Todd Palmer, vice president of Americas Channels at NetApp, told me that the company currently has 16% of the midmarket storage space and is stealing share using the strength of the NetApp brand.

NetApp partners seem pleased with the change, which Palmer said was a reaction to partner and customer needs.

“It provides a great competitive answer to EMC and to the wider competition at the mid-entry level,” said Shawn Hamby, director of engineering at Integrated Archive Systems.  “A full featured system with a decent amount of controller horsepower will be well received.”

NetApp partner David Hekimian, CTO of Trace3 agreed that the new products fill a need seen by channel partners.

“I needed a NetApp FAS2000 that could scale up and allow me to get my foot in the door,” said Hekimian.

He shared that the previous iteration of the FAS2000 didn’t have all the features, but the new release has given customers a smaller platform with all the features.

The FAS2040 has limitations around interface connectivity and internal drives. These include choosing between  either the onboard 1 GB Ethernet or 4 GB FC and no PCI slot expansion. Use of the internal drives limits what can be done with those drives after an upgrade. The FAS2240 is an improvement, according to Hekimian, with the available expansion slot for additional interfaces, 10 GB Ethernet or 8 GB FC. It can also be converted into a shelf that could connect to another controller.

“Making a lower-end offering more feature rich allows SMBs to take advantage of enterprise features and bring them one step closer in designing a flexible, scalable and more reliable architecture” said Hekimian.

And, he explained, as the customer needs to scale up, the head can be replaced, making the system go from the 2000 series to the 3000, 4000 or 6000 series and keep the customer disks and avoid data migration.

The most common midmarket use for the new system Hamby said, is multiple protocols and applications such as Exchange, VMware and SQL server deploying on the system.

“A typical midmarket company can deploy two or three of these applications on a single NetApp system, providing economies of scale and ease of management,” he said.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Leah Rosin at lrosin@techtarget.com, or follow us on Twitter.

Before this, all VCE VARs wanting to source Vblocks worked with Cisco, EMC and VMware if they already had a direct relationship with those VCE parent companies–to get the components they needed shipped to VCE for assembly and integration. VCE then shipped the finished Vblock to the customer.

Or they ordered the components through their normal Cisco, EMC or VMware distribution partner which then shipped the piece-parts off  to VCE for assembly. VCE then shipped the finished Vblock to the customer.

If the VAR typically sourced some components direct from the vendor and some through distribution, they  ordered from their usual source and then those sources shipped the components to VCE…You get thepicture.

Now, all VCE partners will submit their orders for the whole, entire Vblock to the VCE-authorized distributor of choice, who then processes the order, financing and handles the reporting. That distributor then places the order to VCE which, per usual, assembles and ships the integrated Vblock to the customer, according to Pete Koliopoulos, VP of global partner marketing and programs for VCE.

One VCE partner was encouraged by this news. He and others said the old Vblock ordering process required several deal registration processes and a lot of back-and-forth with the various vendors about component availability etc. That, in turn, sometimes facilitated channel conflict as one of the vendors’ sales reps would try to take part of the Vblock sale direct to meet quota.

This distribution deal really matters, he said. It can help with availability, help the VAR meet its volume commitments with the distributor and “ultimately we hope that they will allow the distie then us to do the integration instead of them,” he noted via email.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

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Here’s the news, posted today.

“As a result of this combination, all product integration and development, pre-sales and support now falls under the reorganized VCE. All VCE-certified solutions are delivered and supported as a single integrated offering with one VCE point of contact for support. The Acadia brand has been retired as a result of this combination and rebrand.”

 

VCE VARs hope the new entity will iron out channel conflict they’ve seen with some of the VCE parent sales forces. (The original VCE Coalition  was launched in November 2009 by Cisco, EMC and VMware.)

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This is a case where the news is not really news–we’ve heard this was coming for quite some time.

The other “news” coming out of today’s call, hosted by Pete Koliopoulos  the designated VCE channel guy, is that “services are for partners.”

That message is welcome and partners hope it has the added advantage of being true!

Let us know what you think about this post; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com, or follow us on twitter.

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Data center VARs really want the VCE Coalition to get its sales act together soon and some hope for news along those lines Dec. 14 when coalition execs will talk about what’s going on with the VCE Partner Program, go-to-market plans and training.  

