Training computer storage device

Solid state storage can often be harder to sell than other storage solutions. Taking this point into consideration, Solid Data Systems is offering incentives to resellers who put them on the trail for more sales.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based manufacturer of solid state storage systems is running a program called Trailblazer, through which a VAR is entitled to five per cent commission on any deal the company makes with a customer referred to them by that VAR.

"Since solid state is kind of an emerging technology, it is harder to sell than RAID storage," said Criss Marshall, Solid Data's vice-president of marketing.

Solid state disk technology has become a more prominent form of storage recently with the onslaught of Internet applications that can bog down a LAN. It uses DRAM technology for quick access to specific files the company calls "hot files," while the system will continue to use conventional magnetic disk drives for general usage.

The idea is that hot files are those which are used for logs, temporary space and data tables and must be accessed frequently. Although these files only make up about five to 10 per cent of the data on a system they can cause bottlenecks that may bog the system down.

"So we just put the hot files on solid state storage and depending on the application you can double, triple or even quadruple the performance of the entire system," said Marshall.

She said the reason the company considers this type of storage an emerging technology is because it is only now becoming somewhat cost-effective, due to a dramatic ten-fold drop in DRAM prices, as well as the onslaught of Internet applications.

"Companies with new applications are finding there are benefits to solid state, and also people are starting to find that it is a complement to the RAID storage systems so a lot of RAID vendors are starting to package it."

But the main problem VARs could have selling solid state technology is related to cost, said Marshall. The latest product, the Excellerator Ultra with 5.36GB has a street price of about US$78,000 - a figure that "looks pretty high, but is significantly less than buying additional CPUs," which is sometimes the only alternative when faced with I/O bottlenecks, according to Marshall.

In fact, late last month Todd Coopee, a senior consultant at Specialized Communications in Ottawa, gave Excellerator Ultra 800 an "Excellent" rating in a product review for InfoWorld Web site. He said the usual solution to slowing response time for mission-critical applications is to get faster disk drives. "But a traditional magnetic disk drive upgrade might not give you the requisite performance boost and might even prove technically infeasible," wrote Coopee. "The Ultra 800 . . . offers an average access time of microseconds as opposed to milliseconds and uses DRAM instead of rotating mechanical heads and spinning platters to achieve high levels of performance."

However, Coopee said the "major drawback, even with the steady decline of DRAM prices," is cost, and recommended that corporations use the solid state storage in conjunction with existing hard disk configurations.

Marshall said that because this is a hardware solution to software problems, software resellers will be most likely to use the Trailblazer program, but she said it is open to anybody.

"This is a program that is open to anybody who is skeptical about whether or not it makes sense for them to sell solid state," she said. "All they need to do is make an introduction (of a client) to us and if the customer ends up purchasing they will get a commission of five per cent on the retail price from the first purchase for a period of six months."

She said Solid Data would enthusiastically train any VARs to actually sell and service the products themselves. In addition, the company is molding its Web site as a resource and training facility for resellers.

"But because it is a harder sell it doesn't really make sense for just any resellers," she added. "For high-end integrators it is a perfect fit, but for others, if it doesn't make sense to sell the system, we have Trailblazer.

"You could be a Trailblazer 50 times if you want," she said.

Fact Check

* Under the TrailBlazer program, a reseller gets five per cent commission from a successful deal.

* Training is available.