Relationships with vendors ‘seal the deal’ for resellers

Relationships and the ease of doing business are key elements for the channel when selecting their vendor of choice, according to the results of Tandberg Data’s 2009 partner survey.

Out of the 100 channel partners that shared their views on trends and developments in the SME storage market, 98 percent of channel partners questioned said that this is important to very important. However, in the current challenging economic climate, pricing and discounts/rebates are becoming increasingly important; more than 90 percent of the respondents indicated that this is an important criteria.

“Selling is all about relationships,” says Chris Reeves, at Northamber, distributor of Tandberg Data Solutions in the UK. “It’s about relationships with our customers and, in turn, with our vendors...relationships seal the deal. That’s what makes you walk that extra mile when closing deals.”

As customers are struggling with increased data volumes, system performance and availability demands, finding reliable storage solutions that meet their requirements is a challenge. This year’s survey showed that customers are looking for products with long warranty periods and advanced replacement offerings. In the current economic climate, the survey shows that end users are less likely to pay the more expensive on-site service contracts.

In the past years, the industry has seen the introduction and success of tiered storage in the SMB market, with disk taking a vital role in backup and archiving scenarios. The survey confirmed that 81 percent of end users are opting for disk based backup – in the form of NAS (33 percent), Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape (28 percent) or Virtual Tape (20 percent). Requirements for disk are ease of integration and use and scalability. LTO tape technology and tape automation remain the archiving method of choice for most end users – tape is moving into an archival role. In the archiving arena, scalability and upgradeability are key requirements for tape automation solutions.
 
“Comparing the 2009 research with the 2007 research, we have seen a shift in the way end users do their backup and archiving,” says Bharat Kumar, vice president of marketing and strategy at Tandberg Data. “In line with industry predictions, our channel partners reported that end users are moving away from tape for backup. Instead they are looking for easy to use, scalable disk based backup solutions such as our recently introduced DPS1000 Series VTL. They are also telling us that end users¬ are moving away from disk for archiving – instead choosing to use the more economical, ‘no-power-medium’ – tape – which provides them with secure, cost effective, long term archiving.”