DataCore Software‘s CEO and president, George Teixeira, said the company’s last two quarters were its “best ever.” And now, to keep the momentum going, the company has expanded its partnerships by adding Ingram Micro and Tech Data as its newest distributors.
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based storage virtualization software vendor uses a two-tier distribution model and does business in both the U.S. and Canada. Before entering into a distribution agreement with both Tech Data’s Advanced Infrastructure Solutions (AIS) division and Ingram Micro earlier this month, DataCore distributed its solutions through Alternative Technologies and Lifeboat Distribution.
In about a year’s time, Teixeira said the company has been able to increase its partner base through distribution from about 25 to 30 partners in the U.S. to about 100. In Canada, the partner base has increased from 12 to 25. The new distribution partnerships will mean significant partner increases and more North American presence, Teixeira adds.
“The addition of Tech Data and Ingram Micro will increase those (partner) numbers because (these distributors) have a much broader scope and they’ll give us tremendous reach into Canada in areas we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to cover,” he said. “They’ll help us expand in terms of training and by having more resources too.”
Although Teixeira would not comment on just how much revenue he’s expecting to come out of its new distribution partnerships, he did say, “These kinds of companies don’t typically get involved in deals unless they see a $1 million plus revenue stream coming in.”
John Sloan, a senior research analyst specializing in infrastructure, consolidation, servers and storage at London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, says DataCore’s storage virtualization solutions bode well in terms of opportunities for the channel.
“Disaster recovery and support for server consolidation, which often takes the form of virtualization, are the triggers for investing in SAN,” Sloan said. “Server virtualization and storage virtualization tends to go hand in hand and in terms of market size, the smaller and mid-sized companies have been the biggest growth area for network storage in support of virtualization.”
Both distributors will be stocking DataCore’s full software line of solutions across North America, including the company’s SANmelody business continuity solution package. Teixeira says this is a software-based SAN solution that’s ideal for any partner who’d like to get its feet wet in the storage virtualization market space. The solution offers businesses automated storage management, high-availability, disaster recovery, thin provisioning and continuous data protection capabilities. In addition, he says the solution is completely transparent, which enhances the SANmelody’s automatic failover and failback features.
LeftHand Networks, which was acquired by HP last year and EqualLogic, which was also purchased by Dell in the same year, are perhaps DataCore’s closest competitors in the low-end, grid-type storage virtualization space, Sloan said.
“It’s hard to say who’s DataCore’s main competitors because it depends on which market they’re in,” he said. “DataCore’s focus is on software, while LeftHand Networks and EqualLogic did that and hardware. But these companies compete when you talk about the grid-type solutions that cluster to form a virtual pool,” he adds.
A differentiating feature with DataCore products, Teixeira says, is that partners are able to go into their customers to utilize existing storage.
“The benefit with DataCore software is partners can help their customers use their existing storage to turn it into high-availability storage for virtual servers,” Teixeira said. “Especially with the economy now, instead of trying to sell ‘new’ storage all the time, it’s now about doing more with less without having to buy a lot of new storage.”