01732 759725
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DATA STORAGE
Nigel Morris,
marketing director,
Beta Distribution
Beta Distribution
Beta has been a leading player in
the storage sector for many years,
supplying LTO high capacity, single
reel tape storage solutions. Marketing
Director Nigel Morris argues that
dealers who already engage with
IT Managers could be missing an
opportunity if they are not also selling
storage solutions, as almost every
customer they speak to will have a
need to store data.
“It’s a new area for print resellers
and many might feel they don’t have the
knowledge to talk storage with IT Managers,
but it’s no different to selling consumables
or other standalone products. All a dealer
needs to do is ask the question ‘How do
you back-up?’ and their customer will know
exactly what they want,” he said.
“For dealers used to selling MPS
solutions, the solutions-led sales cycle
and process are similar. It’s not a major
step-change and could positively impact the
bottom line.”
Morris added: “LTO is a great starting
point. In the same vein as VHS was, LTO
is an open format, licensed by some of
the most prominent names in the storage
industry to ensure a broad range of
compatible tape drives and cartridges.”
He concedes that emerging technologies
are disrupting the storage market and that,
at first glance, it can look complex, with a
wide choice of internal and external storage
systems, flash, software defined storage and
most recently cloud storage. But adds that
this is where Beta can make a difference.
“Once a dealer has made that first
approach to their customer and identified
that they do store data but need a more
in-depth solution, it’s time to talk to us,” he
said. “We have a vendor portfolio to meet
all requirements within the data storage
market. Over and above that, we offer
dealers the service, support and expertise to
help them enter this space.”
Beta’s Technology Solutions Division
provides pre-and post-sales support, from
project scoping, including determining and
documenting project goals, deliverables,
costs and deadlines, through to first line
technical support post-sale.
In addition, it can provide a number of
value-added services to a dealer’s customers,
such as HDD data recovery and on-site disk
data eradication and degaussing to render
inaccessible all data stored on disk drives
and servo tracks from hard disk drives. Other
services include extended warranty options;
on-site installation, maintenance and
training; and an on-site tape recovery and
restore service for extracting and recovering
customers’ valuable data should the tape
storage media fail.
Exertis
Exertis also sees great opportunities
for resellers – as long as they set their
sights on the right target.
Pete I’Bel, General Manager Server and
Storage at Exertis, said: “Enterprise storage
is hard to define, but we’re really talking
about storage that’s used for mission-critical
data/information. For some companies this
could be just 100GB; for others, hundreds of
Terabytes, or even Petabytes.”
Within the SMB and mid-market, he
identifies a customer/vendor/market ‘sweet
One of the biggest challenges facing organisations of any size is how to
manage the ever increasing volume of structured and unstructured data.
Here we explore what three distributors are doing to help resellers address
the data storage market and secure an additional revenue stream
From desktop to
datacentre
spot’ of 5TB-200TB. “Above this, we view
as high-end enterprise, which becomes
even more bespoke and consultative, with
more specialist/niche VARs and a greater
prevalence of vendors,” he explained.
In pricing terms, the sweet spot is in the
range of £3K – £200K. “At this level we are
looking at relatively mainstream solutions
(within the context of enterprise storage),
based around one of a few architectures -
Storage Area Network Arrays (SAN), High
end Network Attached Storage (NAS),
Software Defined Storage (SDS) and Direct
Attach (JBODs),” explained l’Bel.
He adds that these solutions can be
bought as pre-defined bundles or customised
to bespoke customer needs quite easily.
Exertis can help resellers select the right
type of storage for each customer’s needs
(SAN/ NAS/ DAS/ SDS etc.), and can train
partners on how these topologies work
if they are looking to upskill in this area.
It can provide hands-on demonstrations
of equipment and help with technical
enablement at either the reseller or end-
user level.
“As we have a specialist team focused
on selling enterprise server and storage
solutions, we can take the time to sell
consultatively with partners rather than
to partners and end-users,” explained
I’Bel. “By understanding exactly what the
business driver is for needing/buying storage,
identifying multiple options with the relevant
advantages and disadvantages, we can help
drive an informed decision.
“This process builds a lot of value into
the sale. It drives a ‘what’s the best solution
within budget’ mentality. Best might be
cheapest, best might be fastest, best might
be most scalable, best might be longest
warranty. The ‘best’ solution relies upon
understanding each and every customer and
opportunity, rather than ‘what’s the cheapest
possible outcome’ or ‘what do Amazon have
on special this week?’. This is exactly where
we help the customer.”
He added: “We also help partners
understand and uncover the wider
opportunity, as looking at storage
requirements in isolation can lead to
disappointed customers. If a customer is
looking at shared storage, can their existing
infrastructure cope with it? Do the switches
It’s a new
area for print
resellers and
many might
feel they
don’t have the
knowledge to
talk storage
with IT
Managers