Almost everyone agrees that business customers are interested in Vblocks. The bundles of EMC storage, VMware virtualization and Cisco servers definitely get a look from data center pros looking to upgrade aging infrastructure and consolidate hardware.

But actual deals lag that interest and will continue to do so until the VCE coalition, soon to be the VCE Company, get’s it sales-and-channel house in order.

Several VCE VARs say they’ve run into channel conflict in the field, where someone affiliated with VCE tries to take the deals they have been working on direct. What’s not exactly clear is who the guilty parties are.

One VAR said he’s seen deals percolating nicely until the EMC sales rep gets wind that  X hundred thousand dollars worth of EMC storage is slated to go out as part of a Vblock. Since the rep is not compensated as well for storage bundled that way, guess what ? He pushes the customer into buying it separately.

The VAR said it’s easy to see why given how aggressively EMC “quotas” its sales force each quarter. He’s hearing that the VCE (and by extension EMC) is working to make sure that those EMC reps will make out equally well whether the storage sells solo or as part of a Vblock. Something definitely has to happen on the sales incentive side to stop the bleeding.

Tick tock on that.

One EMC executive denied outright that EMC sales guys are the culprits but said some VCE folks are taking deals direct.

A second VCE partner said it would be extremely interesting if VCE is poaching deals on its own since, technically, it has no sales force. But it does have that weird Acadia services unit that might have been getting feisty. Acadia, though, is going away.

Asked whether the deal poachers were on the VCE or EMC or Cisco staffs, still another VAR shrugged. “Who the hell knows WHO  these guys are working for?”  

It’s true, the bulk of VCE employees are “on loan” from Cisco and EMC, so things are clear as mud.

The EMC exec who said VCE people were the ones misbehaving has great faith that Michael Capellas, he of Compaq fame, will fix the sales-and-channel situation. Capellas was brought in to head Acadia, but is now the de facto head of VCE, apparently.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com, or follow us on twitter.

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Isilon specializes in what it calls scale-out network attached storage (NAS.)

Ever since Hewlett-Packard outdueled Dell to buy 3Par earlier this fall,  speculation has swirled that othersmaller storage vendors, including Seattle-based Isilon, were in play.

For VARs that often seek out smaller, nimbler vendors vs. technology giants that can be direct-sales focused, this is not necessarily good news.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com, or follow us on twitter.

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Lately Nexsan’s hit the radar screen in this respect.  Nexsan is seeing phenomenal success recruiting new VARs (including  Sun storage partners) for its Assureon archiving appliances. Perhaps more important, it seems to be keeping existing VARs happy and profitable.

For one thing, the margins are solid. Generally, a storage VAR hopes for 20% margin on product sales: Nexsan ups the ante to 30%. Then there’s an aggressive SPIFF program for sales reps and sales engineers, said one source close to the company

Above and beyond margin, basically, for every $25,000 worth of product sold, there’s $1,000 spiff for the sales rep and $500 for the sales engineer.

 Skip Gould, CEO of BrightPlanIT,a Buffalo-based systems integrator, has sold the entire Nexsan product line for a few years, moving probably a million dollar’s worth of product.

Gould likes the technology and the energy efficiency of the line.  “In terms of density and green-ness it’s great for many customers who don’t have a lot of power left in their data centers but who still need more storage.” Assureon packs 84 terabytes onto a four-U rack, he said.

He also said the partner program is well thought out and executed. “They have one of the better deal registration programs in the business. It works the way it’s supposed to–I think we’ve had one conflict in six years.”

 Scott Mellegaard is another true believer. “They treat their partners really well. We had one conflict over the years where two partners registered the deal. Nexsan completely freaked out and wrote us a check to cover the difference between our quote for the customer and what the cost would be and we got an apology from the president,: said Mellegaard, data center specialist for 3rpco, a Scottsdale, Arizona, ERP specialist.

Assureon competes very well with EMC’s Centera line, several VARs said. “This will be a great elephant hunting season in IT…with only four or five Nexsan VARsper market, we can go out there, and replace those boxes,” Mellegaard said.

In his view, a 56-terabyte Assureon box and Centera are dollar-for-dollar equal but installation with Assureon takes a day and a half vs. 30 days for EMC.

