BakBone's New Linux, Solaris Focus Concerns VARs

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At its annual solution provider summit this week, data protection vendor BakBone Software unveiled new technology partnerships and a focus on Linux and Solaris and addressed partner concerns about the new strategy and the reselling of maintenance renewals.

Solution providers attending the San Diego conference were generally upbeat about the channel credentials of BakBone, which competes with storage software makers such as Symantec, EMC, IBM Tivoli and CommVault. However, they expressed concern about BakBone's plan to make a big push in the Solaris market via a reseller agreement with Sun Microsystems, which is expected to take effect this summer, as well as the vendor's move to hitch its branding strategy to Linux.

Those concerns come on top of a feeling among channel partners that San Diego-based BakBone will be acquired by Sun -- sooner rather than later.

In December, BakBone filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that said Sun and BakBone will negotiate in good faith on an agreement in which Sun will have the right to "purchase authorized but unissued common shares of [BakBone] on terms and subject to conditions to be specified."

Though BakBone didn't address the issue of Sun's possible investment in or acquisition of the company, channel partners said they worried that a Sun acquisition of BakBone would cause the company to lose focus on its Windows-based data protection business.

Ken Horner, BakBone's senior vice president of corporate development and strategy, told CRN that his company and Sun has an agreement under which Sun is expected to make BakBone software available to its channel partners sometime before the end of this quarter. However, he said the Sun relationship shouldn't impact sales of the company's channel partners.

"There will be level and equal playing fields," Horner said. "We are painstakingly ensuring the same level of pricing for solution providers who work with BakBone and with Sun. Partners may ask, 'Will Sun undercut me on BakBone sales?' I can say, absolutely not. We'd be really surprised to see a difference in pricing at the street level."

During his opening keynote address at the summit, Horner also unveiled BakBone's plan to rebrand itself with a new focus on its Linux expertise. He said research firm Gartner estimates Linux to be growing at an annual rate of 35 percent, and researcher Saugatuck Technology expects 50 percent of all enterprise data centers to be using Linux to support mission-critical applications by 2011.

This year, BakBone wants to own the Linux platform in the data protection realm, with a full range of technology that includes backup and restore, performance management, continuous data protection (CDP) and more, according to Horner.

"Windows is important. Solaris is important. But the real growth opportunity is to land around Linux," he said.

Horner later told CRN that BakBone is happy with its Windows-based software sales. "But Linux as a market is one-tenth of the Windows market," he said. "And it's growing, so we see a better opportunity to compete in Linux at the ground level. We don't expect the Linux market to be the same size as the Windows market. But we'll have a more competitive offering in Linux than our competitors."

Both the Sun reseller agreement and the Linux focus caused disagreement among solution providers, most of whom said they think BakBone is doing well in the much larger Windows market.

John Zammett, president of HorizonTek, a Huntington, N.Y.-based storage solution provider, said it's hard to imagine a Sun reseller deal not affecting his BakBone sales. "In the New York market especially, everybody gets shopped," he said. "If the customer's purchasing agent knows he can source from Sun, it will lower our profitability substantially."

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