CRU-Dataport, a vendor of data security and data mobility devices, is looking to aggressively increase its presence in Canada by signing on new partners next year.
Dan Bovee, vice-president of sales at Vancouver, Wash.-based CRU-Dataport, explains that the now privately-held company was once a subsidiary of personal peripherals vendor, Logitech. When the company became private several years ago, Bovee said CRU-Dataport had to grow its Canadian channel base from zero. Today, the company has between 30 and 40 active reseller partners in the country.
“Partners are critical for us because we are 100 per cent channel friendly,” Bovee said. “We want to raise our (Canadian) partner base to about 100 to 130 active resellers. We’d like to complete this in the next 18 months.
In all, the company has around 600 active resellers around the world, with between 200 and 250 of them coming from the U.S. market. This year, the company grew its Canadian market share by about 20 per cent. This was achieved through the help of its partner and end-user expansions, Bovee said.
“Our resellers are taking us into new markets and they’re engaging with us to help close the deals,” he explained. “We feel we have the resources that we can now support our Canadian partners further and also be able to engage with them. Resellers that would do well with us are those that work in storage, data security, or the disk to disk backup (markets). Partners should also have a regional expertise and understand the market they sell to.”
CRU-Dataport also relies on its distribution partners, which in Canada include Bell Micro, Synnex and Simple Technology, to help it do business.
Bovee says the company’s flagship product is branded under the name, DataPort. DataPort is a high performance removable storage product which helps to secure and protect classified and sensitive business information.
While the solution is more horizontal than it is vertical, Bovee says the solution will also do well in vertical markets such as education, financial, hospitals and legal areas.
“(The solution) pretty much (fits) anywhere where businesses are dealing with sensitive data,” he said.
CRU-Dataport partners have the ability to achieve anywhere between 20 and 25 per cent profit margin, Bovee said. The company also supports its partners through its Partner Advantage program, which is a program that’s customizable to the partner.
“There are no tiers or revenue requirements in the program,” Bovee said. “There are four areas of the program which include our Value Plus category, which is for VARs and solution providers, a Forensics program for partners that work in this space, Digital Media and Technology partners, which include OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), system builders and systems integrators.”
In addition to DataPort, the company also offers other removable and external hard drive enclosures for physical data security and safe data transporting, Bovee said.
