SVA Software is looking to enlist 25-30 top IBM storage resellers to sell their BVQ storage management solution, which will go to market entirely through partners.
SVA Software, which makes storage performance management software for IBM systems, has announced it has established a North American office. It has also announced its initial partner program, with several key founding members. They hope to make a big splash at the IBM Edge event in Las Vegas in September.
SVA Software is a spinoff of SVA, the largest IBM systems integrator in Germany. Until now, however, they have not had a physical presence outside of Europe.
Mead indicated that in January, SVA Germany reached out and indicated that they wanted to expand their offering outside of Europe.
BVQ is made for the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and the IBM Storwize family including V9000, V7000, V5000 and V2700. It is typically sold to larger customers, and will be sold in the U.S. and Canada entirely through the channel.
The goal is to assemble a comprehensive channel of important IBM partners.
"We have the two largest partners signed up, and are talking with the third," McCausland said. The objective is to get partners covering the significant metro areas – essentially any place large enough to have an NFL team.
"We augment the IBM solutions very nicely because we can get very deep," McCausland added.
Mead said that the new SVA Velocity Partner Program is based on the same guiding principle as the product – simplicity.
"The message around the product is simplify performance management, and the message around the partner program is also to keep it simple," he stated. The program includes sales and support training, product resources and marketing support to build a successful practice to sell BVQ. It includes a turnkey offering, the BVQ Health Check. This is a limited engagement that analyzes a customer's current storage state, creating a comprehensive assessment report with recommendations for storage environment optimization.
Long term, the plan is to expand the BVQ technology beyond IBM systems.