San Jose-based storage software vendor PernixData has inked its first general distribution deal covering North America, with Promark Technology, a division of Ingram Micro. The agreement will see Promark distribute PernixData’s FVP and Architect software.

PernixData FVP is the company’s storage and VM acceleration platform. It creates a low latency, fault tolerant I/O acceleration using high-speed server media for very fast and scalable VM performance. The Architect platform provides real-time analytics for all virtualized applications and storage devices, irrespective of underlying hardware, for  full visibility and control of virtualized applications.   PernixData FVP and Architect software together allows any shared storage hardware to be used for capacity, and avoid rip-and-replace situations.

Previously, PernixData dealt directly with their partners for most of their business, although almost two years ago they entered into a distribution relationship with Carahsoft which is focused on the U.S. federal government market. Kristin Carnes, who came to PernixData as vice president of channel sales six months ago, said that the time is now ripe for expansion of their distribution.

“When we looked at the landscape of the partner community,  we wanted to be able to expand in the US and Canada, especially with some of the larger strategic national programs,” Carnes said. “Today we have 721 partners worldwide, 320 of which are in the U.S., and 18 in Canada. 15 of the Canadian partners did transactions in the last fiscal year ending in January.

Canadian partners are underrepresented compared to the U.S, although Carnes said they have some especially strategic ones like Softchoice who can help them grow in the territory. The relationship with Promark is also expected to grow the number of partners in both Canada and the U.S.

“We are looking to Promark to help us recruit and train new partners, but we aren’t looking to sign every reseller across North America,” Carnes said. “We want partners who have been successful with newer technologies.”

So why choose Promark specifically? Carnes acknowledged that it is all about past relationships.

“I have worked successfully with them in the past both at Data Domain and at Nimble Storage,” Carnes said.

Dale Foster, who was Promark’s CEO before they were acquired, and who now holds the General Manager title there, said that they added PernixData to their line card for two reasons.

“One is relationships, relationships that go way back,” he said. “The other is philosophy. While we go from corporate resellers down to independent storage VARs, we focus on only about 400 resellers, a much smaller number than Ingram. We also focus on emerging brands in storage. We were Nutanix’s first distributor, for example.”

Foster said PernixData is an emerging brand which is highly complementary with much of Promark’s line card.

“Their value proposition fits perfectly with about half about of my storage lines,” he said. “It fits with a lot of what we do.”

Promark and Pernix will jointly recruit and train new storage and virtualization resellers, and work on joint marketing activities that expand awareness for the company’s software.