SpectraLogic’s chief sales officer, Brian Grainger
The channel can leverage on offering professional services when it comes to the Cloud, and anyone left still selling tin is limiting their opportunities, says SpectraLogic’s chief sales officer, Brian Grainger.
His company focuses on four key areas that also happen to be large data growth groups – media and entertainment, video surveillance, high-performance computing industries, and general IT businesses such as banks and MSPs, and manufacturers.
“As people, especially within these industries, start to build private Clouds or backup-as-a-service, it generates more demand for storage. Cloud is the subset of all the verticals and almost every company is aware of the Cloud and is looking for ways to utilise it,” he said.
As such, Grainger believes that channel partners should move away from just selling tin or hardware.
“The more successful ones are the partners that are investing heavily on the services side – professional services, as well as in pre-sales and post-sales. Network design is another service they can provide.”
SpectraLogic has also launched new solutions to the market. The first, ArcticBlue, leverages the company’s existing BlackPearl hybrid storage architecture and Shingled Magnetic Recording media to create an object storage based disk platform.
“Customers want more solutions from us that they can utilise in both disk and tape technologies. So, we’re shifting away from being a hardware provider to more of a solutions provider.
“As companies move towards the Cloud, be it public or private, they need an infrastructure behind them that can understand that topology. It takes a tape company to understand how to maximise the benefits of disk but reduce cost. We’ve also had to look for new channel partners in adopting this strategy,” Grainger said.
He also indicated the launch of Verde DPE, a Shingled Magnetic Recording-based network attached storage disk platform that aims to deliver high-density bulk storage. Grainger said it maximises system performance while lowering costs.
“The channel should be focusing on capex versus opex savings, the need for them to keep data, etc. instead of just selling the solutions. At the end of the day, it’s about the benefits it brings rather than just the sheet metal.
“The channel partners that understand that will be able to move into the professional services engagement quicker,” he added.
Grainger also indicated that going forward, the company will continue investing in research and development in the tape storage space.
“I’ve been hearing for 25 years that the tape business is going away – it isn’t and it will never go away for one very important fact; there’s no other technology where businesses can get large amounts of data volume in a long-term retention for an affordable cost. And data’s not going anywhere,” he added.
ArcticBlue will begin shipping in December this year.
