Intransa Details Channel Strategy

The company, which develops iSCSI storage solutions, has already recruited three channel partners and is looking to sell its IP5000 Storage System exclusively through solution providers, said Peter Behrakis, director of sales at the San Jose, Calif.-based company, which was spun off from 3Com in late 2000.

The IP5000 bundles a third-party industry-standard server with Intransa's software applications, all of which were developed in-house. Those apps include volume management, virtualization, RAID management and device discovery, Behrakis said.

"Our goal is to let whoever sells it for us just drop it into a Gigabit Ethernet network," he said. "All you need is an iSCSI driver or an iSCSI host-bus adapter."

The IP5000 allows up to three disk enclosures, each with a maximum capacity of 3.2 Tbytes using ATA hard drives, to be connected to a single controller, Behrakis said.

Each drive behind the controller can be assigned its own unique IP address, allowing the IP5000 to scale by number of controllers, number of hard drives or both at the same time.

The company expects to soon unveil a new version that allows two or three controllers to connect to up to eight enclosures, Behrakis said. Additional controllers, with or without additional enclosures, will boost the system's performance, he said.

Intransa also offers a Support Service Plan with two levels: Standard and High Availability. Otherwise, customers can opt for online self-service through mySupport.

The company plans to continue recruiting partners that have experience in selling storage solutions and Ethernet networks and for which storage forms a significant part of their business, Behrakis said.

Intransa's sales force is focused on finding and bringing together solution providers and end users, Behrakis said. "We'll initially have direct touch with the customer, but we hope the partners can do the installations," he said.

One solution provider, whose company's engineers have been testing the IP5000, said it appears to be a good product from a technology standpoint and he expects Microsoft Exchange to be one of its main target markets.

"We haven't sold one yet, though, so we can't comment on what customers think," said the solution provider, who requested anonymity.

The VAR did add, however, that now is the time to be considering iSCSI products. "That's where the world is going. There's no doubt in my mind that there'll be iSCSI in the future," the solution provider said. "This is bleeding-edge stuff."