That’s because Nexsan does a ton of custom preconfiguration so the Assureon appliances arrive pretty much ready to roll.

“It’s all baked and done. The hardest thing about Assureon is knowing what you’re policies will be, how long do you hold this type of data vs. that type of data? Theses IT guys often have no idea. You’re not training them on assembling the product, you’re talking to them about wht they want their policies to be,” Mellegaard said.

Once the VAR gets the PO, he goes to the business owner and runs through a series of scenarios. “Do you want this [type of data] encrypted or not? Do you want it held for 30, 90, days or one year, ten years?  Do you want to save every version or the last two versions? How do you want to ingest the data?”

Once the box is ready, the VAR sends the intended IP addresses to the factory, and the checklist of policies is loaded. Then the quick on-site install.

Robert Niemeyer, director of business development at Epoch Concepts, a Lone Tree, Colo. government integrator is a convert.  

Nexsan can be a strategic vendor for companies wanting to reduce their storage costs, he said.  “It helps lead a conversation about minimizing some of the expense and complexity of storage. Assureon does a great job archiving data and, in doing that, it doesn’t ‘get rid’ of EMC but is an inexpensive way to allow customers to buy less EMC,” Niemeyer said.

Assureon offers partners a livable margin, is a solid product inexpensively priced and targets unstructured data, which is a hot part of the market,” he noted.

Let us know what you think about this post; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com, or follow us on twitter.

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George Fandos, vice president of global data center for Weston’s Comstor Worldwide operation, says the centers are meant to help accelerate adoption of converged data center technologies being advocated and designed by several of the distributor’s key vendor partners, notably Cisco, NetApp, EMC, VMware, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Solution providers can either visit the center live or access technologies remotely.

“Those with data center practices will be able to go in and debate what is best for their customers. See how technologies coexist with different servers in the converged data center environment,” says Fandos.

Access to the LEAP Center is available to any qualified solution provider who buys through Westcon, according to Fandos. The main intent is to help accelerate adoption of these evolving technologies, both on the part of solution providers and end-user customers, he says.

This is actually the second LEAP center; the first one was opened in Brussels and additional facilities are planning for Singapore and Sydney, according to Fandos.

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Recurring rumors have Cisco giving up all pretense at some point (John Chambers: ” Ah heck, let’s just get this over with!”) and buying EMC outright.

The newly-announced hydra-headed Cisco-EMC-VMware alliance wasn’t THAT but it was still pretty interesting. All I could think as the channel chiefs from the three companies did their best to position this thing as good for VARs, was that if I were HP, I’d sure as hell start pushing Microsoft Hyper-V with both hands. HP and Microsoft are clearly best buds again even though HP still counts VMware as a strategic partner–at least on paper.

After all, Cisco started this mess, when it decided to jump into  the middle of the data center server business–basically slapping HP with a white glove.

EMC, Cisco, VMware put their channel guys on the phone yesterday to pitch how this joint effort really does require partners to put the solutions together.  VMware’s Ben Matheson did his best to say that VMware’s position with other hardware partners will be unaffected.

“We have great partnerships with HP, Dell, NetApp and otehrs. This [deal] won’t impact those at all. We want to continue to parnter with them. vBlock is very exciting but it is in no way exclusive and we won’t ignore partners,” he said.

We know they have to say these things, but the closed-captioning was “Yeah, right.”

Both parties in this food fight are contorting themselves to have it both ways.

 HP claims its tightly converged computing gear brings the benefits of that integration but does not foreclose use of third party components. VMware says little things like corporate ownership and a very special relationship with Cisco does not mean it will stint Cisco competitors.

The answer appears to be as soon after Jan. 2, 2010 as possible.

That’s the magic date when former EMC guy David Donatelli gets his handcuffs taken off. Said one HP insider: “I would expect to see news around that [converged hardware] pretty soon after January 2.”

When Donatelli left EMC for HP, he was enjoined from taking part in HP’s storage business for a year. So he forged ahead with servers and networking hardware  a la the Hewlett-Packard ProCurve Blade Switches . Since HP has all the pieces–including storage–one might have expected it to fill in that slot. But apparently that will wait for nagging legal issues to evaporate.

Then all eyes will be on Cisco, which stuffs its own networking hardware and new-self branded server into its enclosures and has a tight alliance with–you guessed it–EMC on storage.