EMC makes DD160 deduplication storage system exclusive to channel

In a move designed to expand the SME and mid-market opportunities for its partners, storage giant, EMC, has launched its Data Domain DD160 deduplication storage system as a channel-only product.

EMC hopes that by making the EMC DD160 a channel-only product, it will lead to new market opportunities in the SME sector.

The DD160 is the entry product in EMC’s Data Domain range and has been positioned as the replacement for the prior DD140 model.

“The DD140 was a fairly small capacity product with a low feature set that we used to put into remote offices in order to do back-ups and replicate the data off-site, so it was always in a fairly large customer environment that could afford multiple premises,” EMC A/NZ backup and recovery systems marketing manager, Mike Sparkes, said.

For Sparkes, the DD160 is notable because it is capable of having five times the capacity of the outgoing model and twice the speed at a 20 per cent lower cost.

“It effectively becomes a whole new market space by itself because it’s large enough to be a standalone, complete back-up solution, so we can bring all of the benefits that enterprises have been getting from de-duplication to a small user now at a low cost,” he explained.

EMC made the DD160 channel-only to eliminate the cost of sale from EMC and offer a product that has a low entry price point and make it a viable business for its small resellers.

“That will allow them to concentrate on dealing with their customers, with whom they have their relationship, probably better than the vendor EMC does, without being concerned of any interference from anywhere else,” Sparkes added.

While Sparkes said that the revenue for the initiative is not expected to “take off immediately”, he claimed there is potential for significant, incremental revenue growth.

“What we want to do is address some of the recent issues of local SMB users who don’t believe they’re getting serviced properly or getting the appropriate products from the hardware vendors,” he said.

“We believe that we have the appropriate product, and rather than pretending that we can develop a one-on-one relationship with everybody in the country, we think that working through the resellers with whom they deal with everyday will be good for the end user and develop a good reseller model.”

Based on these predictions, Sparkes expects to see incremental revenue from DD160 that could be “as high as 50 per cent" of Data Domain revenue.

EMC recently launched its new Campaign-in-a-Box program for affiliate and affiliate elite partners to participate in.