Connected Data snaps up new VARs for UK drive

Storage vendor says it wants to add a further five to 10 partners to the channel

Storage vendor Connected Data has signed up three new resellers as it looks to grow its UK channel, claiming outages at some of its rivals are helping partners to drum up business.

Further to the addition of resellers Blue Profile, NDC and Virtek, the company told CRN that it wants to draft in another five to 10 partners, which it says will help double its sales quarter on quarter.

Connected Data – which provides private file, sync and share appliances to businesses – said it was looking for storage VARs that will be able get up and running quickly with the firm's products.

The vendor’s vice president of international marketing, Geraldine Osman, said: “What I like about the three of these is that they are not directly competitive with each other. They have all got very strong skill sets in different areas.

“NDC are good in the public sector, Virtek are a good cloud player and Blue Profile are a good all-round storage reseller, and they really get the differentiation that our product brings.”

She added that the next wave of growth would involve looking for more resellers through its sole UK distributor Commtech, which partnered with Connected Data last month.

New partners will push the private cloud products out to customers who, according to Osman, have suffered problems with rival public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Dropbox.

"Outages have been reported with AWS and DropBox, meaning businesses do not have continuity or continuous access to their data," she said. "That is another issue for customers that is being raised more and more when we talk to them."

The problems with those services, she claims, have increased demand for Connected Data’s solution, and been the driving force behind the UK expansion.

“Now we have seen such good traction in the UK, we really want to get more resources around the UK and grow that market. We have a good six months of work to do with recruiting new partners and on-boarding them in that market,” she said.

“Beyond that, we will be looking at other European markets, but I really want to get the UK up and running and growing over the next two quarters.”