Levanta Opens Door To Open Source

With a new name and focus on the channel, Levanta is hoping to win over service providers looking for deployment tools and managed-services opportunities in the Linux space.

Levanta, formerly Linuxcare, San Mateo, Calif., last month unveiled the North American Partner Program+, its new U.S. channel initiative, at LinuxWorld. Program+ opens up opportunity for VARs to resell Levanta's popular Intrepid M, a Linux server-management appliance.

Priced starting at $8,995, the Intrepid M provides a centralized management console for Linux servers and workstations, and manages virtual machines running on Linux.

Responding to the lack of sophisticated management tools available for Linux, Levanta has bundled its own Linux-management and provisioning software with a plug-and-play appliance whose intuitive interface allows systems administrators to deploy, roll back and migrate RPM-based Linux servers--whether running Red Hat, SuSE or Fedora--from a central location.

The appliance, optimized for most common external-storage environments, includes one terabyte of on-board storage.

In fact, VARBusiness chose the Intrepid M as one of the five best midmarket products in the open-source category last month. According to our research, the product works well for midsize players because of its fast, flexible control of Linux on racks, blades, virtual machines and mainframes.

Executives of Genstor Systems in San Jose, Calif., say they have signed up as one of Levanta's first domestic reseller partners because of the Intrepid M's ease of deployment and use, and its ability to handle end users with Linux server farms of all sizes.

According to Raj Chahal, vice president of product marketing at Genstor, Levanta offers training and marketing support that puts VARs in "a great position to make money."

Levanta's offering is well-timed, as studies indicate that solution providers are steadily growing their profits in the Linux arena.

According to a survey of 400 VARs conducted by CMP Technology's Institute for Partner Education and Development (IPED), Linux is responsible for about 7 percent of total revenue. But for more than one-third of the providers polled, that figure jumps to more than 20 percent. Half of those with strong Linux revenue said that Linux is more profitable than their other businesses, the IPED study found.

Other findings: Solution providers cited cost savings as the top reason for deploying Linux; one-third of revenue from the biggest Linux solution providers comes from deploying Linux for mission-critical apps.

According to Miguel Nhuch, senior vice president of sales and channels at Levanta, the ideal partner will have a Linux practice and be familiar with the most common Linux distributions and open-source technologies.

In July, Levanta announced NetApp and ONStor external-storage support, and added advanced virtual machine management to the Intrepid M. Resellers with storage expertise are also encouraged to inquire about partnership opportunities.