Wasabi Channel Team Continues to Expand – Get to Know Dean Archibald

Wasabi has seen tremendous growth in our Wasabi Partner Network in a very short time, now boasting over 2700 channel partners globally in just over a year! To help drive continued growth and channel activation, Wasabi welcomes Dean Archibald, Director of North America Channels and Alliances.

Only two weeks into his tenure at Wasabi, Dean has already been plenty busy. Ahead of his planned participation at Wasabi’s VeeamON Virtual booth this week, Dean answered some questions about his experience in the channel and how Wasabi fits into the larger channel ecosystem.

Tell us about yourself. Where were you before Wasabi?

Before joining the Wasabi team, I spent almost 4 years at Veeam Software and prior to that, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Both were incredibly rewarding experiences and afforded me the opportunity to work with great partners – in the data center hardware, software, data protection and services realm.

I live in Central New Jersey with my wife, baby boy and dog. During my free time I love being outdoors, firing up the grill and being with my family.

What was your biggest takeaway/something important you learned from your time at Veeam?

A well executed channel strategy represents enormous opportunity in the market… Partners add so much value in an abundance of ways:

• Keeping a constant pulse on market trends
• Extending sales reach
• Expanding and uncovering new use cases
• Connecting us with complementary alliance partners

I also got validation that the cloud will not be going away – it's here to stay. For many businesses, their ability to harness the power and scale of the cloud will dictate their long term viability in their respective industries.

Why Wasabi? Why now?

Wasabi is one the most refreshing technologies to hit the industry in quite some time. There is an explosion of applications that create massive amounts of data – so storage continues to stay hot; Wasabi’s price and performance cannot be beaten; and partnerships are at the epicenter of this industry… partners are the glue that ties all technologies together and Wasabi is doubling down on the channel.

This is an incredibly exciting time to be at Wasabi – and to be a Wasabi partner!

What's in it for the partner community?

The partner community is constantly searching for ways to deliver value to end users – which makes my job incredibly enjoyable. Wasabi brings a unique offering to partners and that’s the opportunity to sell and bundle cloud storage easier and in a more profitable way than ever before. Regardless if we are talking to a VAR who has traditionally sold hardware, a “born in the cloud” service provider, or something in between – Wasabi has a very compelling offer for partners of all shapes and sizes.

Where do you see the channel organization going in the next 18mo?

We’re transitioning toward becoming a 100% channel company. We will finish the year over with over half our business coming by way of partners – up from 30% in 2019.

We recognize that won’t just happen by chance. Over the past year Wasabi has made significant investments into the channel and will increasingly do so in the form of programs, resources and personnel. Laurie Mitchell is putting the finishing touches on an incredible “campaign-in-a-box” as we speak – a great example of our enhanced focus on partners.

What is missing from the channel that you can bring?

That’s a great question – for me it’s really all about understanding partners’ capabilities and core competencies… then tailoring the “Wasabi opportunity” to their respective business models. Too often, large vendors force partners to adopt their GTM strategy which we know is less than ideal.

I am bringing a ton of focus to this exact conundrum – and the Wasabi leadership team has long believed in this which really attracted me to coming over. Now, it's all about executing on that belief and equipping partners with everything they need to incorporate Hot Cloud Storage into their unique business models.

What is the greatest challenge facing the channel today?

For a lot of channel partners, the products and manner in which they used to sell (and once made them incredibly successful) is no longer sustainable on its own. The margin selling laptops, servers, storage etc – just isn’t there anymore and partners are reinventing themselves by leading with services, cloud and software-defined solutions.

This plays right into Wasabi’s wheelhouse – and we’re finding an amazing amount of synergy through our partnerships.

Why do you think Wasabi is a good fit for the channel?

Wasabi is channel and alliance friendly – and represents an opportunity to sell Wasabi as a point product or as an ingredient in a managed service offering … In some cases, we’re helping partners enter into the Managed Service category.

Historically, let’s say you're a partner and you have a big, exciting cloud opportunity on your hands… there is a high probability that you won’t even be able to get in touch with the sales rep from a major hyperscaler. That certainly won’t be an issue with us.

What are you most excited to work on?

I’ve mentioned it a couple of times earlier, but being able to help partners reinvent themselves with the cloud or further expand on their strengths really energizes me. There is no debating that the market has a huge need for scalable cloud storage – everyone knows that. However, very few cloud vendors actually have the product and even fewer have the GTM that allows the partner community to tap into that opportunity.

This is a unique opportunity that I am thrilled to be a part of – finding inspiration every day certainly isn’t a problem for the Wasabi Channel Team!

As Wasabi continues to evolve to meet the needs of our channel partners, we’ll need inspiring, creative minds like Dean’s to keep us on the cutting edge and continue to deliver the best cloud storage in the universe.

Be sure to chat with Dean at Wasabi’s VeeamON virtual booth on Wednesday June 17!