Big Data 'Wrangler' Trifacta Launches Channel Program For Reseller, Consulting And Technology Partners

Data preparation software vendor Trifacta has launched its first formal channel partner program and is setting goals to double the number of reseller, consulting and technology partners it works with in the next year.

Trifacta, founded in 2012, is also looking to grow the percentage of its sales in which the partner makes the sale and supports the product to more than 50 percent.

"It's important for us to aggressively embrace the partner ecosystem," said CEO Adam Wilson in an interview with CRN before Tuesday's unveiling of the program. "We see the partner ecosystem as incredibly critical to the success we've had to date."

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Trifacta, based in San Francisco, develops "data wrangling" software for transforming raw, complex data into clean, structured formats for analysis -- seen as one of the biggest challenges in data analysis processes.

"The biggest barrier in adoption of data science today is shaping raw data for value added analysis," said Asif Hasan, a co-founder of Quantiphi, a Marlborough, Mass.-based solution provider that resells Trifacta's software. Trifacta's technology "enables us to help our clients overcome this barrier and harness the full potential of big data analytics," he said in a statement.

Trifacta has been working with partners almost since its beginning, and 46 percent of the company's deals today are either "partner-sourced or heavily partner-influenced," Wilson said. Many of the company's most successful customer implementations are cases in which partners combined the Trifacta product with their own best practices and expertise, he added.

Partners use Trifacta's software to help their customers with their big data analytics projects, better matching those projects to use cases and business problems -- often for specific line-of-business users within vertical industries, Wilson said.

"We help customers achieve rapid time to value from their big data investments by building new insights from their data," said David Bennett, CEO of Excelerate Systems, a Redmond, Wash.-based solution provider. Excelerate partners with Trifacta, reselling its data-wrangling technology to provide a range of services to build big data systems on a number of industry-leading platforms, Bennett said in a statement.

The company has lacked a formal partner program before now, as it negotiated deals and provided partner benefits and referral fees on an ad hoc basis. The new Wrangler Partner Program formalizes relationships with existing partners, providing rules of engagement and structured incentives.

As Trifacta ramps up its sales and marketing efforts, demand from other regions of the globe, including Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Europe, is also driving the need for a global partner program, Wilson said. "We're now getting interest from all parts of the globe."

Trifacta's stable of partners consists of resellers, consulting partners and technology vendors. Consulting partners are professional services firms that work with Trifacta's software to help customers design, assemble and manage their analytical processes. Technology partners include independent software vendors, Software-as-a-Service companies, and providers of development and analytics tools who integrate or bundle Trifacta with their own products.

Last month, Trifacta revealed a reseller relationship with Infosys, the giant IT services and consulting company, under which Infosys is selling Trifacta's software as part of its Infosys Information Platform.

Altogether, the company has more than 50 partners today and Wilson expects to double that in the next 12 months. The CEO also expects the majority of international sales to be through the channel, and he would like to see the percent of deals sourced and supported through partners to exceed 50 percent.

The Wrangler Partner Program will provide a broad range of partner enablement services, including training and certification (both online and classroom), sales and pre-sales assistance, sales referrals, joint business and marketing planning, co-branded marketing materials and other collateral assets, technical support, development and demonstration licenses, and a partner portal with a deal registration system.

Resellers will receive discounts and financial incentives with a 20 percent entry-level margin, increasing based on partner sales volumes and partner commitments, the latter measured by such criteria as a partner's number of trained personnel and its spending on customer support.

Trifacta appears to have the resources to devote to the new channel program: In February, the company raised $35 million in growth-stage financing from Accel Partners, Greylock partners and other private equity firms, bringing its total funding to $76 million.