Storage resellers are in a precarious situation. They have to differentiate not only themselves from other storage resellers theyat have to differentiate themselves from storage manufacturers that are often tempted to have a direct relationship with the reseller’s customers. On top of that, there is this thing called the cloud that threatens to replace the reseller with a web-portal and a credit card. The future for these resellers seems bleak, but with the right vision, the modern storage reseller can be more successful than they were in the early 2000’s storage hay days.
What is a Storage Reseller?
A storage reseller is an organization that, although they may sell other IT products and services, specializes in the sale and support of storage infrastructure. The products they represent include storage arrays, storage networking and, typically, data protection software and hardware. Most of the time they offer some form of help getting the above products installed, and a few might even provide first level technical support.
The Storage Reseller Challenge
The problem for the storage reseller is that they are under siege, and their future is treacherous. An end-user organization can buy products directly from the vendor for similar pricing to what the reseller can provide. The end-user can also go the software-defined route; buying storage software and coupling it with commodity hardware. Or, as mentioned above, they can start moving services to the cloud.
Future Proofing The Storage Reseller
For some reason, conventional wisdom is advising resellers to narrow down their product lines and become a specialist, only selling vendor “A”’s products. This conventional wisdom is the most dangerous advice ever given to a reseller. It actually makes it harder to differentiate from the storage vendor. They sell, install and support one product, just like the vendor.
Instead, storage resellers should do the exact opposite; they should have relationships with as many storage vendors as possible while still being knowledgeable on each. With this broad knowledge the storage reseller earns that trusted advisor status that all the books tell them they should aspire to be. If they sell several storage products, they can help their prospective customers navigate the increasingly complex maze of storage solutions on the market. At the same time, the reseller has to be careful not to become a grocery store, letting their customers pick from a shelf of solutions that they know little about. Instead, the storage reseller needs to continue to listen to their customers, understand their goals and challenges and direct them to the right solution.
Be Your Own Vendor
Another option to future-proof the storage reseller business is to become your vendor. IT professionals love the concept of the software-defined data center and software- defined storage but most of them don’t have the time to implement it. Instead they want more of a turnkey software-defined solution. The need for these turnkey solutions is best evidenced by the number of converged and hyper-converged solutions on the market and their rapid adoption in data centers. There is nothing that would prevent a reseller from partnering with a storage software vendor on one side and a storage hardware vendor on the other and integrate the two. End-user organizations would love a solution that is software-defined, integrated AND flexible enough to support alternate hardware components in the future.
Embrace The Cloud But Don’t Sell Your Soul
One of the best options for storage resellers is to embrace the cloud. The key for these resellers though is to embrace the cloud without losing value to their customers. There are plenty of cloud solutions that these resellers can get involved in; File Sync and Share, cloud backup or cloud archive and disaster recovery as a service, to name a few.
While many cloud services have reseller programs, many are more of a finder’s fee relationship. The reseller brings the end-user to the cloud provider, and they get a check when the customer signs up and when they renew. While this agency approach sounds easy, there is also limited opportunity to add value. Instead, resellers should look for the ability to add value by providing on-premises hardware and software as well as services. They should also consider building their own storage repository that their potential customers back up to.
Click To Watch Webinar On Demand
As we discussed in our recent webinar “3 Important Factors for MSPs Adding Cloud Backup to Their Portfolio” cloud-based data protection is an ideal service for storage resellers to adopt as an offering to their customers. They need to select a solution that will allow them to implement the backup software and to have the option of being the destination for the first copy of backup data (of course replicating it off-site after that). Local but not in the same building will protect an organization from 90% of the disasters they might face. The ability to restore over a metrolink or even drive the server over to their customer eliminates much of the recovery concerns.
Conclusion
The above options are not mutually exclusive. Storage resellers should use a mixture of the above as the technical capabilities of their teams can handle them. If they future-proof their businesses, storage resellers can do far more than just survive the siege they are under, they can be the best part of the industry. More importantly they can help end-user organizations solve the very real data storage challenges they face.
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George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
StorageSwiss.com - The Home of Storage Switzerland 
Yes! The storage vendors who will have the most effective channel partnerships moving forward are the ones who offer products and services for BOTH on-premises and in the cloud, and who share their recurring revenue stream with their partners. We’re proud to be doing all of the above.
George: The product portfolios of each of the three major storage vendors (EMC, HP, DELL) provide plenty of varied product choices (perhaps too much) for a single storage reseller. To me it is more important to form strong relationships to negotiate the best pricing and support I can from my vendors for my clients. Adding more products requires more staff, lowers productivity and eventually raises costs which I have to pass along to my clients. I try to add products when they add value or are complimentary to my client’s needs, and I always try to stay on top of new technology.
As for cloud storage services, I see that as primarily application-centric. For businesses that want to run their applications in the cloud, I doubt we could ever do that as well as Microsoft, AWS or Sales Force. So far those folks havent chosen to compete directly with in-house vendors, and there is plenty of business still left for us to provide for our clients.
Gordon McKemie
Ohio Valley Storage Consultants
@Gordon, that’s certainly how we feel. And given that (1) we focus on one product, and (2) our offering is any mix of on-prem and AWS/Azure storage, we feel we give our partners what they’re looking for: a focused (and better) product, a recurring revenue stream, and answers to their customers’ storage needs now and in the future.