INTERVIEW Simon Aldous - EMEA
“Many resellers today just do not understand digital transformation (DX) but we see the reseller challenge as
one of ‘embrace DX or die’...” Simon Aldous, Head of Channels EMEA, Dropbox
Persistent
Content and
Collaboration
Like many others, I have
Simon Aldous,
Head of
Channels EMEA
at Dropbox
Ian Hunter met up with Dropbox’s Head of Channels for EMEA, Simon Aldous, to discuss the company’s channel
strategy, challenges in the channel his vision for Dropbox and their partners for the next year
been a Dropbox user
almost from their 2007
beginnings. I even recall
who recommended the service
to me; Jim Robertson, at
the time of ScanSource and
latterly with NEC prior to his
retirement.
Here’s a couple of other facts;
since then the number of users
has grown exponentially from
one million in April 2009 to over
500 million today. Secondly,
my wife and I progressed to
the paid for Plus service a few
years ago; she to back up her
rapidly growing Ebay business
les – pictures and text mostly,
and myself for everything I have
written and photographed over
the last 20-years.
Being happy campers, I was
pleased therefore to be able to
formerly discuss business with
one of our key service providers.
Simon Aldous is steeped in
channel service have spent time
with Tech Data, Microsoft,
Ingram Micro and other
players before joining Dropbox
two and a half years ago.
WHAT IS DROPBOX’S CHANNEL
PROPOSITION? (WHERE IT WAS,
WHERE IT IS AT AND WHERE IT IS
GOING IN THE FUTURE)
When we started Dropbox
Business (Plus today) four years
ago we established a direct sales
team across the US and quickly
discovered a lot of accounts
preferred to source applications
via a trusted reseller channel so
we set up a channel operation
and began to build it out
worldwide. is year we signed
our 10,000th channel partner so
we’ve have made good progress.
We o er partners something
unique and di erent; ease
of use and great technology
that can be used on any
device that addressed user
business challenges. Dropbox
Plus is more than storage
management; we call it a
‘Persistent Content and
Collaboration Platform’ and
it is a constituent part of a
digital transformation journey
that enables the management
of data and content. It can
connect natively to any
application, say, 365, Salesforce
and Slack with all data saved
and shared with permissions
and version management which
makes it very e cient for team
working – you can begin and
complete work ows within
Dropbox.
Our ethos on security of
data is ‘Be worthy of trust’
so we have bank level of
encryption and have industry
standards implemented.
With regards to data location
we have sites in the US and
Frankfurt for the EU market.
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE
MAJOR CHALLENGES THAT HE
SEES IMPACTING THE CHANNEL
RIGHT NOW?
Many resellers today just
do not understand digital
transformation (DX) but we
see the reseller challenge as one
of ‘embrace DX or die’; it’s the
di erence between survive and
thrive and a position where
reseller have to become cloud
savvy. e cloud and the ‘as a
Service’ model has imposed a
new nancial model on resellers
which many have resisted.
However, the cloud has
been around a while now and
many resellers were ‘born in
the cloud so full get DX and
the nancial model.
AND LOOKING AHEAD…?
Arti cial intelligence and
machine learning will create
an enormous quantity of data
and will also play a part in the
ongoing development of our
product. Vendors today have
recognised that life is not just
about selling SKUs (Stock
Keeping Units is an inventory
management term/jargon)
it’s more about what can our
product do for the customer.
Dropbox is in a good position
for this.
We are a member of the
Cloud Industry Forum in the
UK and at a recent members
meeting where it was apparent
that a commonly held belief
existed that, despite what
Microsoft might say, holds that
we are not ready for AI just yet
and that the need instead is for
education on the topic to set
realistic expectations.
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