Tintri looks to strike it Rich in EMEA with new channel plans

New EMEA boss Doug Rich eyes flurry of new resellers across the region

Storage vendor Tintri is looking to its newly appointed EMEA boss to expand its reach across the region as it kicks off a VAR recruitment drive.

California-headquartered Tintri specialises in virtualisation tech and aims to reduce complexity and costs for primarily mid-sized customers. The firm was founded in 2008 and officially launched in 2011, when its then-EMEA vice president Marcus Chambers vowed to expand its five-strong EMEA team as word spread about the firm.

At the end of last year, a few months after Chambers left his role to go to Good Technology, former EMC man Doug Rich was brought in to continue the expansion plans. Since its formal EMEA launch, Tintri now employs around 20 people across EMEA, 13 of which are based in the UK.

Rich ran EMC's Isilon sales in EMEA for nearly two years after stints at HDS and Lefthand Networks.

In his new role at Tintri, he plans to add around five dedicated resellers to its roster across each of the regions in which it operates: the UK, the DACH and Benelux regions and South Africa.

The firm currently has around 20 partners in the UK, five of which are active and committed, he said.

"The channel is our oxygen," he told CRN. "Lots of companies are channel friendly, but we're channel centric. It's all about deal registration and working with the channel through the whole [sales] process.

"We want to sign up a small number of partners who really get our value-add proposition, which is unique. There are a lot of new storage firms out there vying for the channel's attention, but we want to have a smaller number of partners and don't want to be over distributed."

Rich added that the firm currently enjoys a good relationship with sole distie Zycko but he would not rule out adding another distributor to its ranks once he has had a more in-depth look at the strategy.

Last summer, Rich's predecessor Chambers spoke out about the competitive landscape in the storage industry and said giants such as EMC are under threat from smaller firms' ability to innovate quicker.

Today Rich took a less combative stance towards competitors and said while Tintri still directly competes with the likes of EMC and NetApp, customers often find the rivals' tech is complementary.

"We find ourselves drawn into positions with [EMC and NetApp, for example] where we're brought in to coexist with them. Our uniqueness is about getting the maximum performance out of a virtual machine... so we get pulled into a usually very happy customer of the big companies who just has a pain point.

"Obviously [big vendors] don't want to lose share, we're direct competition, but you don't have to stop using [their tech] - we coexist for the customer."