IBM’s Global Services operation, meanwhile, will provide installation and break/fix services for partners who need such assistance. For example, a reseller pitching a prospect with offices outside its immediate territory may need to find localized support.

The turnkey approach will let service providers and resellers deliver cloud-based backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and test and development services from a single virtualized platform, according to Actifio.

Ash Ashutosh, founder and chief executive officer of Actifio, said the IBM partnership will “expand the availability of cloud services to a much broader market.”

Worldwide, Actifio seeks to target 4,400 MSPs with the joint IBM/Actifio offering.

Channel Background

Actifio launched a formal partner program last January. Service providers represent one of two core markets for Actifio, the other being mid-sized and large enterprises. The service provider segment includes pure-play providers such as NaviSite, which provides managed cloud services, managed application services and managed hosting. NaviSite uses Actifio technology to virtualize storage and data management.

Ashutosh said his company works with two types of pure-play providers: infrastructure companies such as NaviSite and SaaS providers. In addition to the pure-play firms, Actifio also partners with resellers transforming themselves into service providers.

While Actifio’s traditional sales team works with resellers-turned-service providers, the company has created a channel team to concentrate on the pure-play side. Relationships with companies in that category tend to be longer term and require more of a business development approach, Ashutosh said.

Actifio’s current marketing push follows a $33.5 million round of financing  announced in December. At the time, the company said it planned to use the funding to expand globally and capitalize on the adoption of its products among MSPs, cloud service providers and organizations dealing with big data management challenges.

Actifio’s channel foray with IBM, meanwhile, will potentially provide more than hardware and services. IBM’s mid-size business focus, where business partners play a pivotal role, lines up with Actifio’s market orientation. Actifio may well be able to tap IBM’s channel experience and partner base.

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Arkeia’s North American sales strategy got a facelift today as the backup software provider formalized its relationship with Channel Chargers, a group made up of what Arkeia Software CEO Bill Evans (pictured) calls “experienced channel veterans,” in order to develop a North American channel program targeted at VARs and managed service providers.

The plan is to develop a North American channel program that includes tools and benefits that will give VARs and MSPs a competitive advantage over other service providers selling backup solutions. The program will also include special backup software pricing, deal registration, technical training, marketing collateral and demand generation.

Arkeia’s North American channel development is fueled by the company’s 2011 customer acquisition and overall sales growth. It also comes shortly after Arkeia released version 3 of its backup and virtual appliances for the mid-market. It’s an offering that includes a remote management cloud backup solution for both local and offsite data protection.

Arkeia hasn’t yet released names of MSPs or VARs that have joined its new program, but more announcements will be coming within the next few months.

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To begin with, the new partner program is broken down into the following four levels, beginning with the lowest level partnership:

• Standard StorageCraft Resellers (Entry Level)
• StorageCraft STAR Certified Reseller
• StorageCraft Engineer Certified Reseller
• StorageCraft Advanced Engineer Certified Reseller

Standard resellers will be able to develop relationships with new business customers, activate storage licenses, manage customers and process renewals, all through the StorageCraft Business Class Portal. Second level partners — STAR Certified Resellers — essentially have the sample capabilities. The difference is, STAR Certified Partners have undergone a half day StorageCraft technical training course and pass an online test. The top two partners conduct on and off site BDR as a service. Level two partners and above have their own StorageCraft Account Managers, free telephone support, free NFR software and bonuses for reaching a customer turnover target.

Keep in mind, no partner is stuck at any one level. Standard resellers can move up by passing a technical test, and STAR resellers can move up by meeting profit margins. The company’s goal with its new European partner structure is the same goal it had in mind when it restructured its storage partner program into three tiers back in August, 2011: reward its best-performing partners, increase sales, and expand the use of its BDR software solution.

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Zenith Infotech CEO Akash Saraf says the company will ship a BDR upgrade — known as BDR Generation 12 — next week. The solution is platform agnostic, meaning that MSPs can use any remote management and monitoring tool to manage it.

Also, Zenith Infotech is prepping a SmartStyle cloud upgrade that will support Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization. Zenith Infotech also is debating a potential name change for the platform but it sounds like SmartStyle will very likely remain the brand for this launch. The upgrade is similar in concept to the VBlock and VCE effort promoted by Cisco Systems, EMC and VMware. However, Zenith Infotech will continue focusing its cloud efforts on partners that support small and midsize businesses; there are no plans to counter Vblock within enterprise datacenters.

Saraf said the new SmartStyle release will cost more than previous releases. MSPs running existing SmartStyle systems will be able to make one-to-one exchanges for the new SmartStyle offering if they so choose. MSPs that make the one-to-one exchange will have to pay Zenith Infotech the price difference between the old and new SmartStyle releases, Saraf said.

