DataCore claims UK ripe for storage virtualisation boom

Scathing parliamentary report could finally pave way for greater adoption of virtualisation technology in the storage sector, says vendor

Last week's damning report on wastage in government IT procurement could thrust storage virtualisation up CIOs' agendas, according to vendor DataCore.

The parliamentary report concluded that the government is wasting an "obscene" amount of money on IT due to an "oligopoly" of vendors and suppliers.

DataCore – which has about 40 UK partners – bills itself as the Switzerland of storage, acting as a hypervisor for the storage infrastructure and enabling end users to deploy multiple storage brands. It also claims to provide zero-day ROI on hardware savings alone.

Rupert Collier, who recently joined the vendor as a regional manager, said infrastructure decision makers may now feel obliged to look at their options.

"On the topic of hardware which, in many cases, is one of the most expensive parts of any project, virtualisation technologies have enabled choice," he said. "But not, it would seem, in the storage industry.

"Storage seems to be one of the last remaining bastions of quasi-compulsory vendor lock-in – something that is no longer the case with desktops or servers."

Collier said DataCore had invested heavily into the UK channel this year, adding manpower and upping reseller marketing funds.

But he admitted that many traditional HP, EMC and IBM resellers are still not au fait with DataCore's business model, even though they could use its technology as a route to dislodge rivals and save their clients money.

"The storage resellers we target are all about hardware, three-year life cycles and rip and replace, and it is more of a leap for them than the virtualisation resellers," Collier said.

He also claimed the recent acquisitions of rival 3PAR, Compellent and LeftHand had played into DataCore's hands.

"[Dell and HP] bought them for their own hardware," he explained. "Since they were snapped up there are very few competitors that have vendor independence and this gives us a stronger message."