SVA Storms into the channel

StorageTek has added Storm to its list of UK distributors as part of its plan to attract resellers to its Shared Virtual Array (SVA) high end product. The company said its SVA storage device would be available to the UK channel from today. It follows the break up of StorageTek's deal with IBM in April, in which Big Blue was rebadgeing SVA as its own OEM disk array product, RVA (Ramac Virtual Array). The joint venture had around 6,000 customers worldwide. IBM is allowed to sell RVA until the end of this year. It will then promote a rival version using its own technology, codenamed Shark. Since the split with IBM, StorageTek has been searching for a distributor for SVA, said StorageTek indirect sales manager, Peter Yarwood. It not only plans to compete against IBM, but will also battle with direct storage seller EMC. "We are actively looking for channel resellers," said Yarwood. "It is never easy to take on such a dominant partner as EMC. But we can recruit channel partners to sell StorageTek product that can't sell EMC product. The way to attack EMC is through the channel." Storm will take on the entire range of StorageTek products, and hopes to add around 15 new resellers to StorageTek's existing 35 channel partners. The storage distributor currently also sells product from Sun, IBM and Compaq. It will continue to sell IBM's Shark product. Bryn Sage, Storm sales director, said: "Storm see this as a StorageTek relationship which underpins our storage-only focus and allows us to offer the widest range of products and services for the corporate reseller and their customers. "You could say it's the final piece in the jigsaw. We now have the most complete storage offering in the UK." StorageTek sells its open system products in the UK through distributors Ideal Hardware and Transformation. Its major resellers are MTI, ICL and Computacenter. ®