NetApp pushes into SMB space with new partner tier

The vendor used its third annual Australia/New Zealand Partner Summit to announce plans to strengthen its channel and drive increased business in the SMB market with its Storevault SMB product range.

Scott Morris, director of partner sales A/NZ for NetApp, said he will focus on helping the channel to penetrate into direct accounts through increased education and services training. According to Morris, NetApp will devote increased resources into its seven-strong partner enablement team, particularly around free training.

“We spent an inordinate amount of last year doing a whole bunch of baseline education around skills and certification,” he said. “Nothing is free of course. The kickback to me is if I get them trained they're on the drug."

NetApp is also introducing a new Silver partner level to attract resellers who don't fall into the Platinum or Gold levels, but who are still willing to make a commitment to achieving certification around the product range.

While no mention was made on the number of Silver partners sought, Scott Frew, CEO of NetApp's local distributor, Distribution Central, said a number of the distributor's stable of 1000 resellers had an opportunity to achieve Silver certification and cross-sell network, security and storage solutions.

“There’s a massive opportunity for integrators that don’t play in the storage market today because they fundamentally saw it as too difficult," he said. “If they aren’t playing in this network attached storage space then they should start leveraging off our and NetApp's engineers and get involved in that business.”