On New Year’s Eve, when the clock struck midnight, many of us felt a sense of relief leaving 2008 behind. It was a tough year for many, personally and professionally, what with credit crunches and recessions and a flailing loonie.
Who knows what lies ahead in the coming year – economists and analysts have all sorts of different opinions – but it’s a new year, full of new opportunities.
That doesn’t mean the economy won’t continue to be a giant elephant in the room whenever we discuss business ventures in 2009. But smart VARs – and their distribution partners – are looking to provide solutions with higher margins and quick ROI that will help customers trim the fat from their operations.
And that could simply be a matter of looking outside the box. While storage hardware sales are expected to remain flat, storage is on a growth curve in areas such as data recovery, storage management and storage virtualization. Now that server virtualization has proven itself as a viable solution with myriad benefits, the stage is set for storage virtualization to get its turn in the spotlight.
Tech Data, for example, has signed an agreement with DataCore Software Corp. to distribute its storage virtualization solutions. This is an area where the distie sees two distinct opportunities: one for VARs implementing server virtualization who are looking to expand their offerings, and another for storage-focused VARs that may not have experience in virtualization.
Customers who’ve already virtualized their servers have likely seen the benefits – from reduced costs to easier management – and may be interested in virtualizing other aspects of their infrastructure, so storage is a great add-on for VARs with experience in server virtualization.
And for VARs with a storage focus, hardware sales may be flat, but they can create new opportunities through virtualization software and solutions.
Storage virtualization, however, isn’t quite as straightforward as server virtualization, so that’s where distributors can play a role in helping VARs find the right solution.
DataCore software is designed to make the best use of storage devices attached to the SAN by creating a virtual pool of capacity that can be allocated and provisioned in real time, as users demand it. Benefits come in centralized management, data replication and security. The software operates across multiple storage platforms, including EMC, Fujitsu, HP and IBM, as well as Linux and Mac.
Other areas that are expected to see growth include network security and security-as-a-service solutions. One reason? Compliance issues will drive adoption, giant elephant or not. Wireless technologies will continue their hot streak, as will unified communications.
Customers may be willing to spend a bit of money in order to save a lot of money, if they can make use of their existing infrastructure and see a quick ROI – especially for smaller businesses or government organizations that may not be feeling the effects of a recession as much as larger enterprises.
