Backups and data protection are concerns for businesses of all sizes. Ransomware, data corruption, and infrastructure failures make secure backups a must. If you provide IT solutions to your clients, becoming a cloud backup reseller lets you offer much-needed services that can be a valuable revenue source.
What Is a Cloud Backup Reseller?
Cloud backup resellers provide clients with cloud backup services from a third party and earn commission for the sales they generate. Resellers don’t need to have their own cloud infrastructure, and they can resell access to their program provider’s infrastructure while testing the market and deciding if they want to invest in their own systems.
The Benefits of Cloud Backup Resellers
Becoming a cloud backup reseller offers several benefits for IT solutions providers, including:
- Cost savings: As a reseller, you can take advantage of the economies of scale and provide affordable backup services to your clients.
- Increased data security for the digital age: Help your clients protect their most valuable resource: Their data.
- Scalability and flexibility: Since resellers don’t need to invest in their own infrastructure, it’s easy to get started and scale up as demand for services grow.
- Improved compliance: Help your clients meet compliance requirements with secure backups.
- Build customer trust: Working with a reliable backup partner positions you as a provider your clients can trust with their infrastructure and data.
If you’re looking for backup solutions for your own business, see our list of cloud backup resellers to find one near you.
Key Features of an Ideal Cloud Backup Reseller Program
If you’d like to provide cloud backup services for your clients, it’s vital that you find a provider you can trust. The following sections go into detail about what you should consider when choosing a cloud backup reseller program.
Reliability and Data Redundancy
Backups are only useful if they’re available when you need them. A good backup solution follows the 3-2-1 Rule. This rule states that:
- You need three different copies of your data (i.e., your original production data and two backups)
- Stored on two different media types
- One copy should be stored offsite
If a backup solution doesn’t follow these best practices, a disaster could take out both your production data and your backups. The 3-2-1 rule is a great starting point for data redundancy and reliability, but upgrading this strategy to the 3-2-1-1-0 rule can help customers stay confident in their backup strategies.
Data Encryption and Security
If your clients back up sensitive data like business secrets or personally identifiable information (PII), those backups must be stored securely and in an encrypted form. Your clients may also be required to comply with HIPAA, COPA, or GDPR regulations, depending on where they do business and the industry they serve.
If you’re a reseller for a backup solutions provider, ensure they comply with major data protection standards as well.
User Friendly Management Interface and Automation
As a reseller, you may work with a variety of clients, some of whom may lack an in-house IT team. Choose a backup provider that offers a user-friendly backup management interface to reduce your tech support burden and increase customer satisfaction.
Ideally, your backup provider should also offer automation tools so your clients can set up a backup schedule and know their data is taken care of.
Customization and White Labeling Options
From a branding point of view, having a white-label option is a big plus. If your solutions provider lets you to add your branding to the product you’re reselling, you can establish your brand as a backup service provider and offer a professional product with minimal upfront investment.
Competitive Pricing and Profit Margins
Resellers often face stiff competition from other resellers. Finding a reseller program that has competitive pricing helps you offer backup products to customers at an appealing price while maintaining sustainable profit margins.
Marketing and Sales Support
Many reseller programs provide an API or a reseller management portal and expect the reseller to market their product with no support. This lack of support combined with the low barrier to entry for reselling services means many resellers will fail to grow into a sustainable business.
Look for a reseller that provides marketing and sales support and gives you a chance to build up a sustainable revenue stream.
Technical Support and Training
Even if you already sell other IT solutions, invest in training to learn more about these backup solutions. Each client will have different needs, and eventually, you may encounter a problem you can’t solve.
Check the technical support policies for the reseller programs you’re thinking of joining, and consider the following:
- How quickly does their technical support team respond to issues?
- What level of support do they provide?
- How confident are you in your ability to provide assistance to your clients?
Choosing the Best Cloud Backup Reseller Program
There are many companies that offer cloud backup services. When choosing a provider, consider the following:
- Pricing tiers
- Storage
- Encryption
- Ransomware protection
- Technical support options
- Brand recognition (if not using a white-label service)
- API integrations
Veeam’s ProPartner Network lets you become a Veeam Value-Added Reseller (VVAR) and market our radically resilient solutions to your clients. You’ll also be able to offer competitive pricing, thanks to our partner discounts on prepaid maintenance and renewals, and benefit from additional incentives as your business grows.
Best Practices for Cloud Backup Reselling
To succeed as a cloud backup reseller, you’ll need a strong business plan to set you apart from your competitors.
Follow these best practices to grow your reseller business.
Target Audience and Market Research
Before you can sell a product, you need to know your target audience. Many startups assume their target audience is simply anyone who needs their product. It’s true that most businesses store data digitally and need to make backups. However, an independent bookkeeper’s needs, goals, and budget vastly differ from those of a school or a large online store, for example.
Conduct thorough market research and choose a target audience you understand. Then, tailor your marketing efforts to address their specific data protection needs and easily make sales.
