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Data protection is the No. 1 Quest software opportunity at Dell, Quest's Vitale said. Dell previously built a successful $250-million business reselling Symantec's NetBackup and Backup Express software, as well as software from Woburn, Mass.-based Acronis; Columbus, Ohio-based Veeam; and Oceanport, N.J.-based CommVault.
However, except for Symantec's NetBackup and the CommVault software, Dell took all the other offerings out of its product catalog late this summer, Vitale said.
Symantec's NetBackup could be next. "When you look at NetVault, our new version 9 is moving in the enterprise direction of NetBackup," he said. "You'll see NetVault knock out some of the inhibitors that will help it scale into the enterprise."
Actually, Dell is taking a risk by ending its storage software partnerships, according to the vendors impacted by the move.
Sean Regan, senior director of product marketing for Symantec's Information Management Group, said the Dell-Symantec relationship remains strong thanks to continuing ties between the two over NetBackup, Symantec's Enterprise Vault archiving software and a wide range of OEM products.
But by ending its Symantec Backup Exec partnership, Dell triggered a new round of competition, Regan said.
"Dell was short-sided," he said. "Backup Exec has been around for 25 years, and has millions of customers who can now sign up with Symantec channel partners instead of Dell. It's a huge opportunity for our partners, and we're seeing significant renewals."
Backup Exec is a very "sticky" product, Regan said. "Just because Dell is no longer selling Backup Exec or its renewals doesn't mean the customer won't renew it."
Regan said Dell's NetVault 9 product has never really competed in the enterprise market. Symantec also seldom comes up against the Dell-Quest vRanger product, which competes with the company's Backup Exec V-Ray edition, he said.
Dell's actions did impact the market for Veeam, said Bill Botti, North American sales vice president for that company.
"But in August we rolled out our new partner program and moved to aggressively expand with the channel," Botti said. "We continue to grow faster than the market."
Botti said few if any customers switched from Veeam to Dell software. "The business was picked up aggressively by other resellers," he said. "From a technology perspective, we're in a good spot in the virtualization space."
Despite Veeam not being in the Dell catalog, Dell still reaches out to Veeam for certain customers, especially those who have both VMware vSphere 5.1 and Microsoft Hyper-V environments as Veeam is the only company to support disaster recovery in both, Botti said.
NEXT: Dell Provides Quarterly Channel Update
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