Separate Paths, Single Destination

So it's interesting to watch which roads they take as they play in a space where most veteran storage companies are using more than their elbows to gain market domination. For instance, CreekPath CEO Dennis J. Grant--formerly CEO of HighGround--believes that a start-up shouldn't come out of the starting gate with the intent of building a VAR base unless it has proved it can sell its product through an end-user direct sales force.

"Unless you have solid traction in revenue, there won't be traction with a channel partner," he says. "Anything done earlier is going to be done out of desperation or because you can't sell the product."

So, for the past three years, CreekPath has been trying to build a customer base through direct sales. Last quarter, CreekPath landed its first million-dollar deal--a single sale that generated $1.5 million in revenue. Executives wouldn't specify how many customers it has, other than that it's "south of 30" and that it has corporatewide agreements with companies the likes of United Airlines. Given its "solid traction," at the October Storage Networking World conference, CreekPath announced its first VAR program: the CreekPath Global Solutions Partner Program. CreekPath executives say that their primary focus will be global integrators, such as Cap Gemini, CNT and Greenwich Technology Partners. CreekPath also has signed on partners in France, Netherlands and Germany.

Not to be outdone, at the same conference AppIQ announced a private-label VAR deal with systems vendor Hitachi Data Systems. Until recently, Hitachi's software strategy only extended as far as its HiCommand software modules, including Device Manager and Tuning Manager products.

But now Hitachi has partnered with AppIQ to deliver a standards-based storage-area management suite. This deal will add SAN management, SRM functionality and heterogeneous provisioning to the existing HiCommand suite. In the first leg of this deal, Hitachi will co-brand AppIQ's products. For instance, AppIQ's Storage Authority Manager will be sold as HiCommand Storage Services Manager, and the AppIQ Storage Authority for Oracle will be renamed the HiCommand QoS for Oracle. Moreover, the second component of this deal is that all of Hitachi's future management software products will be based on AppIQ's standards-based platform called CIMIQ-X.

In turn, AppIQ has scored a coup by aligning itself with a major systems vendor that gives it both name recognition and expands its worldwide sales and distribution channel. The question now is whether this partnership can propel AppIQ into the big leagues. AppIQ executives certainly think so.

"We feel this sets us apart from CreekPath and the other small players," says Tom Rose, vice president of marketing at AppIQ and also a former HighGround executive. "We see this now as a three-horse race: EMC, Veritas and AppIQ."

What does CreekPath think of AppIQ's recent deal with a hardware vendor? "Not much," says Victor Walker, president and COO at CreekPath. And according to Mike Koclanes, CTO and co-founder at CreekPath: "It's more of an OEM model they are doing. Hitachi did a similar deal with InterSAN a year ago."