Tape Library Takeoff

At its fourth annual VARcon meeting in Boulder, Colo., late last week, Spectra Logic unveiled the addition of a second tier to its Partner Success Program.

Solution providers currently working with the vendor, which derives about 65 percent of its U.S. revenue through the channel, will automatically become Gold-level VARs, said Bill Reed, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Spectra Logic.

A solution provider can become a Platinum-level VAR by committing to having 75 percent of its storage specialists trained on Spectra Logic, purchasing demo equipment at a 70 percent discount off list price and participating with the vendor in quarterly forecasting meetings, Reed said.

In return, Spectra Logic will give Platinum partners a quarterly rebate of "a couple of points," as well as increased joint telemarketing support, said Reed.

The week before, Overland Storage used its first-ever partner summit to press partners to focus on software.

The company recently started shipping Overland Storage Resource Manager, a storage resource-management application. Next quarter, it plans to release Overland Storage Planner, software that helps design and set up SANs. That is slated to be followed up early next year by Overland Storage Area Network Manager, which discovers, manages and monitors multivendor SAN devices, said John Cloyd, vice president and general manager of Overland's Storage Management Business Unit.

Cloyd said the software will help partners become professional services providers by allowing them to survey clients' data needs, provide suggestions and view their storage consumption. Partners also can earn recurring revenue via the software, he said.

In addition, Overland Storage plans to unveil by year's end an expanded version of its Neo tape libraries with capacity of up to 99 Tbytes, said Bob Scroop, vice president and general manager of the company's Storage Resource Business Unit.

Al Conte, sales manager at Portsmouth, N.H., solution provider Sourcetek Systems, said he likes Overland's software message, especially since the company doesn't sell hard drive-based storage systems. "That lets them act almost like an outside adviser," he said. "They're not trying to use backup software to sell more disk drives."