Cisco establishes storage VAR council

In what seems on the face of it to be a curious move, switch maker Cisco has set up an enterprise storage VAR (value added reseller) council.

What is strange about this is that Cisco does not work directly with storage system providers.

Rather, those storage system providers who utilise Cisco's storage switches get them from OSMs (original storage manufacturers) – a variation on OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). The OSMs include leading vendors such as IBM, EMC, HP and HDS.

While Cisco does not deal directly with the solution providers – instead leaving it to the likes of IBM – the solution providers play a key role in OSMs storage sales, so Cisco sees great value in keeping in closer contact with them, while at the same time building a bridge between the solution providers and the OSMs, explained Keith Zubchevich, director of storage and optical worldwide channels for Cisco.

"We want to reach out to VARs to better understand the needs of their community. This is part of our effort to reach out and help OSMs to foster a storage networking competency within their VAR channel."

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