HPC Linux Software Vendor Clustercorp Taps Tech Data, Dell
The Round Rock,Tex.-based hardware vendor will purchase Clustercorp's HPC Linux-based software platform from Clearwater, Fla.-based Tech Data according to Clustercorp executives. The software and service products which include Clustercorp's Rocks + cluster computing operating system, Rocks +Support, Rocks+MOAB and Rocks+Rolls products will be distributed by Tech Data's Advanced Infrastructure Solutions division.
"Our entire marketing distribution plan is partner-driven," said Tim McIntire, CEO and co-founder of San Jose, Calif.-based Clustercorp. "The concept behind distributing our software is to help VARs and Tier 2 and Tier 1 hardware vendors deploy HPC clusters successfully."
The HPC software company has spent its first year building up its partner network and has OEM relationships with vendors Sun Microsystems, Atipa, Appro and Pogo Linux. When it went looking to build its first distribution partnership, it chose Tech Data because McIntire said, Tech Data seemed to understand Clustercorp better than the other distributors it had approached.
"We feel like Tech Data's new enterprise computing group, the Advanced Infrastructure Solutions division " has a real keen understanding of what we're doing. If we were to work with a distributor just focused on SMB, they wouldn't really hit our target market right. This new division in Tech Data just seemed to get it immediately," he said. "They immediately understood the opportunity that was in front of them."
Clustercorp has trained Tech Data's sales team on the software and hopes to have between 40 and 50 VARs sign on to resell the product. For Dell to begin reselling the product the relationship with Tech Data needed to be announced, said McIntire. Dell purchases many of its peripherals from the distributor.
VARs will be able to purchase the software from Tech Data and can also purchase a services and deployment package, Cluster Kickstart, in which the vendor does all installation and provides support for six months. It will also offer Rocks+Support, subscription-based support services.
"We want to make this as easy as possible for VARs," said McIntire. "If we're working with a VAR that's brand new in this space, we strongly recommend we choose this Cluster Kickstart SKU. Once the VAR gets on their feet, they can just choose the Rocks + SKU and go out and do deployments themselves. That's the idea. We're more of a software and support company than a services company. But having that there to educate our customer and our end-users is an important piece of it now."
For Tech Data, the addition brings a higher-end solution to its AIS line card while giving it an exclusive relationship with what it hopes will be a hot start-up software vendor.
"We are attempting to provide them with an opportunity to expand their business through the IT distribution channel. Obviously the benefit of doing business with Tech Data is that we touch a very broad base of resellers and within that broad base of resellers we have some VARs that specialize in different and unique solutions offerings," said Pete Peterson, senior vice president and general manager of the AIS division.
Tech Data will be targeting resellers that work in the enterprise and midmarket data center spaces including "those that are selling into an end-user environment where there's a requirement for high availability, which is obviously critical," said Peterson.
The software sells for $100 per server, and clusters typically contain between 16 and 250 servers. The company charges deployment fees based on size. For example, a 32-server deployment would run a customer about $5,000, said Clustercorp's McIntire. VARs can expect to make 20 percent margins on both the software and services products.