Tackling virtual storage

How does this affect the way DataCore is developing products and approaching the market?

We think it is quite powerful because we can do things such as data migration; SAN motion is one of our capabilities that allows you to move stuff around. A lot of the stuff, for instance virtual machine migrations, are really storage technologies when you look at them. What I mean by that is if you look at what a virtual machine is, it is an encapsulation of a machine as a file. Everybody has their own name for it - VMware calls it VMDK - but really it is a disk image. What happens with storage is if you take these machines and you suspend them, the image goes to disk. Once they are on disk you can move them around. These snapshot technologies or movements of disk is what DataCore and the storage people do.

Over time the storage value-add around these hypervisors is going to create the major benefit for users.

What are some initiatives you have for the channel in Australia?

On the channel side there are a couple of points to make. DataCore believes that we fundamentally reduced the hurdle to entry for virtual servers. So the reason VMware, Microsoft and Citrix are all working with DataCore is that when they go to deploy a virtual server the next thing a customer says is, 'Okay, now you just told me to do a VMotion, I have to have a shared storage SAN?' A good example is customers will buy $20,000 of Citrix XenServer and then find out they have to spend $100,000 to buy an EMC SAN. With DataCore you could start with a $10,000 high availability full failover package. Most importantly is it is software so users can try it immediately. That opens up the entry to virtual servers.

The second advantage is what DataCore calls 'carry forward protection'. We have virtual SANs starting at $1000 but if you need to go to the $10,000 high availability disaster recovery you just pay the $9000 difference. You can't do that with a storage array because you have to buy another box. Because we offer our products on a perpetual licence what we have done is make it easy for our partners to sell the customer at whatever level that customer can accept.