Choosing the Right Cloud Backup Provider
Finding a reliable cloud backup provider that offers competitive pricing and easy-to-use products will help set your reselling business up for success. If anything goes wrong with the backup product you sell, your reputation could be damaged, especially if you’re using a white-label product.
The bottom line? If you wouldn’t use the backup solution to protect your own data, you shouldn’t entrust it with your client’s data.
Setting up Your Reseller Business
Once you’ve found a cloud backup provider you trust, it’s time to consider how you’ll implement their solutions. Good reseller programs offer partner portals where you can manage client accounts and ensure that each client has a private, separate account.
Verify that each client account is properly encrypted and segregated to comply with privacy and data protection regulations.
Pricing Strategy and Packaging
Your clients’ budget and price sensitivity levels may vary depending on size and industry. Research the pricings offered by other resellers that target similar markets and set your pricing to be competitive while providing a large enough profit margin to keep your business sustainable.
Marketing and Sales Strategies
Plan and target your marketing carefully. Use several marketing techniques, including social media, paid searches, and blogger outreach/content marketing, to generate as many leads as possible. Follow marketing best practices, like only using opt-in email lists.
If you already have a customer base from existing IT services, you may be able to upsell backup solutions to those clients. If you’re starting from scratch, plan to slowly build your customer base.
Differentiation Strategies and Overcoming Competition
Since the barrier to entry for the reseller market is relatively low, you should ensure your marketing materials make your value proposition clear.
Rather than trying to compete on price alone, consider what else you have to offer. Do you provide other IT services so you can market an affordable bundle? Can you provide responsive and helpful technical support? Does the backup provider you’ve partnered with offer unique features?
Work out what makes your product stand out and emphasize that in your marketing materials.
Providing Excellent Customer Support
Once you’ve acquired some customers, be sure to keep them happy. This means 24-hour technical support, proactive communications about upcoming outages or maintenance, and responding to any issues promptly.
If you’re a small business or a one-man band, consider hiring someone to offer after-hours support. In the early days, you may never get a call or message about restoring a backup at 2 a.m. , but when you eventually do, your reputation will depend on how quickly you reply.
Managing Customer Relationships
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Keep them happy, and they may advocate for your business and generate lots of referrals.
Also invest in reputation management and customer service. Reply to reviews, both positive and negative. Engage with customers in forums and on social media and conduct occasional surveys to ensure your customers are happy with what you’re offering. Eventually, your effort will pay off.
Staying Updated With Industry Trends
The IT world is constantly evolving, and the cloud backup industry is no exception. Make time to ensure you’re up-to-date with the latest industry trends. Watch what your backup provider is doing, too. Are they innovating and investing in improving their services so you can better serve your customers?
Success Stories: Inspiring Examples
At Veeam, we’re proud to have a growing family of resellers, including trusted names like Lenovo. Veeam and Lenovo have been strategic partners for a long time, and Lenovo has a reputation for providing reliable hardware. Thanks to our partnership, Lenovo now offers radically resilient data protection for ransomware and multi-purpose workloads. Users of Lenovo HCI platforms and SaaS providers can take advantage of the Lenovo and Veeam partnership to enjoy high-performance, reliable servers and maximum digital resiliency.
Because Veeam offers direct integration with Lenovo V-Series storage, clients benefit from easier automation and fast, high-availability storage that suits any workload and budget. We’re proud to combine their hardware expertise with our backup and automation knowledge.
Future Trends in Cloud Backup Reselling
Cloud backups are increasingly in demand as businesses deal with higher volumes of data and increasingly complex regulatory requirements. In our 2024 Data Protection Trends Report, we noted that ransomware attacks were becoming more frequent. Sadly, that’s not something we expect to see change any time soon, so backups are as important as ever.
In the future, we can expect to see demand for cloud backups increase even more as the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices grows and businesses increasingly rely on edge computing to manage data from IoT devices. We’ll also see advances in sustainable cloud backup solutions to serve clients who are increasingly concerned about energy use.
AI and machine learning technologies are already being employed to augment existing cloud computing solutions, including monitoring security logs or automating certain processes. These practices may also become commonplace in the world of cloud backups.
In 2023, 81% of organizations planned to use cloud services for their data protection strategy. This shows that the demand for cloud backups is strong and likely to continue growing. This makes reselling cloud backup solutions an in-demand service for the foreseeable future.
How Veeam Can Help
Becoming a cloud backup reseller is an effective way to test the waters of the cloud backup industry or offer added value to your existing IT service customers. If you’re interested in reselling cloud backup solutions, the Veeam reseller program offers an easy way to get started with reselling a backup solution from a trusted provider in the world of modern data protection solutions.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a major IT brand that’s looking to augment your existing product line, we’re eager to work with you! Contact us today to learn more about Veeam’s ProPartner Network.
Additional Resources
- Veeam Introduces NEW Competency Program for Veeam Value-Added Resellers and Veeam Cloud & Service Provider Partners
- Veeam Broadens Channel Reseller Program With Ingram Micro Canada
- Veeam Announces New Competencies and Rewards to EMEA ProPartner Program for Value-Added Resellers to Help Support the Growing Demand for Cloud Data Management
