Arrow Makes Top HP Enterprise Array Available To VARs

The SBM Division, the part of the Englewood, Colo.-based distributor that focuses on HP solutions, has an XP12000 in its Atlanta-based Enterprise Storage Lab aimed at educating solution providers about the array and letting VARs demo the array to potential customers, said Charlie McPherson, vice president of marketing for the organization.

The enterprise-class XP12000, which HP introduced in September, scales to up to 165 Tbytes of internal capacity and 14 petabytes of external capacity in heterogeneous operating system environments.

The Lab also has other HP arrays such as an EVA and an MSA, as well as non-HP storage arrays and servers from several vendors in order to allow heterogeneous testing of storage, said McPherson. "We're the only [Enterprise Channel Partner] to have an XP12000 for demos," he said.

Late last month, Arrow held its first education program for about 35 solution providers on the XP12000, and will do other similar events with support from HP, McPherson said. At that initial seminar, four solution providers who previously did not sell the XP12000 signed up to get certified on the array, he said.

The Lab also allows such programs to be held on-line for solution providers who cannot attend in person. Solution providers can also bring customers to the Lab for hands-on demos of the array, or can connect customers on-line for remote demos, said McPherson.

Going forward, McPherson said, Arrow plans to offer its solution providers similar training and demonstration programs with a 1-Tbyte Reference Information Storage System (RISS), an array HP introduced last May specifically for secure storage of data for compliance and regulatory purposes.