 Evolving Solutions has indeed been evolving over the past nine years—from a reseller of recertified IBM hardware into a full-service infrastructure solution provider.
With sales climbing 28 percent to $45 million in 2003, Evolving Solutions rose to prominence as a key IBM Business Partner in the Midwest, hosting one of the region’s two IBM Total Storage Solution Centers. Evolving Solutions’ clientele—typically companies with sales ranging from $500 million to $2 billion—have been fertile ground for deploying storage virtualization and SAN solutions, moving the integrator deeper into software and services. And IBM Tivoli has been a key part of that. “We have made an investment in developing virtualization expertise,” said Jaime Gmach, co-founder and CEO of the solution provider. But Evolving Solutions’ IBM partnership is only part of the story. Network Appliance became an important vendor for the solution provider last year. The company is looking to McData and Cisco Systems as key SAN fabric partners and is bolstering its software sales with Veritas Software, Oracle and VMware. “We have never represented ourselves as a one-trick pony,” Gmach said. “IBM doesn’t always have the best solution.” The solution provider is also expanding managed services such as disaster recovery with plans to push service revenue, currently at 18 percent, to 26 percent of sales by the end of next year. “There are a lot of different annuity services,” Gmach said. “That’s where everyone wants to get.”
|
Published for the Week Of November 1, 2004