Meanwhile, Zenith Infotech is starting to see Vu Telepresence — its video conferencing platform — gain some traction with MSPs. The traction began when Vu Telepresence introduced interoperability with third-party telepresence systems (Cisco, LifeSize, Polycom, etc.) in early November 2011, Saraf said.

On the business and debt front, Zenith Infotech continues to negotiate with bondholders but Saraf said he has no new developments to share. Bondholders took Zenith Infotech to court after the cloud company defaulted on a debt payment in September 2011. Media speculation about the debt default has quieted down dramatically in recent weeks.

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“EMC FAST moves data across storage tiers based on how hot it is,” Sorenson explained. “VFCache accelerates the reads from the server.” So by reading data more quickly, VFCache allows EMC FAST users to moved data around to different storage tiers much faster, EMC asserts.

Disk Drives Still Alive

Even though Flash storage innovation will be a large part of EMC’s 2012 plan, both Sorenson and President and CEO of EMC Information Products Pat Gelsinger said Flash won’t make traditional disk storage drives completely obsolete.

“Flash storage can be as much as 30x more expensive than disk storage,” Gelsinger said. So EMC has focused on Flash storage for performance applications. That is, VFCache is designed to hold data that is being used regularly.

“Some of our competitors only sell Flash storage,” Sorenson said. “But only about five percent of a businesses’ data is hot, meaning it’s being used regularly. And that five percent changes all the time. So EMC FAST can change the data across storage tiers depending on when it’s being used and not used, and VFCache speeds up that application performance by 2-3x.”

Focus on the Channel

Sorenson also said that EMC plans to focus on its channel business throughout 2012, which ties in well with its VFCache solution development.

“VFCache is interesting to the channel because those who supply servers and system integrators can integrate VFCache into their service offerings,” Sorenson said. EMC plans to heavily market VFCache in London City, New York City and along the U.S. West Coast. The company also plans to sell VFCache to the mid-market, along with its more traditional enterprise base.

For service providers, VFCache could help to speed the performance of on-demand and SaaS applications.

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Indeed, EMC says the VFCache solution to an EMC Flash storage solution can reduce latency by 60 percent. The VFCache development also means that EMC is extending its Flash technology beyond what it calls “edge case social media and Internet,” and into support for Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and other mainstream applications.

“EMC identified very early on that Flash would technology would change the industry forever,” EMC President and COO of Information Infrastructure Pat Gelsinger said in a prepared stateement. “With today’s announcement, EMC also becomes the first to implement PCIe Flash in a way that ensures mission critical applications reach new levels of performance, at the right cost, and with the level of protection and intelligence that customers demand.”

EMC FAST Update

The VFCache solution allows the EMC FAST architecture to facilitate end-to-end data tiering and caching from the storage space straight to the server, EMC claims. On a related note, EMC FAST is one of the company’s fastest growing storage products.

This week I’ll be attending an EMC event in San Francisco to gather more insights and to chat with EMC President Gelsinger about EMC’s channel partner strategy.

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Indeed, our guests will describe how they set their own pricing, margins and service level agreements. Both Data Storage Corp. and BUMI partnered with Asigra to build the cloud storage businesses. Now you can learn from each of them. Our confirmed guest speakers include:

• Matthew P. Grosso, executive VP, Data Storage Corp.
• Jennifer Walzer, CEO, BUMI (Backup My Info! Inc.)
• Eran Farajun, Executive VP, Asigra

Register now and join us Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT. We look forward to your questions.

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McChord has a degree in bioinformatics — which marries super computers and DNA-type research. But when McChord became disenfranchised with the big pharmaceutical industry, he shifted attention to an entrepreneurial itch. The result: McChord launched Datto in a Connecticut basement in 2007.

Working the Phones

During Datto’s early years, Datto focused on consumer storage. McChord personally reached out to consumer tech websites and blogs like Engadget, hoping they’d review Datto’s storage products to create viral buzz about the company. Gradually, bloggers started responding to McChord’s outreach, and chatter about the small company started to spread across the web.

By 2009, Datto shifted its attention to the business market with Viridian, a storage solution that countered Zenith Infotech. “That’s when the channel really started to pay attention to us,” said McChord. “MSPs weren’t part of our original vision. But over time, MSPs discovered us and they convinced us to get into the channel.”

Moving Forward

Fast forward to the present and the storage company remains self-funded, profitable, debt free and growing. “We’ve funded our growth organically and we only answer to our customers,” said McChord.

In fact, Datto now employs 80 people and the company manages 5.7 petabytes of data. McChord expects to hit 6 petabytes (6,000 terabytes) of managed storage within the next few weeks — thanks to the company’s growing base of MSP partners.

Still, McChord sees some more opportunities to further refine the BDR market, through simplified pricing. A prime example: The company does not require long-term contract engagements with MSPs. Instead, “we re-win that business every month,” said McChord. “If we don’t win your business every month you’re free to walk away. That reality helps us to set our priorities internally.” As a result, McChord asserts, Datto has a 97 percent satisfaction rate on customer support.

