The VAR Guy

There are any number of cloud storage solution vendors out there. So why should a VAR partner with a company like Nexenta and leverage the brand-new NexentaStor 3.0? Nexenta CEO Evan Powell says it comes down to 93 points — of margin. Interested? Here are the details.

The California-based Nexenta, which specializes in turning existing hardware into an enterprise-grade storage cloud, relies almost entirely on its 100-plus channel partners to distribute their trademark ZFS-based NexentaStor product.

That means Nexenta has a vested interest in keeping their VARs happy. Nexenta only sells software, which means that the VAR also gets a cut of hardware sales through their preferred vendor. When all is said and done, Nexenta typically takes only 7% total of each deal, Parker says, leaving an unusually healthy margin for the reseller. Moreover, they have a system in place to help their partners generate leads.

So that’s what Nexenta can do for VARs. What NexentaStor can do for customers, Powell says, is provide a cloud storage solution that – Nexeta claims – works better than legacy systems, while also providing increased visibility into VMs hosted in this private cloud.

What the newly-available 3.0 release of NexentaStor adds is inline primary storage deduplication, meaning that for the first time, VARs can leverage a storage solution that deletes redundant files on the fly: handy when you’re hosting a few dozen VMs, Powell says. And speaking of VMs, NexentaStor has just added Hyper-V support to complement its existing Citrix Xen integration.

Wait, that’s not all — NexentaStor 3.0 also supports on-box compression to further save on memory usage.

I can’t argue with the strength of Nexenta’s solution or channel program — on paper. All the same, I can’t help but feel like I’m playing buzzword bingo with these announcements. The cloud storage market is exploding, and The VAR Guy’s team will keep watching.

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