Could SAS storm a profit for resellers?
The levels of hype surrounding Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) technology have reached dizzying levels in recent years. But does it really have the potential to be the next big margin opportunity for storage VARs? James Sherwood investigates
In recent years there has been an increasing amount of channel discussion about Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) technology. Many vendors have predicted that it has the potential to revolutionise the data storage practices of businesses of all sizes.
However, despite the perceived benefits of this up and coming technology for their potential end-users, SAS vendors have been quick to realise the importance of first preaching the benefits of the technology to their channel partners. These vendors claim that SAS can create higher margin and additional revenue streams for resellers that invest in supplying the technology.
From a technological standpoint, the SCSI Trade Association (STA) sees SAS as “the logical evolution of SCSI” and as a superior and more flexible storage technology capable of providing high-capacity storage at more economical costs.
However, despite these benefits, the technology has been slow to get off the ground. It has left many VARs questioning whether the technology and its new features, such as transfer rates in excess of three gigabits per second and the eradication of crosstalk problems, will prove to be the goldmine of financial opportunity for the channel that vendors are beginning to promise.
One such vendor is Fujitsu Europe, which last year launched its SAS Now Integration Programme (SNIP) to enable system integrators and resellers to experience “the features and benefits” of SAS first-hand, before taking the message out to their end-users.
Andrew Batty, sales and marketing director at Fujitsu Europe, told CRN that despite the slow take-up of SAS, it still has great sales potential for the channel.
“It’s definitely the next big thing for storage, but it has been a long time coming. Channel partners understand what it is, but it will take time for the market to accept the new technology,” he said.
“Partners will first need to build awareness with training from vendors, but SAS opportunities will present themselves from SMEs all the way up to large businesses. The technology is applicable from a small server all the way up to a large SAN.”
Batty’s view was mirrored by a recent CRN online poll that discovered that 63 per cent of readers believed SAS technology had the potential to be the next big margin opportunity for storage VARs.
Analyst Gartner has also conducted research into the potential of SAS technology. According to its figures, SAS adoption, as a percentage of the multi-user market, will have more than doubled from 5.4 per cent of the total multi-user hard disk drive market in 2005 to 47 per cent by 2009.
However, Robin Burke, vice-pres-ident of research at Gartner, said that much of SAS’s success will come at the expense of established technologies, such as parallel SCSI.
“We believe that shipments of SAS will surpass that of parallel SCSI this year to become the primary hard disk drive interface used in multi-user systems by 2007,” Burke said.
In an effort to awaken the channel to what vendors, such as Fujitsu Europe, believe is a great opportunity for storage VARs, several manufacturers have also set-up specific training centres and partner programmes.
Adaptec last month teamed up with hard drive vendor Seagate to launch an SAS EMEA channel programme (CRN, 13 February). Both vendors described the move as an effort to increase channel SAS knowledge, while at the same time helping to encourage early adoption of the technology.
The joint programme, dubbed the SAS Starter Kit, includes a set of two 36GB Seagate hard drives, an Adaptec SAS card and associated cabling. Russ Johnson, general manager of Adaptec, said SAS will create additional margin for the channel, but only once resellers are given training.
“SAS is both a margin and a volume opportunity for the channel. But there needs to be a wider deployment of white papers and web-training schemes to help resellers’ transition over to it,” he said.
It comes as no surprise that SAS vendors are keen to talk about the physical and channel benefits of a technology they have so openly allocated swathes of marketing budget to pushing.
However, the independent organisation, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe also believes there is a lot of opportunity to be had for resellers from the development of SAS.
Paul Talbut, chairman of the SNIA Europe, agreed with the vendors that this will not happen until the channel is fully educated about the technology. “SNIA has a strong SAS educational focus. We will help to back up channel and vendor training with vendor-neutral training as well,” he said.
The distribution community is also starting to latch onto the margin potential available from SAS technology. Storage distributor Hammer, in conjunction with vendor Fujitsu, is currently in the process of arranging a SAS tutorial event for its VARs. The seminar will involve presentations on the commercial and technical advantages of SAS technology and how integrators and resellers can best build and sell SAS components and solutions (See Storage, page 14).
Gerard Marlow, business development manager at Hammer, said that SAS holds many technical and commercial benefits for the channel, which resellers will be able to use to gain more sales once they are aware of them.
“There’s lots of potential for three to six monthly services visits with SAS. It is an area where the resellers will generate a lot of additional margin. For example, SAS is expandable and becomes cheaper the more it’s used [in a business]. Therefore it can lead to more opportunities for channel partners,” he said.
SAS technology also incorporates numerous technological benefits over its predecessors, such as Serial-ATA (SATA) and SCSI. For example, it allows for a mix and match with SATA and SCSI technologies. This allows resellers from mu ltiple storage technology backgrounds to expand their product portfolio with SAS technology.
External disk drives and host bus adaptors were among the first devices to employ SAS. Resellers also told CRN that once the technology becomes more established, they expect sales opportunities to expand into previously unforeseen areas, such as printers, scanners, digital cameras and other peripherals.
However, Jonathan Harle, solution architect at storage distributor GE Access Distribution, stressed that to extract a healthy margin from SAS resellers need to retrain and vendors need to play by the rules.
“As long as vendors pass on the SAS savings there should be margin to be made on the hard drives. Resellers will need to be able to understand the advantages of SAS and how to implement it into an existing solution, such as Fibre Channel. That’s where the skilled resellers will really excel,” he said.
Andy Cordial, director of storage manufacturer and distributor Origin Storage Solutions, added that only certain VARs will be able to take advantage of the SAS opportunity. “SAS is not a mass-market opportunity. Resellers of SCSI technology will be our target audience,” he said.
“There will definitely be a margin opportunity as the demand for SAS increases. At the moment, there is no real business need to introduce SAS. It won’t be there until vendors really start to educate resellers about it,” he said.
Marlow added that he foresees the potential for SAS conflict between the different vendors, but he claimed this could turn out to be an advantage for the channel.
“There could be a war between the SAS vendors, because they all need to differentiate themselves within the same product set. However, because SAS integrates so well with other technologies, it means that VARs can take advantage of this and use SAS products from different vendors to find the right end-to-end solution for the customer and win the business,” he said.
Johnson concluded with a note of caution to resellers: “VARs need to put a little time and effort into SAS, then it won’t be time wasted. After a short period they will see the benefit of SAS technology.” C
>> Further reading:
www.channelweb.co.uk/analysis/2150088
www.channelweb.co.uk/analysis/2085703
www.channelweb.co.uk/analysis/2124718
Contacts:
GE Access Distribution (0800) 733 9333
Hammer (01256) 841000
Origin Storage Solutions (08701) 688889
The Storage Networking Industry Association (4154) 020006