Storage vendor Compellent is on the hunt for UK resellers to help it battle rivals such as EMC, HP and IBM.

The firm, which operates a single-tier channel strategy in the UK, is looking for a handful of new partners as it plans for aggressive growth in 2010.

Michael Beach, vice president of worldwide sales and channel operations at Compellent, said: “I come from a reseller background, so I know the value that resellers bring to customers. We know that resellers get us into markets faster and the channel is part of Compellent’s DNA. We have hitched our wagon exclusively to the channel.”

The vendor has seen 31 per cent revenue growth in its recent third quarter and 12 per cent profit growth on last year, Beach said, attributing much of that growth to the channel.

“We are looking for partners that are going to invest in Compellent and take us into their customer base,” he added.

He said there is no ‘magic number’ of partners the vendor is looking for and stressed that it is not looking to flood the market.

“We are very aware that if we oversubscribe it will dilute the value for partners,” he said.

Beach added that the vendor’s sweet spot has traditionally been the mid-market, but after feedback from the channel Compellent has launched its Quickstart SE for SMEs, which is fully scalable.

Richard Blanford, managing director of VAR Fordway, said: “We came on board with Compellent pretty early and it is one of the better partnerships we have.

“We are pretty happy with the relationship and it works well for us. I hope it sticks with a small and fully committed channel. We do not want to be part of some massive channel group.”