2008 CRN Channel Champions: Storage
CRN hard drives
Seagate was the top vendor across the board, getting the solution provider thumbs-up in technical criteria, program and support criteria and financial criteria. Seagate scored a 75.9 overall rating, solidly beating No. 2 Western Digital's 75.3 and far ahead of No. 3 Storage Technologies with a 70.6.
In technical criteria, Seagate, Scotts Valley, Calif., was beat out by No. 2 Western Digital Corp., Lake Forest, Calif., in functionality, availability and price for performance. But its wins in the product quality and reliability criterion, where it scored a 108.2, well ahead of Western Digital's 105.8, as well as interoperability and scalability, gave the vendor a satisfaction rating of 94.2, a .9 point lead over Western Digital.
Seagate's presales support score of 64.3, a full 2.3 point lead over its closest rival, led its win in the program and support criteria. Efforts to manage channel conflict was also a strong area for Seagate, which is especially important in a year when it was digesting Maxtor, post-acquisition.
In financial criteria, VARs also gave Seagate the highest grades for next year's projected sales increase—there the vendor had a 2.7 point lead over Western Digital. Seagate also won the services attach rate criterion—a factor that is of ever-increasing importance to the channel.
"Seagate has relationships far beyond, from the laptop to the enterprise level," said Ron Robinson, CEO of IT Data Storage, a Kennesaw, Ga.-based solution provider. "They have 15 or 20 products—online, disk-based storage, storage for transaction-based applications."
To add to Seagate's fortune, he said, is timing. With a push toward server consolidation and virtualization, many companies are taking the opportunity to upgrade storage hardware—putting Seagate into a solid position.
Solution providers crowned Hewlett-Packard Co. the 2008 Channel Champion in the network storage category, which includes SAN and NAS, despite a strong showing by its top competitor, IBM Corp.
HP earned a 74.5 overall satisfaction rating in the category, a solid lead over No. 2 IBM's 73.1 and No. 3 Sun StorageTek's 70.8.
The key to Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP's success was the vendor's overwhelming victory in the technical area, where HP swept the field, bolstered by a 6.2 lead over its closest competitor, IBM, in price for performance.
HP eked out a win in the program and support criteria, losing presales and postsales support and relevance of channel program to second-place IBM, Armonk, N.Y., which also bested HP in the financial area.
Patrick Eitenbichler, director of marketing for HP's StorageWorks division, said HP's easy win on the technical side stems from having the market's broadest product portfolio, with products for small businesses to enterprises. That success has most recently been duplicated with the company's new storage blades, including the All-in-One blades for small business customers who have adopted HP's Shorty blade server chassis.
"The only challenge with StorageWorks is to educate customers and partners about the capabilities of our entire storage portfolio," Eitenbichler said. "We get visibility for our printers, notebooks and servers. Storage is not the first thing that comes to mind."
Arlin Sorensen, president of Heartland Technology Solutions, a Harlan, Iowa-based solution provider, said HP's product reliability has been very strong. Sorensen said he has received strong presales and postsales support from HP in the field, going above and beyond what he expected, but their Web-based partner mechanism is klutzy and slow.
Eitenbichler said HP is working on it. During the past nine months, HP has significantly beefed up its customer support team, and simplified the way it works with partners, he said.
Solution providers gave Hewlett-Packard Co. enough thumbs-up in terms of technical, program and support, and financial criteria to enable the vendor to continue its reign as storage management software Channel Champion.
However, the solution providers responding to the 2008 CRN Channel Champions Survey by no means let the Palo Alto, Calif.-based storage vendor walk away with the crown. Instead, they made it clear that vendors such as IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., EMC Corp., Hopkinton, Mass., and Symantec Corp., Cupertino, Calif., were also strong contenders in many areas.
Yet HP still managed to come in with a full 1 point lead ahead of IBM and EMC in the category—HP posted a 73.5 overall satisfaction score to the 72.5 that both IBM and EMC earned. Symantec came in third with a 72.2 score and CA trailed with 66.0.
HP won three of the six technical criteria, but tied with IBM in multiplatform support; it lost to IBM in scalability, and to Symantec in predictive capabilities.
That makes sense to Chris Case, president of Sequel Data Systems, an Austin, Texas-based HP solution provider. Symantec's software is definitely the primary competition to HP's Data Protector application on the data protection side of the software business, Case said. "The features and functions are pretty much the same," he said.
Dean Snyder, HP's director of product management and storage automation, said that HP has addressed scalability, the issue identified as the vendor's main weak point, with a new version of Storage Essentials that automates the deployment of new storage.
In the program and support criteria, HP won in presales support and tied with EMC for postsales support, but stumbled in the other three criteria. HP offers excellent postsales and presales support, and is ready to offer whatever help a partner needs, said Dan Molina, CTO of Nth Generation Computing Inc., a San Diego-based solution provider.
Snyder said HP has also rolled out new certification programs for sales and deployment, particularly in the midmarket, and so solution providers should see improvements in terms of training.
Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. fought to a tie in the 2008 CRN Channel Champions Survey external data backup product category, with HP posting slim leads in the technical and program and support areas while IBM edged out HP in the financial area. Both earned an overall score of 73.7.
In the technical area, HP, Palo Alto, Calif., took two of the five criteria, but got beat solidly by IBM in the two other criteria to keep Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM in the game. HP took management and configuration features and interoperability, where it posted its largest lead of 2.5 points over IBM.
But IBM fired back with a win in the all-important product quality and reliability criterion and an impressive 2.8 point win over HP in scalability.
In the program and support area, HP took three of the five criteria, leading with a solid 1.5 point win in relevance of channel program. But IBM, with a 1.9 point lead in postsales support and .9 point lead in technical training, kept HP's lead in the area to only .2 points.
IBM then took the financial area by a slim .2 points, leading with its solid 1 point win over HP in ROI.
Both vendors touted their product offerings and channel focus.
IBM has a "two-pronged approach" in the data backup space, said Brad Johns, IBM program director, enterprise storage marketing, consisting of new products like the new tape storage offerings based on the Linear Tape Open Generation 4 standard, and, in some cases, channel-exclusive availability. IBM has a "complete portfolio" of products for VARs to offer to their customers, Johns said. "We can provide comprehensive solutions for all their customers' needs."
HP's Adam Thew, director of marketing, Nearline Division, HP StorageWorks, said HP had introduced a number of new products in the last 12 months, including the sixth generation of DDS tape for small business. Mark Lewis, senior marketing communications manager, Solutions Partners Organization-Americas, said HP had added new sales and marketing support for partners focusing on the SMB space.
-- Timothy long