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With the entire industry gunning for a pie of the SMB market, Network
Appliances (NetApp) has also decided gear up for the opportunity. By June 2008,
the company will be ready with its StoreVault S500 suite of products for SMB
customers.
Till three years ago, NetApp India was directly going to its customers. But
since it started working with the channel, it signed up with the tier-1 solution
providers (SPs) like Wipro. Now with the SMB product line, the company has
started working in tier-2 channel organizations that have storage selling as
their skill set.
Worldwide, the company is running a channel partner program called VIP, which
is divided into three levels-Platinum Elite, Platinum and Gold. With the SMB
thrust, a new category Silver, will be added to accommodate the tier-2 partners.
“We have started talking to several SPs in the metros and
A-class cities and will work with them proactively this year, to change the
perception that NetApp only has products for the enterprises. We realize that
the SMB is a significant customer vertical and we will aggressively entrench
ourselves in this arena,” said Soumitra Agarwal, Director-Marketing, NetApp
India.
One reason why there are not too many SPs willing to invest in the storage
technologies is because of the high gestation period before a deal is signed. On
an average, storage consolidation or management deals can take around three to
18 months before finalization. Not too many partners have the bandwidth to
sustain the account for so long.
“This is why, we will work with the partners to close the deals in the SMB
space in less time period. We have a direct pre-sales team which will make joint
call with the SPs, increasing the chances of an earlier closure,” explained
Agarwal.
Data management is becoming increasingly crucial for the customers, who are
looking at storage consolidation to get better return on investment (RoI) on
their IT investments. Plus, with storage costs going down, a lot more SMB
clients were willing to invest in the technology to better manage their data.
Other players like IBM and HP had realized earlier on and rolled out
specially tailored products for the SMB customers trimming out features that
they did not need and thereby lowering its total cost. Page(s) 1
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