Scale Computing has launched its first formal partner program aimed at bolstering revenue opportunities for resellers in the midsize enterprise market. At the heart of the program is Scale Computing’s HC3 product, which integrates servers, storage and virtualization in a single platform.
The program is aimed at giving channel partners the ability to offer midsize enterprises a product platform for rolling out virtualization and private cloud environments, as well asother value-added services.
HC3 was designed from the ground up for the midmarket, delivering the efficiency of virtualization and the security of a private cloud without the complexity and cost of traditional virtualization technology, according to the company. It provides everything in one box—including provisioning, one-touch configuration, integrated compute/storage and automated capacity management.
The platform eliminates software licenses and the need for additional hardware. It also offers built-in redundancy, high availability and scalability. With HC3, channel partners can help their midmarket customers simplify their infrastructure at the price and performance points that meet their requirements.
“Scale Computing’s channel program focuses on full partner competency in the midmarket,” said Doug Howell, channel director. “The midmarket is a multibillion-dollar opportunity, and we want to help our channel partners deliver the right solution to this market. HC3 is an excellent foundational platform that is budget-friendly for the channel customer and margin-rich for the partner.”
HC3 offers additional avenues of future channel services revenue, while preserving a lot more of the customer’s budget for partner services, he added.
“Our channel’s customers are doing more with less; budgets are being cut, and IT staff is being reduced, but the demands of the business continue to grow,” said Vanessa Alvarez, head of marketing at Scale Computing. “We see so many different areas being affected, whether it is BYOD [bring-your-own-device], server consolidation or tablets entering the workplace. All of these things are inundating the infrastructure environments today.”
Many existing midmarket IT environments are made up of “hobbled-together solutions” that IT is forced to either upgrade or deal with the “same hodge-podge infrastructure” because they were trying to put a band-aid on the problem, said Alvarez. As a result, IT is constantly in a reactive mode, and the midmarket doesn’t have time to manage this type of environment, she added.
Contributing to the challenge is the struggle by channel partners to retrofit enterprise solutions for the midmarket. Alvarez said HC3 will drive partner sales by providing the right set of features and functionality required by the midmarket.
The Platinum Partner Program provides resellers with dedicated regional sales and market support, as well as technical training and support. The program offers sales and technical certification so registered partners can be trained to become a HC3 Certified Partner, which includes additional benefits such as business development and marketing planning, “warm” sales leads, knowledge transfers and professional services.
The company also has made it easy for partners to “become comfortable with the technology” through a distance-learning platform for their sales and technical employees. Staff can be brought up to speed very quickly on the technology through the training program and certification process, said Howell.
All partners need to be certified to ensure that they have strong skills related to high-availability disaster recovery, and that they are comfortable talking to customers about virtualization and cloud strategies. “We want to make sure that the partner is competent to have high-availability disaster recovery conversations with their customers,” Howell added.
Gina Roos, a Channel Insider contributing writer, specializes in technology and the channel.