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Because ONStors NAS Gateway solutions offer multiple storage types in a single storage environment, company officials claim that their solution breaks down proprietary barriers that have barred resellers from doing business with customers already firmly entrenched with the technology of EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other storage vendors.
“Our solution allows resellers to cross party lines to sell solutions into environments that have competitive brands, where they are compatible with existing solutions,” said Jon Toor, vice president of marketing at Los Gatos, Calif.- based ONStor Inc. “It gives them an easy answer to the question: Thats great, but what do I do with the storage I already have?”
The ONStor solution allows resellers to extend a customers legacy environment while adding newer, more efficient equipment, said Jan Stevens, a senior account executive at Computer Tech, a Houston, Texas, reseller.
“It allows you to use the management tools from whatever is in place, so you have one pane of glass where you can see your entire pool of storage,” she said. “It plays with everybody.”
Computer Tech recently used ONStors NAS (network attached storage) Gateway solution to help a customer with legacy storage equipment expand its SAN (storage area network) to satisfy the needs of an imaging project.
“They got quotes from multiple resellers, and everybody else quoted a separate NAS and/or SAN solution,” Stevens said. “We were able to take storage that had no upgrade path and extend the life of the legacy equipment for an additional one to two years.”
Because Computer Techs solution was able to combine disparate storage, creating one system, the customer avoided having to manage two separate solutions, she said. Cost was another major benefit.
“The customer was looking at $100,000 to $150,000 to put either a SAN or NAS solution in place that would be managed separately from their current SAN,” Stevens said. “I was able to give them an additional 2 terabytes on ATA drives for their imaging project, but marry it to the 2 terabytes they already had on their current SAN.”
ONStors approach also can help extend a resellers available market.
“In many cases, these guys have very strict limitations on where they are in their buying cycle,” Toor said. “If they are two years into a three-year lease with HP, they are going to use that HP for another year. This way, they can use this new solution along with the HP [equipment], and the reseller makes a sale.”
The solution also can provide the extra ammunition resellers need to close the deal.
“The customer may tell you he really likes the solution but has all of the capacity he needs right now, and ask you to come back next year,” Toor said. “In response, the reseller can ask him if he has considered putting file services into his SAN environment, and about using some of the available capacity for file services.”