Datadobi responds to partner requests for a version of their solution designed for less complex sales, which is likely to strengthen their market presence outside of the enterprise as well as increase the number of partners.

Today, Datadobi, which makes unstructured data migration software for large complex NAS migrations, is announcing a new Starter Pack designed for less complex sales, which is ideally suited for many channel use cases. This DobiMigrate DIY Starter Pack is available in three sizes: SMB [up to 50TB], Commercial [up to 200 TBs], and Enterprise [up to 500 TBs].

Datadobi has been in business since 2010, moving large volumes of data between different NAS systems.

“Our primary competitor is the status quo – principally companies using out-of-date tools in house,” said Michael Jack, Datadobi’s co-founder. “We don’t compete with the ISVs or email companies. Our area is storage transition – moving large amounts of data from one NAS to another NAS. Unlike some companies, we don’t have tiering software designed for a trickle. We are built for a deluge, to get the data from A to B as fast as possible. We don’t think we have any real competitors who do that and have the field experience that we do.”

Datadobi has always sold through partners, although their own reseller channel is a relatively new addition.

“We have never sold direct, since we started in 2010,” Jack said. “The channel for us in the early days was EMC. Three years ago, we expanded the EMC and Dell business with our own channel, including global distribution. We now have 110 partners, and the Starter Pack will make things simpler for them.”

Jack emphasized that the Starter Pack was an idea brought to Datadobi by partners.

“We didn’t think of this,” he said. “Our partners asked for something that was more consumable, so that they could sell a single SKU to customers. For us, who are used to complex projects, it wasn’t an issue. But for the average migrations, complex discussions with customers are not needed, because the software will take care of the complexity.”

The Starter Pack contains the DobiMigrate software plus live services for installation, initial migration, and cutovers to the new platform. It also includes ongoing support services as needed.

Datadobi’s sweet spot has been in the enterprise, even though they have sold more broadly than this. Jack expects that the Starter Pack will help develop business further downmarket.

“It will help us go down the stack – but not that far down,” he stated. “The minimum is still 50 TB, so it’s not going to be going to mom and pop shops, even though we have had people buy 50 TB for much smaller deployments in the past. In those cases, it was because they were very complicated.”

Jack also thinks the Starter Pack will be a valuable play for all kinds of partners.

“We are hoping it will become a large part of their business,” he said. “For VARs who are not looking to add a lot of services and who just want to make some extra margin, it fits in there, as software with support from us. And then you have the services-focused partners, and we have quite a lot of those, for whom it will have significant value. We also think that there are many more partners who can take advantage of this, even if they just sell a couple of storage deals a year.”

Jack also emphasized that the Starter Pack will logically increase the number of channel partners by providing more of a turnkey solution that is easier for them to sell.

“We think it will lead to an incremental increase in the number of partners and perhaps double the number over time,” he said. “We are an engineering-driven company, so we want to increase the number of partners and improve their ability to sell the product.”