Quantum leaps forward on its reseller numbers

Vendor plans to add 1,500 VARs by March which it intends to target through a video email campaign

Storage hardware vendor Quantum plans to substantially increase its reseller numbers through a targeted video email campaign.

The vendor currently has 2,300 resellers in Europe, split between high-volume partners and VARs. By March it will increase European partners by 1,500, including the addition of 100 UK partners by December.

Marije Stijen, marketing communications manager at Quantum EMEA, said: “We will look to increase reseller numbers and migrate existing partners up to new storage technologies, such as disk.”

Specially designed video emails have been produced to show potential resellers the benefits of reselling Quantum storage.

“The video emails will educate new partners and incentivise existing ones,” Stijen claimed.

Quantum works through four distribution partners in the UK: Ingram Micro, as a high-volume distributor, CMS Peripherals, Hammer and Ideal Hardware, as well as resellers such as Posetiv and GlassHouse.

Alex Tatham, director of commercial products at Ideal Hardware, said: “Video email is a good and innovative recruitment mechanism. Resellers will be quite willing to accept it as a form of VAR recruitment.”

Franco Mezzullo, vice-president of Quantum EMEA, told CRN that Quantum will also achieve additional growth by capitalising on its position in the tape market, growing its tape automation business through platform transition and through focused investments centred on integration of tape, disk, software and services.

As part of this expansion, Quantum has partnered with Microsoft to integrate its DPM5500 disk-based backup appliance with Microsoft’s System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 software.

Both vendors claimed the partnership will result in reduced complexity and improved operational efficiency for the backup and recovery of data for Windows Server environments.