eChannelLine Daily News 9-June-2008 Cashing in on Canada's hot virtualization market by Mark Rieger While the Canadian economy is experiencing slow to moderate growth, some areas, and in particular virtualization, are experiencing double to triple-digit growth. Virtualization and other growth areas have certain things in common. They save organizations money, allow them to operate more efficiently, and/or reduce business risk, such as that associated with business continuity/disaster recovery and compliance. "We are seeing significant growth in the Canadian market," said David Bangs, worldwide vice president of sales, LeftHand Networks, a provider of iSCSI-based storage virtualization solutions. "Working with server virtualization partners like VMware and Citrix, and with value added distribution and solution providers who have a strong presence in Canada, we are delivering storage virtualization solutions across all segments from enterprises with multiple locations (retail, financial, medical, food service, distribution), to mid-tier companies, to small and medium businesses." "The number of business applications that organizations need to run their operations and the sheer volume of data that they must maintain have created a real problem with server and storage sprawl," said Keith Groom, solutions group director, Softchoice Corp., a LeftHand Networks VAR. "Server sprawl adds a level of complexity and cost to managing both centralized and distributed operations, because each of the servers has to be maintained and backed up and there is typically unused capacity on each server. That has led many organizations to initiate server consolidation. Then they stack virtualization on top of it, which requires shared high availability storage. LeftHand Networks has a complete iSCSI SAN solution for the data center, which is certified to run on VMware and Citrix. Plus they have a very cost effective virtual SAN (VSA) that supports remote sites." Alternative Technology, a value added distributor who has served the Canadian market since 2001 and is now working with over 1,000 Canadian VARs, supplies LeftHand Network storage solutions along with VMware and Citrix virtualization through Softchoice and other Canadian VARs. Alternative Technology strongly recommends the iSCSI solution over fibre channel. "For deploying a new SAN infrastructure or if an organization is coming off a lease or their maintenance is up for renewal, or they are expanding beyond the limits of their fibre channel SAN, iSCSI is a much easier and more cost-effective solution to implement," says Tom Zorn, senior vice president, Alternative Technology. "Most customers already own the Ethernet infrastructure that they need for iSCSI. And IT organizations are more comfortable managing an iSCSI rather than a fibre channel infrastructure." The Canadian Resale Opportunity LeftHand Networks offers complete integrated storage virtualization solutions, utilizing its SAN/iQ® software platform with its NSM 2120, NSM 2060 and NSM 4150, and can easily scale to meet the needs of the mid-tier and enterprise data centers. One of the areas that really differentiate LeftHand Networks, however, is its ability to address the needs of enterprise remote offices and packaged solutions for the small and medium business. "Canadian enterprises with a nationwide presence have many regional and branch locations to support across a very large land mass," said LeftHand Networks' David Bangs. "Deployment of physical SANs at enterprise remote offices typically has been cost prohibitive. But when you install a VMware ESX, for example, in a remote office with both VMware Server Virtualization and LeftHand Networks Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) on the same box, that server turns into a low-cost remote data centre. It includes snapshots and the ability to replicate that data into the main data centre. LeftHand Networks' VSA is a highly cost-effective option and can deliver much of the same feature-function and benefit as deploying storage virtualization in the main data centre, including backup and disaster recovery. It means users don't need to do any local backups, which eliminates a major headache for central IT. It becomes a very cost-effective, low-installation, low-maintenance approach, enabling broad-scale virtualization deployment across an entire organization." Easy Implementation Rather than using proprietary storage controllers that limit capacity and performance, LeftHand has taken a new approach. Relying on standards-based hardware, LeftHand SANs use virtualization to aggregate multiple storage nodes into a single storage system, regardless of how many nodes are added. What's more, LeftHand's integrated SANs have controllers built into every node, and come with a comprehensive set of software features at no additional cost. This approach eliminates expensive and disruptive controller upgrades and also eliminates the complicated guesswork involved in determining how much storage you will need as you grow. With LeftHand, you buy only what you need today, and scale capacity and performance non-disruptively as your business requires. "In a typical configuration in the enterprise or mid-tier customer data center, we start out with a physical NSM 2120, 2060, or 4150; maybe a single node and then scale up to multiple nodes, depending on how much capacity or performance the customer needs and the available budget they want to spend," said Bangs. "The core SAN product is simple to install with software that is preloaded. You connect it to the network and the availability is really high." Channel Enablement "LeftHand Networks is 100 per cent channel centric and always a tier model. We have always seen the value of distribution to build and service the channel partners," said Bangs. "We selected Alternative Technology because they bring a good blend. They carry both VMware and Citrix, have storage engineers and capacity planners to support deals and are able to deliver a synergistic integrated package for the channel. They are also part of Arrow, so they have access to HP and IBM hardware, along with integration capabilities. And with their turnaround time on quotes and responsiveness to channel partners and their ability to recruit new channel partners, it feels like you are dealing with a more nimble distributor, compared to a broadline distributor." "LeftHand Networks has been a great partner," said Keith Groom, Softchoice. "They are 100 per cent channel friendly, and have a simple yet lucrative deal registration program, which protects me when I bring new business to the table. They also provide local support resources. We have 45 offices across North America and it is really helpful for my sales reps to have someone who can go to an appointment and meet face to face with customers. The fact that LeftHand has built that model to support the reseller is really important and will prove to be one of the critical success factors for them as they grow their business." "Alternative Technology has teamed with VMware and LeftHand Networks to offer four different virtualization solution kits," said Ken Watkins, Alternative Technology's country manager for Canada who is based in the distributor's Mississauga, Ont., office. "The virtualization solution kits combine LeftHand's Virtual SAN Appliance and VMware Infrastructure Acceleration Kits to offer the advantages of server and storage virtualization without SAN hardware. By offering everything a VAR needs for an engagement in one bundle, partners don't need to configure the solutions themselves. They can even sell a LeftHand Networks' SKU for installation and startup services. The bundle approach also offers excellent margins," Watkins said. "In addition to the usual margins from LeftHand and VMware, VARs will also realize 20 to 30 per cent upside over buying all the pieces of the bundle separately." To learn more about the opportunity to sell LeftHand Networks' suite of products visit www.alttech.com/a/8746 or call Alternative Technology at 866-728-1958. Mark Rieger is Managing Director of ProAmericas, Centennial, Colorado, a full service supplier of channel and end user market strategy, advertising, media research and publicity services for ISVs and VARs. He can be reached at markr@proamericas.com or www.proamericas.com.