MX Logic: Taking a different approach to the channel 12 December, 2007 By Vanessa Ho

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"It's a testament of how well our program works," said Ken Totura, vice-president of channel sales with MX Logic. "Our route to market is clearly through the channel. While we currently have a hybrid model, we have a passionate desire to continue to increase the percentage of our sales through the channel."

The MX Logic PartnerFocus program enables partners to deliver margin-rich managed services that protect customers from e-mail and Web threats, through a built-to-fit program, dedicated support and sales tools.

MX Logic has over 800 partners, 97 per cent of which are based in North America, 11 per cent of those in Canada. Totura credits Alt-Tech and Ingram Micro as catalysts for the company's growth both in Canada and the U.S. Additionally, MX Logic has 22,000 customers with 80 per cent of those attached to the channel.

Unlike some other partner programs that have bronze, silver and gold levels, MX Logic takes a contrary approach. Totura explained that they look for solution providers based on their ability to handle MSP functions and categorize them accordingly. For example, MX Logic asks if solution providers know how to provision and if they know how to do recurring billing as well as have the infrastructure and personnel to keep up with a recurring subscription model. Also, does the solution provider do 24/7 tier one technical support. If the solution provider relies on MX Logic for those functions then they are placed in its F1 tier. These partners are then paid a commission every month in this tier, which provide partners with incentives to grow their customer base. The F2 tier are for those partners that rely on MX Logic for just support but does the selling and recurring billing themselves and F3 tier partners do it all themselves but use MX Logic solutions to protect their end customers.

"Our program is structured to appeal to anyone of those segments," said Totura. "And when we say revenue is attached, they are generating recurring subscription revenue on their end customer."

He added, "What is attractive about our program and the feedback we get from our partners is that we provide the month-to-month subscription, a low price point, we are simple to do business with, we have money back guaranteed and the fact that we turn our inside sales team into an extension of our VAR's sales force."

In terms of new customers, Totura said that MX Logic attracts those that are in the SMB space but also work on very large enterprise deals.

"You always want to keep those in pipeline and focus on it as that is where all our competitors are, where all the on-premise appliance vendors are. It is an incredible noise level and we had our fair share of wins and continue to pursue [the enterprise market] and provide an enterprise grade product. But the bulk of our new customer acquisition is under 1000 seats."

Totura said that MX Logic is also very attracted to partners who have customers with less than 100 seats because the company has built an infrastructure and support mechanism around scale in the SMB market and there are a lot solution providers that play in that space. He added MX Logic not only goes after the primary markets in Canada and the U.S. but also reaches out to secondary and tertiary markets that might not get the phone calls or welcome reception.

"Even though we recruit very aggressively, we are very sensitive of the oversaturation of a particular geography. We have a lot of remote geographies and a lot of our partners that come on board with us are really in the secondary and tertiary markets and a key amount of their customers, if not all, are a couple of seats or over a hundred seats. We certainly cater to that very nicely and I think that is what [differentiates] us."