Synetic VAR certification pilot to go prime time 17 October, 2006 By Liam Lahey

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Initially launched as a pilot program out of Synetic's head office in Victoria, B.C., last August and geared to the regional market, the hands-on program would give value-added resellers the tools they need to support the fast- growing market for Synetic's data storage products, officials said.

"This is a new training path for all Synetic's partners, resellers, and some high-level IT staff in main corporate and governments across Canada. We'll be using both Webinars and traditional classroom training sessions in major locations," explained Catherine Schulmann, sales and marketing manager for Synetic. "Presently, we have done our entry-level-one training among nine resellers and their staff (15 people) in Victoria."

To that end, Synetic plans to host future training sessions in Vancouver, as well as at locations in Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec.

"We're also looking to explore the market and resellers in the Maritimes provinces," Schulmann added.

Furthermore, Synetic plans to offer similar certification programs to its channel partners throughout North America by working with its distribution partners to provide training for the resellers in their regions, the company said.

The Synetic Certification Program is made up of three distinct tracks:

*The Certified Synetic Data Storage Sales Professional: Designe to provide resellers a broad knowledge of Synetic data storage technologies. This level of expertise has been tailored to the sales environment, concentrating more on what various products and technologies do for end users than how they have been engineered.

*The Certified Synetic Product Specialist  Level 1, 2: The product specialist level has been geared to VARs whose primary market is providing sales and service to small and mid-sized businesses.

Drilling down further, a Level 1 certification would represent Synetic product specialists that have the ability to service and support entry-level RAID 1 storage subsystems and enclosures. Level 1 Certification is mandatory for all Synetic product resellers.

Level 2 certification is geared towards product specialists installing and configuring more complex data storage management systems for data replication, disaster recovery and other functions. Service and support for Synetic's flagship products, the SyneRAID6 storage subsystem, SyneSERV, SyneNAS and SyneISCSI are included at this level.

*Certified Synetic Data Storage Engineers have attained the highest level of technical knowledge required to design, implement and maintain advanced storage systems. Synetic Data Storage Engineers will have mastered advanced diagnostic skills and will be able to tailor and implement a solution to any level of data storage volume or security required by the end user.

Synetic's iSCSI RAID subsystem is a solid data storage solution with great performance and very good margin for VARs, she said. With about 80 resellers and partners in North America currently, Schulmann said the plan is to reach out and attract more resellers in other provinces.

"We have to be realistic and add our resources first. Once we have more well- trained technical engineers, we will walk into different territories and try to attract more partners and resellers," she said. "We are the first stop and source in Canada for these types of data storage products. Our resellers do not have to go south of the border to buy the similar products at twice the price, plus go through all the hassle cross-border shopping and the cost of shipment entails.

"We can ship them directly from Victoria or a VAR can buy from our local sub- distributors in their region."