Veritas Begins Software Push
StorageCentral, Veritas' entry-level storage resource management software, will be available to the company's 8,000 Backup Exec solution providers before year-end but is available now as a stand-alone product via CDW and Dell Computer's Software and Peripherals Division, said Michael Sotnick, vice president of partner sales at Veritas.
The second technology, i3, is application performance management software aimed primarily at enterprises working with applications from Siebel, PeopleSoft and SAP, IBM's WebSphere and BEA Systems' WebLogic application servers, and Oracle and IBM DB2 databases, Sotnick said. Veritas' initial go-to-market channel partner is EDS, but the company expects 10 percent to 15 percent of its 350 North American enterprise channel partners to resell i3, he said.
Sotnick defended Veritas' initial choice of channel partners, saying it is better to take a slow approach when introducing new products. "With a merger of two public companies, we are limited in what we can do," he said. "This rollout will help our broader launch later this year. In some ways, this will be better for the entire channel."
Rajiv Shah, president of Impex Technologies, a Torrance, Calif., storage solution provider, said if Veritas wants to champion its new StorageCentral product it shouldn't lead with CDW. "They need to lead with value-added resellers," he said. "We are the ones that bring solutions to customers. CDW acts more like a fulfillment house."
But Eryck Bredy, president of Bredy Network Management, a Woburn, Mass., small-business solution provider, said he understands Veritas' move to use Dell and CDW. "I'd rather Veritas gets it right," he said. "By the end of the year, they will have the bugs worked out and have it ready for integration."
Bredy said he thinks the marriage of StorageCentral and Veritas' other storage management applications is good for customers. "Any company with 10 or more servers is a potential client for [storage resource management]," he said.