Arrow ECS adds Butterfly to Fusion as SaaS portfolio grows

The soon to be announced Arrow ECS “Butterfly” SaaS offers a similar deep reporting and analysis tool for large IBM based tape backup environments to help reduce costs or improve operational performance. Butterfly will also follow a “pay as you go” model similar to Storage Fusion.

Pearce has been quite outspoken about SaaS in the past and equates the firm’s new strategy as “putting a toe in the water” as in his view, many of the emerging business models around SaaS and cloud computing are still unproven. “What we are saying to our partners is they need to become cloud ready”. He believes that its first two SaaS offerings are both relatively low risk for both partners and customers to trial.

Arrow has initially engaged with 10 partners to promote Storage Fusion and will be approaching its roster of IBM partners with Butterfly.  In total, Pearce believes a target group of around 400 resellers are suited to delivering its emerging services portfolio which he hints is likely to grow if these initial forays are successful.

In the US, Arrow ECS which is part of Arrow Electronics Inc, recently launched its first cloud service under the Arrow Fusion brand. Although Pearce points out that the names are purely a coincidence as Storage Fusion will only initially be available in the UK.