Of the top three SMB storage virtualization vendors, IBM looks to be on track to gain the most share of the storage virtualization market compared to its top competitors, Hewlett-Packard and EMC, according to a survey by Everything Channel's Institute for Partner Education & Development (IPED).
That's good news for IBM solution providers in a market that VARs only expect to grow 1.1 percent in the second half of the year, compared to the first half. IPED's new Channel Affinity Index also found that solution providers said services, sales training and customer lock-in potential offer the vendor and its partners the best opportunities.
Yet despite its dominance in terms of the value of storage virtualization deals that have either been closed or are pending, IBM takes second place to HP in terms of overall channel affinity thanks to its longer history of offering storage virtualization to small and midsize businesses and its varied solutions focusing on this part of the market.
The following slides illustrate some results in the SMB storage virtualization category. ChannelWeb is providing further findings in other product categories throughout December.
