PowerFile Bulks Up Channel Program

PowerFile currently has about 150 solution providers in the United States and Canada but hopes to add an additional 250 partners in the next 60 days, said Matt Ridenour, CEO of the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company.

Solution providers that sign up with one of PowerFile's two distributors,Ingram Micro, Santa Ana, Calif., or Optical Laser, Huntington Beach, Calif.,automatically will become authorized partners with access to online sales tools, a password-protected Web site, sales and technical training, and assistance in doing sales Webinars for clients, Ridenour said.

Partners that can provide first-level technical support and commit to selling at least $10,000 in PowerFile products, which amounts to as few as two units per quarter become Elite resellers, Ridenour said. Elite partners qualify for 5 percent volume rebates, 40 percent discounts on demo units, listing on the company's solution provider locator, joint account calls and more sales tools. All partners can earn 20 percent to 25 percent margins on the optical libraries, Ridenour said.

PowerFile's new C200 series, which allows archiving, cataloging and accessing of up to 200 DVDs or CD-ROMs stored vertically in a 9-inch-high rackmount unit, Ridenour said. Up to five units can be daisy-chained for a total capacity of 940 Gbytes. Price starts at about $2,799.

The R200 series allows data to be written as well and starts at $3,799.

Eric Koskoff, president of Multi Media Management, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based solution provider, said his customers in the prepress, medical imaging and other imaging markets are looking for optical storage for both archiving and for quick retrieval of files months after archived without the need to do a restore. PowerFile's libraries offer similar capacity to competitive units costing five times as much, he said.

Bob Young, president of Computer Tree, a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Macintosh solution provider, said the best part of the latest version of the PowerFile optical storage devices is their ability to work with in both the Mac OS X and Windows environments.

The sales revenue requirement for the rebate has dropped under the new channel program, making it easier to qualify than previously, Young said. "In the past, we didn't always qualify for the rebate," he said. "Now we will every quarter."