Mimecast Triples Size of U.S. Partner Base

Mimecast Ltd. has tripled the size of its U.S. partner base in the past year and aims for a 100% North America channel focus within the next 18 months.

Since extending its global partner program in North America earlier this year, Mimecast is focused on offering its partners resources and support needed to integrate its cloud solutions within their offerings and strengthen their business.

Currently, Mimecast has a customer renewal rate of 97% and experienced nearly 70% year-over-year growth in active partners, which included adding new partners Softchoice, SHI, KiZAN, Bear Data Solutions and FusionStorm.

At this time, the U.S. channel accounts for 24% of North American revenue and the company plans to accelerate this growth across all regions, with a targeted focus on growing partners within the healthcare and legal industries.

Channel momentum also follows hires including Sean Broderick, VP of channel, North America, who previously held partnership roles at Iron Mountain and Autonomy and joined Mimecast last year to expand the North American partner base.

Additionally, Mimecast plans to expand the U.S. team by 50% within the next year.

"Organizations need secure cloud solutions that enable them to quickly scale their business operations," said Kevin Wright, CIO of Softchoice Corp. and chief architect of Softchoice Cloud. "Our cloud management platform combined with Mimecast’s cloud portfolio gives our team the resources to design and implement comprehensive, secure and compliant cloud solutions that best meet our customers’ data management and storage needs. With Mimecast, we can not only provide the unique expertise and resources to help our customers reduce their IT infrastructure costs, but also gain the flexibility and partner protection to expand our business into new markets."

Since establishing its North American presence in 2007, Mimecast’s U.S. channel program is committed to helping partners build recurring revenue streams, protect partners with Mimecast’s poacher’s penalty and drive business growth with high margin opportunities and renewal protection. In addition to full access to entire cloud-based unified email management portfolio backed by a 100% SLA on availability, partners also gain training resources, marketing support and access to the partner portal, which includes on-demand tools needed to simplify deal registration and provide customer support.

"Our partner program is becoming the cornerstone to our growth within North America, fuelled by Mimecast’s recent funding and growth announced earlier this month," said Broderick. "As companies look to incorporate cloud solutions within their offerings, choosing a partner they can trust and that offers a full portfolio of services and support is critical. Our channel program is designed to help partners build long-term growth strategies and enable partners to offer secure cloud services, provide more comprehensive solutions to their customers as well as identify new revenue channels to drive business growth."

Mimecast was also honored as the 2012 Microsoft Innovative Customer Advocacy Partner of the year and was recognized for demonstrating excellence in implementation of customer solutions, developing trusted partnerships and building proactive relationship management programs.

Globally, Mimecast has more than 500 partners and experienced the equivalent of 170% year-over-year growth in active partners compared to the previous four years.

In addition to the new partners mentioned previously, current Mimecast partners and alliances include HP, NaviSite, Binary Tree and SoftwareONE.