Egnyte: Setting The Storage World On Fire

Company:

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Technology Sector: Storage

Key Product: Egnyte On-Demand File Server

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: 125

Ideal Channel Partners: Small business and midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: The Egnyte On-Demand File Server helps your customers get the same services as they would from a physical file server, but without the associated maintenance and overhead costs.

The Lowdown: Vineet Jain, CEO, started Egnyte in 2006, but it took two years to get the On-Demand File Server launched. The increased popularity of cloud computing has resulted in the company's accelerated growth in the past nine months, said Jain.

"We went after the file server and its problems. File servers work best when a company's workers are in-house. But that's not so when there are technical issues and you're at a SME [small to midsize enterprise], or have a distributed workforce," Jain said. "We're targeting companies with one to 1,000 employees. We show them they can replace their file servers with cloud-based products."

Jain recognized that companies were reticent about having all of their data online. Many firms simply don't want to be totally reliant on their Internet connections running; even an outage of two or three minutes can have huge ramifications. So the company introduced Egnyte Local Cloud.

"It essentially overcomes the challenges of being totally reliant on the Internet connection a company has," Jain said. "It provides offline access to your files; by doing a reverse backup it gives you a local copy to work from. We give you a hybrid cloud play. This is how cloud will get widely adopted."

Egnyte works with PCs and Macs and does not require VPN or FTP. It is sold mainly through very small VARs, "mom and pops," as Jain called them. He noted that even one-person shops have approached him, wanting to offer Egnyte as part of their cloud-based services offering.

"We work with a bevy of IT service providers who have five to 25 customers. This offering doesn't cannibalize their offerings. Not only are they still needed for desktop support, but once they sell the Egnyte product, they get perpetual income from us. We split the income. We tell them, 'All you have to do is get the customer once. We'll do the rest, including billing and support,'" he said. "We like to work with them because their relationships with customers are very stable. Typically, these VARs have very strong relationships, so there is little churn."