Raising the gold standard

At a conference in New York recently, Veritas unveiled version 10 of its Backup Exec product. Delegates were impressed, but plenty of questions remain

As the bitter north Atlantic winds recently began their annual pounding of America's eastern states, executives from software vendor Veritas braved the freezing temperatures to unveil version 10 of the firm's data backup and management product, Backup Exec 10.

In a New York conference room adorned with gold plaques, gold-lined presentation screens and golden smiles, Veritas chief executive Gary Bloom and his colleagues attempted to draw parallels between the precious metal, the channel and the lucrative SME market.

Veritas claimed to be setting the "gold standard" in storage management for SMEs and said that its channel partners will play a crucial role in taking the product to market.

The software vendor told the delegates, including partners, customers and analysts, that it is presenting its channel partners with a golden opportunity by making them the primary outlet for version 10 into the SME market, which the vendor defined as any business with fewer than 1,000 employees.

The importance of being indirect

"Version 10 has been designed, built and delivered for the SME, and we have one of the broadest distribution channels to be able to deliver it," Bloom said.

The channel has long been important to many SMEs across a spectrum of horizontal and vertical markets. But according to Bloom its importance has recently begun to blossom.

Peter Gerr, analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, reiterated the value and size of the SME opportunity on offer to channel partners.

"SMEs' data protection challenges are often greater than those of enterprises, but they often have lesser resources. Thirty-eight per cent of customers said their primary storage technology is doubling every 12 months, so not only is more data being kept, it's also being kept for longer. SMEs are simply growing more quickly than enterprise-class businesses," he said.

"The channel is critical because resellers are trusted advisors to SMEs. The increased importance of the channel in meeting the data needs of SMEs means vendors must now work through it."

Chris Boorman, vice-president of marketing EMEA at Veritas, said most SMEs are still experiencing a massive storage headache, which is where the channel can help.

"SMEs are now getting to the stage where they understand the need to back up, particularly for disaster recovery, and the Backup Exec suite gives our channel partners the opportunity to deliver cross- and up-sell opportunities and a greater product portfolio," Boorman claimed.

"We are doing face-to-face channel partner training across Europe for this launch, which is the biggest channel training programme in the history of the company."

Depending on the channel

Seventy-five per cent of Veritas's revenue, Boorman said, comes from its top 100 resellers, and so the success of version 10 depends upon channel partners' sales pitches, presentation and management.

According to Veritas, the UK channel is mature, sophisticated and knowledgeable. But it said this state of affairs will only continue as long as the right kind of help and assistance is given to resellers.

Veritas therefore moved to quell any fears channel partners might have by launching European training programmes and by handing out more than 35,000 channel partner kits, containing version 10 marketing products and materials.

Boorman added that Veritas sees resellers and distributors as key to the success of version 10. He said that in the UK the vendor uses five core distributors, including Ideal, Computer 2000 and Hammer.

"We sell through our distribution partners into the channel, so we rely on them enormously to help drive this thing [version 10] forward," said Boorman.

While Veritas was keen to make an example of its commitment to the channel, it also admitted that resellers will have to work harder to gain sales in the UK.

The UK market, according to Veritas, is more hesitant about taking a technology on board, but the firm claimed that once a reseller has managed to break down the barriers of entry, then SMEs are more likely to accept future products from a vendor they know and trust.

However, Abdul Terry, marketing director at VAR Equanet, said software vendors, Veritas included, often have a way of getting around this. "Eventually support for previous versions of Backup Exec will be pulled, so customers will be forced to upgrade. Veritas should upgrade it less often," he said.

Meeting expectations

Veritas also rolled out the traditional customer references at the conference, with one firm claiming Backup Exec 10 had met its SME price expectations as well as offering other benefits.

Ralph Barker, chief information officer at US law firm Holland and Knight, said: "The [competing] $250,000 solutions were too expensive for us, and Veritas Backup Exec 10 was up and running within two weeks. We have experienced cost savings of $100,000 and a 30 per cent improvement in IT staff productivity."

While citing the business benefits on the one hand, Veritas was also quick to point out the technological benefits of its software.

Bloom, who has been pushing the channel model inside Veritas for several years, said: "The number-one thing that SMEs need is low-cost IT, because most SMEs have very limited budgets. But their data requirements are growing and they need a scalable product that can also be used to back up data from remote locations."

Spiralling mobile data costs

In recent years the falling price of mobile technologies has contributed to a boom in the number of mobile workers in the SME sector.

Jeremy Burton, executive vice-president of data management at Veritas, claimed that with 60 per cent of employee data currently residing outside many SMEs' data centres - such as on laptops - and with data volumes growing by 50 per cent each year, it is no surprise that storage software has been one of the fastest-growing business costs to date.

But Veritas added that version 10 is not only an SME-targeted product; it is scalable for firms of all sizes. The firm enlisted the help of market heavyweight Microsoft to back up this claim.

"It's for Windows products. We use Backup Exec 10 on more than 5,000 servers. We are living proof that the software is scalable," said Robert Bernard, general manager of global ISV strategy at Microsoft.

However, this boast led to more raised hands, as delegates grilled Veritas about the compatibility of version 10 with rival operating systems. The firm later revealed that there is compatibility with Linux and similar open-source systems.

Merger investigation

While overall the launch was a success, and most partners and analysts at the conference seemed positive about version 10, Veritas had little to add on one subject that is sure to have more effect on its partners than anything else in the firm's history: its merger with security giant Symantec.

"We plan to close the deal in the second quarter of this year and will be bringing the two leading companies together," was about all Bloom would say at the conference. Surely that would have been the golden opportunity to calm channel fears and put an end to the speculation.

CONTACTS

Veritas Software (0870) 243 1003
www.veritas.com

Equanet (020) 8974 2321
www.equanet.com

Enterprise Strategy Group (001) 508 482 0188
www.enterprisestrategygroup.com