Fierce Competition

Admittedly, competition looms around every corner for Datto. Clear rivals include Axcient, eFolder and Zenith Infotech — among many others. But Datto is hoping a recent partnership with Continuum — the RMM spin-off from Zenith Infotech — will further accelerate the company’s growth. The first fruit of the Continuum-Datto relationship, called Continuum Vault, officially launched earlier this week. The new BDR system is reaching initial MSPs now.

McChord is upbeat about the Continuum relationship, but he notes that Datto continues to partner elsewhere in the RMM (remote monitoring and management) software market. In fact, Datto will be on hand for Level Platforms‘ upcoming road show…

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The Continuum Vault launch is the latest evidence that Continuum (formerly Zenith RMM) has remained focused on its partner base despite some high-stress distractions in 2011. When Summit Partners acquired Zenith RMM from Zenith Infotech in September 2011, the news was largely overshadowed by a Zenith Infotech bond default.

But by December 2011, Zenith RMM had rebranded as Continuum, partnered with Datto and promised a BDR platform delivery by January 2012. Continuum delivered on that promise earlier this week.

Continuum CEO Michael George is quick to note that the Continuum Vault platform is based on proven technologies — including Continuum’s Remote Monitoring and Management platform, Datto’s storage offering and StorageCraft‘s battle-hardened code, he added. Ironically, Continuum Vault seeks to compete with former parent Zenith Infotech’s own BDR services, plus rival BDR offerings from the likes of Axcient.

Reality Checks

I don’t know if the Continuum Vault platform works as advertised. Nor do I know how Continuum has performed financially since the company became a freestanding organization in September 2011. But here’s an interesting stat: During a Continuum partner webcast a few days ago, roughly 94 percent of partners said Continuum is meeting or exceeding their expectations, according to VP of Marketing Steve Ricketts.

Ironically, I think the late December holiday season helped Continuum immensely. While the company remained heads-down on its fledgling Datto BDR partnership, the broader managed services industry unplugged a bit, and chatter surrounding the Zenith Infotech bond default died down a bit. Even before the holidays, Continuum repeatedly stated that it is an independent company, reassuring partners that Zenith Infotech’s bond status would have zero impact on Continuum’s own business.

Early Adopters

Roughly 1,000 MSPs in December expressed interest and early access to the new Continuum Vault solution. To meet that demand, Continuum and Datto focused heavily on cross-training. One example: Datto’s team visited Continuum’s NOC in Mumbai, India.

Earlier this week, Continuum began Continuum Vault shipments to those MSPs. “There’s a pretty modest delay right now; we’re working through the backlog now to make sure our MSPs receipt the units,” said Continuum CEO Michael George.

The Other Battleground

Meanwhile, several MSP-centric software companies are trying to counter Continuum’s integrated approach to managed services software and NOC (network operations center) services.

Level Platforms recently announced its own push beyond MSP software into NOC services. Plus, N-able Technologies has been building a close relationship with NetEnrich, another NOC specialist.

Still, Continuum’s George points to his company’s long track record in the NOC and managed services market. He says Continuum now has 450 NOC technicians who support nearly 500,000 endpoints for Continuum’s MSP partner base.

Plus, Continuum now has the Vault solution to promote to its MSPs. Initially, the Continuum Vault effort will target North American MSPs, with an international push to follow down the road. Continuum’s Ricketts notes that Datto has data centers in multiple countries, which means extending Continuum Vault to international markets won’t require reinventing the wheel.

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“Mobile apps make managing backups quick and easy,” Ferrari said in a prepared statement. “Partners can view usage data, backup stats and client contact information even when they’re on the run.”

MSPs using iPhone or Android mobile devices can now view their Intronis central management portal from anywhere, meaning they can view network statuses and pretty much provide the same full client support capabilities that they do from their workplace desktops, wherever they are.

Intronis also introduced tighter integration with ConnectWise, the PSA (professional services automation) software platform.  (Side note: Intronis integrates with a range of PSA systems, plus ConnectWise integrates with numerous cloud and on-premises storage platforms.)

Still, Intronis claims it is the first data backup vendor to integrated with ConnectWise based on the new Managed Devices API standards. The benefit to that being the new Managed Devices API gives users a more comprehensive integration with ConnectWise billing and configuration. For example, Intronis customers can now setup billing for their backup solutions within ConnectWise, and then have Intronis notifications automatically create ConnectWise service tickets with more detailed customer information, the company claims.

This latest upgrade is part of Intronis’ larger plan to help its managed services partners spend less time on backups and more time on customer innovation. Apparently, MSPs are embracing the strategy. Intronis CEO Kent Plunkett said back in October 2011 that the company’s cloud backup services were on pace to grow by 50 percent overall in 2011.

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