses.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: You've almost built this entrepreneurial academy which I can imagine for a leader in your position that's a great asset to have.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: We are as good as the people we have.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: We aim to hire top talent.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: We aim to hire people who are proactive.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: We aim to hire people who are hungry, who want to achieve something.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: That's the essence of the partner success management function and that's how we prefer to have.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: That's the type of relationship we prefer to have with our partners, rather than taking a passenger seat and advising or just providing basic support.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Awesome, maybe.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Then on to a couple of the toolkits.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: We also have channel chiefs and sort of program leaders who listen and also come on the podcast, so please feel free to give them the keys to the kingdom Um.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: You mentioned sales development funds being sort of imperative and a real lever um to help drive partner performance.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about some of the strategies that you really see working well within the market.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So this sales development funds program, I see it as a sort of a combination of a.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: If I draw the analogy, it's like a combination of a bank and a venture fund.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you think of it as a bank, the bank provides a loan and in exchange, expects certain payments, certain payments.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And within this program, we're providing funds to our partners and in exchange, we expect to have their commitment on a certain level of monthly generated business with us.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: At the same time, unlike the bank, we have skin in the game.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: It's not just giving access to the funds.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So, just like a venture fund, we're trying to help you grow your business.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: So we're not getting a sharing of your business, obviously, but we're helping you to grow your business.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: We're providing you with the tools.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: We're providing you with marketing automation tools.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: We're connecting you to the marketing agencies.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: We're helping you to run the marketing activities and sales activities.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: We're providing you the content.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: We're providing you the content.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: We're providing you the portal so we enable you train you on the product, on the licensing.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So we have Acronis Academy, which provides not only the Acronis-related trainings, it also provides trainings especially focused on the MSP business and some general best practices how to package your services, how to launch your services, how to automate your services, how to automate your operations.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So all these sorts of things are within our tool, set to help our partners invest this money and get the right ROI from this investment.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: So that's the essence of this sales development funds program and I think maybe it's not super unique, but the way we frame it and the way we support our partners with this program is pretty unique to me, I to me.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I think this is a sort of microcosm of what we've discussed right through the podcast.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Right, you're not closing deals, you're building partnerships and that is a that is a real difference in philosophy.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: It's affecting your hiring practice, it's investing your investment structure and really, you know I'm very biased we talk about this a lot at channex, right, but we, we really see the next phase of the channel as being like investing in the tooling to help the partner grow.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: It used to be a very like hey, we have assets, or hey, we have deal reg, right, and and that stuff's become table stakes.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And now what we see the greatest vendors doing is really looking at partners to go, hmm, how can we help them, maybe even sometimes agnostic of an individual brand how can we help them grow?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And then, just knowing that reciprocity exists, comes back and partners are very thankful and very loyal.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I can imagine you've built a lot of very strong relationships as a result of that, that sort of focus.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Absolutely we did.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Moreover, so all executives in the company are supposed to talk to partners on a regular basis, and so we had this initiative for quite some time and, literally, we spoke with thousands of MSPs and we're supposed to talk to them and share them, share the knowledge with the notes, with the broader group, so we accumulate the knowledge, we accumulate the knowledge of how they run the business and we aim to share this knowledge and, ultimately, the.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: The objective here is to um to have this community where partners can get access to the knowledge of other partners, where we act as a facilitator.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: It's not necessarily have to be related to Acronis per se.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: We all, all vendors in that space, are benefiting from the growth of the market of managed services, so for us to educate a partner on how to increase their footprint with their managed services is beneficial in general, even if it's not Acronis specific.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So this is one of the ideas that we're trying to grow within our channel ecosystem and this is the idea that we circulate with our integration partners.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: We have tens of integration partners that we integrate with within our interface, and even with some competitors.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter as far as you provide the capabilities to leverage the tool set and you provide the knowledge to these partners on how to grow their business, everyone will benefit.