After nearly six years of building a direct channel for its high-end NAS storage sub-systems, BlueArc has embraced solution providers with its first formal channel program.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company this week unveiled the program to its handful of existing channel partners and potential solution providers, said Mike Gustafson, president.
Gustafson, who joined the company only three months ago, said another recent hire will head the channel push. That hire, Peter Mainguy, joined BlueArc as director of worldwide channels in January after a stint with Network Appliance, where he was involved in developing that company's channel programs.
Alan Dumas, president of Accunet Solutions, a Boston-based security infrastructure solution provider to Fortune 1000 clients which added BlueArc to its product line about two years ago, said he has found BlueArc a good partner.
"As a direct company at their roots, there will be challenges," he said of BlueArc. "But we were enamored with their technology."
Accunet's relationship with BlueArc has turned out to be a successful one, Dumas said. "We have a great relationship with our local rep," he said. "It helps that we brought them into a couple deals, and vice-versa."
Included in the new BlueArc channel program is an online deal registration capability to protect solution providers' deals and give them an extra double-digit percentage bonus to incent them, Gustafson said.
The program is also compensation-neutral, so the company's sales reps have no reason to not work with partners. "Our greatest success so far in the U.S. market has been when our direct and indirect people work together," Gustafson said.
Also included are training, technical, and sales and marketing support programs, an online lead registration program, and early access to product releases and documentation.
Between 20 percent and 30 percent of BlueArc's business goes through the channel, Gustafson said. The company would like to increase this by recruiting solution providers that understand how its Titan SiliconServer, which scales to up to 256 Tbytes of capacity with a throughput of up to 20 Gbits per second, is differentiated from other NAS products, he said.
