DataCore inks deal with Tech Data

OK, this disty is not even in ANZ, so what is this post doing on this blog?

I thought that there were a few key pieces of information that ought to be brought out and which we'll also likely see as trends here in this market. First and foremost is the fact that "Storage Virtualization as the next Big Thing" has become a reality. Here is what one of their top execs had to say:

"I clearly think we're starting to see the predictions from this time last year come true, that storage virtualization would be the next great frontier," said Pete Peterson, senior vice president and general manager of Tech Data's Advanced Infrastructure Solutions business unit.

Some other key points made in the article quoted by Peterson:

"Think of the basic concept -- you're optimizing your existing infrastructure. If you have an install base of servers and SANs, adding some software to maximize and optimize those infrastructure investments is a big thing,"

and

"This is an area to show some decent growth over the next 12 to 18 months, when you hear hardware business will be flattish to down. Storage is going to be a growth area for us and certainly virtualization continues to grow too."

And a couple more taken directly from the announcement:

"It has become standard practice for organizations to embrace end-to-end virtualization spanning both servers and storage," said Amy Belcher, Tech Data's director of product marketing, Advanced Infrastructure Solutions. "Virtualization technologies are transforming data centers and by adding DataCore to our virtualization ecosystem we are better able to help VARs provide their customers with industry leading virtualization solutions."

And as our own VP of Sales for EMEA and US put it,

"These VARs already understand the benefits of server virtualization, and that they are only able to realize half of the total sale potential by not providing a cost-effective storage virtualization and fault tolerant SAN solution to meet the needs of their server and desktop virtualization customers"

There you have it - if you are selling server virtualization software, but not storage vistualization software, you've only got 1/2 a solution and are could be missing out on a lot of business.