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Alex, I'm so on board.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I get really annoyed when I hear vendors talking about, hey, come to our partner portal or hey, we have these singular assets, and I'm like it's bad for the end customer because no end customer cares about a singular brand, is bad for the MSP because they definitely don't care about a singular brand and your ability to help the ecosystem ultimately will just be rewarded, and I think it's clear.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, you guys have gone through tremendous growth year over year over year, which is excellent, and I think that's evidence to the fact being selfless through the process is actually going to, ironically, generate the most selfish return, which is awesome to see, maybe pivoting and this is just me fanboying at this point.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: You have an awesome and unique story in terms of building relationships with partners and sports events.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Can you share that for the group?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have the Team Up program, which is where this is a three-way partnership between us as a vendor and MSP as a delivery partner and a sport club as a consumer of the IT services.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: At the same time, the sport club is a provider of marketing assets when done right, can really accelerate the partner's visibility, the brand awareness and drive new customers in.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And I have a personal story when I was sitting at the.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So I live in Arizona, I live in Scottsdale, arizona, and I root for Phoenix Suns NBA team and I've been at the Suns game.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: The Suns were playing Lakers and I brought a partner.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: We were sitting right next to the Lakers bench.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: These were like close to the floor seats and I could literally touch LeBron James because he was sitting at the edge of the bench.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I could touch him and my partner was the fan of Lakers and he could see the Lakers team right up front.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And when you're able to deliver this type of experience to your partners or to your customers, it opens doors.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: It opens doors, it creates a whole different atmosphere and you can have a whole different conversation with your partners and customers when you're able to touch their personal strings, something they're attached to, something they love and that emotional connection is what the TeamUp program helps to build.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So maybe not every MSP is ready for the TeamUp partnership, because obviously it's a lot of obligation, it's a substantial commitment to be a partner of a big sports club, of a pop sport club.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: But there is also.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: We created a version, a smaller version, of the TeamUp program called Sports Ignite up program called Sports Ignite.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And with the Sports Ignite program it's not that you're becoming an official delivery partner for the sport club, but you're gaining a set of marketing assets from a sport club which you can leverage for your marketing activities and brand awareness your marketing activities and brand awareness.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So this is a cool little program for smaller partners and for those who want to test the waters and want to have that experience and deliver that experience to their customers.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Well, a hill that I will die on is that LeBron James is the GOAT, and I will fight anyone who disagrees.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I certainly think that you know there's a real, um, analytical and sort of cynical part of your story, right, which is hey, we, uh, we're building revenue and we've got this great mechanism to build revenue.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: I think the other thing that I would just share is hey, money's great, but experiences are really good, right, and there is a fun and great way to do business, and I just think people who play the game that way ultimately, maybe in a different environment won't do well, but in the channel which focuses on long-term relationships, partnerships, repeat purchase, building a network, hey, playing the game that way is ultimately what's going to win.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I've never met a successful partner who's great at making enemies.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I've met loads that are great at making friends, and I think the ability to sort of pull together disparate parties and find that win-win-win situation especially if you can wrap it up in a Lakers game I think that's an awesome image on how you guys are going to market.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: The essence of the partnership is a win-win and this, this team up program, is just as you mentioned.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's a win, win, win.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Uh, the sport partner wins the service.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Uh provided by source, by Acronis, and delivered by the MSP.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: The MSP wins the?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Uh, the exposure and Acronis and delivered by the MSP.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: The MSP wins the exposure and Acronis wins the partner.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Well, in terms of building partnerships, Alex, we always like to ask our current guest who they think we should have on next.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I know you have someone in mind.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Who do you think we should have on next?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a great partner called Roost.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: They are a service automation company and I met their Senior Director of Strategic Alliances, Jim Despinosa, at MSP Global.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: This year We've been doing a joint panel.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: He's all about automation.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: He lives and breathes automation.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: He enjoys working with MSPs.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I think he'll be a great candidate for your next interview.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Awesome, Alex, it's been a real pleasure having you on.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Alex Likewise.