Distribution Central expects to have more than 30 resellers on board it’s Equinix, AWS, Netapp Cloud solution within six months following the launch of its Sydney demonstration facility.
The distributor yesterday invited five partners to showcase its NetApp Private Storage Solution for AWS at its Equnix datacentre in Alexandria.
The aim is to enable reseller partners to transition their customers to the Cloud by offering Cloud-ready solutions (CloudPods).
SAN Systems (a DC business unit) general manager, Steve Jones, said, after talking about Cloud for 2-3 year DC had finally provided a solution to hit the channel’s requirements.
“If you are looking, as a reseller, in the small to medium enterprise market this is a very good solution,” he said.
“Most of the resellers we have spoken to see this as very positive but we are not going to have complete channel coverage by any stretch of the imagination.”
The company has already partnered with Splunk, Sophos, F5 and Riverbed on the project and is set to enter discussions with CommVault with regard to their Cloud offering in the coming days, according to Jones.
Jones said the biggest concern for the channel was that Cloud was going to open up this technology to “all and sundry”.
“As margins are being squeezed on hardware it was a concern that by providing implementation services we would be taking away a revenue stream from the reseller,” he said.
“Are we there to take away from the reseller what they are currently providing? Absolutely not.”
“It’s probably more of a consultative service then around implementation.
“It’s really going to depend on the complexity of the environment what the customer wants to set up.
The solution involves pre-designed and pre-configured Cloud solution stacks – CloudPODs – that can be easily quoted through the DC CloudSelect configurator.
It is all provided through a single billing model and has three options: entry, mid-range and advanced.
The Hybrid CloudPOD uses NetApp Private Storage for Amazon AWS to deliver a solution, connecting the benefits of both cloud and data centre virtualisation.
NetApp Private Storage for AWS is an enterprise private storage solution for AWS Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2).
In collaboration with AWS, it allows enterprise customers to leverage the performance, customisation, and control of private storage resources with the AWS Cloud.
The service couples NetApp dedicated enterprise storage with AWS EC2 for on-demand computing.
Jones said one of the key reasons his firm had moved on Cloud was because they had seen the shift in the market to the hybrid Cloud model.
“The demo facility helps customers understand the solution gives them an opportunity to really to experience the Cloud environment in real life,” he said.
“And also to see the value we bring to the channel as a distributor.
“They can bring customers out here into the premises and use it to promote their solution moving forward.”
Jones said DC had already taken six racks at the Equinix SY2 datacentre and expected them to be sold pretty quickly.
"We see this as an additional opportunity, not taking away from the existing resellers in the channel,” he said.
“We are in a position now where we can provision racks within a month and the resellers are already talking about wanting to bring customers in.
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“We have seen some customers embracing the Cloud, but this hybrid solution will help drive adoption.
"From the feedback I have had this morning I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that in the next six months we will have 30 resellers.”
It is sold on a 36 month contract and is hosted at the Equinix SY3 co-location datacentre, which is housed in one of the only warehouses designed by architect Harry Seidler.
It is one of three Equinix datacentres in Sydney with a total co-location space of 12,000 sqm.
The company plans to open a Melbourne datacentre at the end of the year.
