FalconStor Flies into SMB Sector

Traditionally a high-end storage vendor, FalconStor is now readying its push into the SME sector.

The company announced its SMB plans back in December, but Danielle Gauthier, vice president of marketing for Europe, said the firm is now gearing up for a major push in the SMB sector. “We have recruited channel partners and have developed our plug-and-play virtual tape library [VTL] appliances,” she said.

The company has also signed a distribution agreement with Magirus in Europe in anticipation of the volume side of the business. Gauthier said it is “a whole new ballgame” in the SMB sector and the company will likely adapt its channel program accordingly. The vendor runs a three-tiered program, and Gauthier said the firm will re-evaluate the criteria for each tier for SMB-sector VARs.

FalconStor today announced a partnership with integrator Total Tec, for the midmarket. Total Tec will offer the FalconStor VTL Storage Appliances with embedded data deduplication, the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector Storage Appliances and the FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) Appliances in HP server and storage environments.

The company also announced at CeBIT today its high-end VTL 5 appliance. Gauthier said the appliance relaunches the vendor’s deduplication technology. “We first launched the technology back in February last year, but the market didn’t go for it. The market was not mature enough and not many people knew we did it,” she said.