Partners the key for NetApp

The storage game is big business in Australia. According to IDC research, the local storage market was worth more than half a billion dollars last year. While ‘snorage’ may not be the most fascinating of areas, it is a highly lucrative – though highly competitive – market for those who understand the opportunities.

One company that appreciated and capitalised on the opportunities around storage early is NetApp. Formed in California in the early ’90s, NetApp is one of several vendors trying to carve out a commanding share of the expanding storage and data management market. The company’s A/NZ arm grew at 80 percent last financial year, generating more than $150 million in revenue.

The prime contributor to this growth was NetApp’s bread and butter Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions. NAS devices comprise hard disks and management software dedicated to serving files over a network. These IP storage devices accounted for more than 70 percent of the A/NZ business during the last financial year. Disc to disc backup, the burgeoning practice of storage virtualisation and increasing demand for Microsoft Exchange storage platforms also saw NetApp finding new opportunities in verticals such as finance and health care.

CRN was invited to join 140 of NetApp’s channel partners from across Australia and New Zealand at the vendor’s third annual partner summit last month. Held at the Crowne Plaza in Terrigal on the New South Wales central coast, the summit united NetApp’s channel partners for an award ceremony and two days of networking and discussion. Partner companies WatchGuard and VMWare were also invited to conduct seminars on integrating their respective products into a NetApp storage solution.

Over the course of the summit, NetApp staffers took attendees through the company’s future plans and repeatedly emphasised the importance of partners in driving the A/NZ business to become NetApp’s fastest growing global region.

Peter O’Connor, managing director of NetApp A/NZ, thanked the channel and promised an escalation
in investment in the partner community over the coming months.

“The partner contribution has absolutely stepped up in the past 12 months which is tremendous. I’m a channel guy, I came from a channel background and I want to see our partners be hugely successful.

“I believe that the partner programs we are bringing to market now versus when we first launched them two years ago are tremendously improved and enhanced. A lot of emphasis will now go into lead generation.”

Towards the end of last year, NetApp began to pour resources into its channel, starting with the establishment of its Authorised Professional Services Partner (APSP) program. Launched in November, the program allows partners to undergo intensive training to attain the same level of certification as the vendor’s in-house engineers. XSI Data Solutions is the first of NetApp’s partners to achieve this status and a further four partners are scheduled to be certified to deliver services to the APSP standard.

November also saw the appointment of Distribution Central’s storage business unit, SAN Systems, as Australian distributor.

Scott Morris, NetApp’s director of partner and public sector sales, was quick to assuage any concerns about the shift to distribution. He said the distribution model is designed to be functionally transparent and will provide access to resources such as inside sales capability, order processing systems and technology, logistics and lines of credit that the vendor was unable to supply.

“The biggest change for the plan this year is that we are manoeuvring all of our operational focus, our procurement and a lot of the operational administrative backend across to distribution.

“It is a big transitional change for a number of our traditional NetApp direct partners who purchase from us directly. I’m asking for a lot of support, from that partner group particularly, to help us transition the procurement and the business operational aspect of our transactions across to distribution.”

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