El Fresko Technologies seeks more partners with data archiving launch

With the recent launch of its new MagnaStor software solution, Calgary-based El Fresko Technologies is hoping to expand its Canadian channel base by adding new partners.

Mark Fowlie, CEO of El Fresko, explained the company was founded two years ago through a merger between archival and storage management company K-Par Archiving Software and an optical storage hardware reseller by the name of Instar Corp.

Fowlie said that while El Fresko serves customers around the world, the majority of its business comes from the U.S. market. Roughly 12 per cent of the company’s overall business comes from Canada.

Most of El Fresko’s business is through an indirect channel model which consists of reseller partners, system integrators, distributors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Today, close to 95 per cent of the company’s overall revenue is driven through the channel.

Last month, the company released its MagnaStor data archiving software product. The solution, Fowlie said, provides customers with easy-to-use and reliable disk-based archiving. With MagnaStor’s release, Fowlie said his goal is to sign on two or three partners per quarter to help deliver the solution to end-users.

“We want partners who are focused on a specific geography and we want a focused number of partners who specialize in certain areas,” Fowlie said. “One category (of partners) that we’re looking to add is hardware partners.”

El Fresko has partners who are both horizontal and vertical players, Fowlie said. Some of the company’s vertical-specific partners include ones who work in the government, military and education sectors. Horizontal partners include those who work in the e-mail archiving space.

“We’ve had a higher success (78 per cent) in the U.S. market because of the regulatory landscape there and there’s more of an immediate need for things like data retention and archiving to be compliant,” Fowlie said. “Canada’s catching up now because we’re seeing more regulation and drivers to market.”

The company has a three-tiered partner program with silver, gold and platinum levels. Depending on the partner’s level, they’ll receive enablement tools such as lead referrals, co-op marketing, lead generation and training resources. Margins for resellers and distributors range anywhere from 20 to 45 per cent, based on the volume and commitment of the partner.

The MagnaStor solution helps prevent operations from overwriting any previously written physical sectors on the disk, Fowlie said. The solution also helps users track and monitor data throughout its lifecycle and also detects and autocorrects any hardware-related errors, tampering or inconsistencies.

The solution also has a built-in journal, which helps keep track of the entire file system history. All entries are protected with digital fingerprinting and encryption to make sure the data’s being securely preserved for a long period of time. MagnaStor also has policy management capabilities which helps to allow or restrict individual access to certain files.

MagnaStor is sold in terabyte-capacity increments and can scale from a small to mid-size enterprise and up. The solution is now available through El Fresko partners, or through the company.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Maxine Cheung
Maxine Cheung
Staff Writer, Computer Dealer News

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