Bocada Turns Data Protection Reporting Into Channel Service
Bocada has been working with channel partners since last year on selling its Bocada Prism data protection service management platform for helping enhance the delivery of data protection services, said Nancy Hurley, CEO of the Kirkland, Wash.-based company.
However, it is now formalizing that program with a new Web portal, video presentations on how to sell and deploy Bocada Prism, a deal registration program, and aggressive margins, Hurley said.
Bocada has been developing heterogeneous centralized backup reporting technology for about 10 years, especially for small and midsize enterprises which have a lot of backups and need to know whether they are done properly, she said.
The company applied that experience in its January release of Bocada Prism, which provides customers with automated SLA impact alerts and analysis to help customers employ the best practices for data protection while maximizing operational efficiency and minimizing risk, she said.
As customers move towards more of a services mentality, their data protection reporting technology needed to follow, Hurley said.
“We saw we needed to build a service management solution, and not just a service reporting solution,” she said. “We want to help customers to learn how to utilize the processes and how to apply them to a services environment.”
Bocada is looking for channel partners who sell services and who can help services-oriented customers audit their backups and manage their SLAs, Hurley said.
Partners can also help customers find where they might need new technologies to improve their backup infrastructure. “They might help customers ask, ‘Will I get better performance with a VTL (virtual tape library) over tape,’ or “Will dedupe help improve my capacity,’” she said.
Partners interested in providing such services need to have experience in the storage market, and be able to talk backup and data protection with customers, Hurley said.
They also need services experience, including how to manage SLAs and set best policies, she said.