Neill Burton, HDS’ UK vice president of channels and alliances, explains, “We’re very excited to partner with Oncore IT who add real value given their knowledge of key markets where we lack track record, as well as operating a business model we don’t – namely Cloud delivery which allow SMBs to access HDS enterprise-class technology as a service rather than buying and owning the assets.”
HDS is already a channel centric organisation in the UK and globally, but its intent is to generate more revenue through indirect channels defined as traditional reseller partners, system integrators and service providers. In other words, partner companies who buy HDS information solutions to sell to customers, use as part of a service offering or both. The Oncore IT partnership supplements HDS’ well-established TrueNorth partner programme and extends its footprint to work with specialist SMB focused partners.
To support this, HDS has created an internal team of 20 staff to aid SMB partners, appointed two distributors, and invested considerably in new business development activities to create growth. Oncore IT will work with Zycko, one of the distributors, who will provide assistance in terms of sales, technical, and marketing support and help Oncore interface with HDS.
Oncore IT has purchased two key HDS platforms – Hitachi Unified Storage VM (HUS VM) and Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) – to standardise on Hitachi information solutions within its business. This means that Oncore IT has effectively become a HDS customer and partner at the same time and will utilise HDS storage on client projects whether it’s managing solutions at a customer site or hosting applications in its multi-tenanted Cloud environment.
Michael Croft, Oncore IT’s chief executive officer, says, “The important thing about the HDS relationship is firstly we can expand our portfolio to now offer a suite of data services for customers and secondly respond appropriately to their particular data challenges irrespective of the type - structured or unstructured – or the quantity. Our HDS platform is completely scalable in this sense and will enable us to develop a data strategy per client to address their specific commercial needs.”
Burton agrees, “By using HCP, Oncore IT will target more [SMB] customers than we can and spawn new revenue generating services. They’re taking HDS to a much wider audience.”
Croft concludes, “The word partnership in the IT industry is commonly banded about rather loosely. Rather than just having the credentials, what’s far more significant is what you do as a partner. We’re fortunate to be fully engaged with HDS to ensure that the relationship works delivering value to our customers yet creating sales opportunities for both companies.”