Overland Storage Increases Deal Reg Margins

The company is also increasing the deal registration margin on its SnapSAN S1000 and SnapSAN S2000 iSCSI SAN appliances to 30 percent, up from the original 20 percent, said Jillian Mansolf, vice president of sales and marketing for the San Diego-based storage vendor.

The increased deal registration margins are not coming at the expense of any other partner benefits, Mansolf said. "We're not taking anything away," she said.

Instead, the company this month also expanded its FastTrack partner program to provide automated approval and monitoring of registered deals, better integration with Salesforce.com, and access to new marketing, sales, and engineering resources, all through the company's Web-based partner portal, she said.

About 90 percent of registration requests are approved, Mansolf said. "For us, it gives us an early indication of what partners are working on, giving us an opportunity to get the required resources ready for them," she said.

Overland Storage has lately been working to make it easier for partners to work with the company, including the increased deal registration margins as well as some new customer promotions and partner spifs, said Joe Kadlec, vice president and senior partner at Consiliant Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and Overland partner.

"They are trying to make things more attractive for the channel, Kadlec said.

Except for its OEM customers, Overland Storage remains a channel-focused company, Mansolf said. "We've never taken a deal direct, and we never will," she said. "We're one of the only storage companies, maybe the only one, who can say that."