PernixData offers partners free place at top table

Pure Storage and NetApp competitor is giving all existing and new partners a five-month grace period in Premier tier of new partner programme

Storage vendor PernixData has promised current and new partners an automatic top-tier position on its new partner programme, giving them access to better margins, high-touch support and improved deal registration.

PernixData provides storage performance acceleration software to businesses, competing with the likes of Pure Storage and NetApp. It currently has around 60 partners in the UK, and works with Arrow distribution across Europe.

Ian Wells, senior director of EMEA at the vendor, explained: “PernixData in three or four words is storage performance for VMware; that’s what we do. Basically we move the performance tier of a VM storage solution into the customer’s server, so the customer just uses the traditional storage layer for capacity, reducing latency.”

Wells laid out the vendor’s ‘evolved’ partner programme, which features new tiers, improved deal registration and distributor incentives, with an expected launch date of 20 October.

The new programme consists of Standard and Premier tiers - the top level being for partners that generate $20,000 (£13,000) a year in revenue, and run a number of marketing activities alongside PernixData.

However, Wells added that all existing and new partners will be automatically put on the top tier regardless of their performance, and be given until the beginning of February 2016 to prove their worth.

“All partners currently registered to Pernixdata will be put straight into being Premier. I am not demoting anybody now. They have until the start of our next fiscal year in February to retain their status,” he said.

“It is not about being nasty and draconian; it is about encouraging people to want to stay with us and get more.”

As part of the Premier tier offering, resellers will gain access to ' deal registration plus', which helps partners push areas of the business PernixData wants to focus on such as enterprise, while raising margins for the partner by up to ten per cent.

Wells said that he also hopes to get a chunk of VMware’s customer base using PernixData’s storage solution in the short term, but added that the company's goal is to have its technology with every customer that uses VMware’s ESX enterprise server virtualisation platform.

“I would like 20 to 30 per cent of the top tier of VMware customers using Pernixdata in the next two years, then I would be happy chap," he said.

“Our overall vision is to have Pernixdata on every ESX host – there is a huge market opportunity for both Pernixdata and our partners,” he said.