How To Preserve Your Data Protection Business With Customers Distracted By Shiny Baubles

By John Pearring, Vice President, STORServer, Inc.

Since data protection remains one of the biggest issues for customers today — both as a recurring growth and upgrade product opportunity — resellers can unfortunately get derailed by “new” offerings on the market. Customers constantly urge their seasoned and trusted resellers to get them information about the new, hyped-up data protection offerings as well as those that are well-known and established without distinction for which kind it is. Resellers can spend both unnecessary time and non-profit forays getting caught up in the latest shiny baubles that widen the eyes of their customers.

How can you tell the difference between offerings that are all flash and no substance and those that actually deliver results? The answer separates the successful resellers from the struggling ones.

While advancements in data protection do deserve reseller attention, the same basics that apply to existing technology upgrades also apply when identifying the real from the fantasy, revolutionary products. Those fundamentals are: 1) to get educated, 2) watch the beta sites, and 3) preserve and protect revenue-source customers by urging caution until technologies are proven.

We will use several cloud offerings as the example for this discussion, though there are plenty more to choose from. Cloud backup, cloud disaster recovery, and cloud archive solution products have been popping up for the greater part of the last decade. Few of them have been golden eggs for resellers, even when they have sold well. Now that the dust is beginning to settle, we can see how data protection leaders in software, hardware and appliance offerings now incorporate the best of cloud.

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