ISV on the hunt for virtualisation resellers

Centrix Consulting spinoff Centrix Software is looking to grow a channel base for its first virtualisation release.

The ISV launched last November with the release of its WorkSpace of application platform. Mark Stradling, a former senior virtualisation executive at VMware and Citrix, has joined Centrix as a non-executive director. He explains: “The problem that our customers are facing is that they are getting a very distributed virtualisation environment with products from multiple vendors such as from Microsoft, Citrix and VMware. That’s presenting them with a real challenge on the desktop where applications from different virtualisation platforms are creating complexity at the end user level. Recognising this as a limiting factor, Centrix has created a solution to provide a single interface providing much better efficiencies.

“Clearly the vendors playing in this space have their own ways to aggregate applications on the desktop but they’re only interested in doing that for their own virtualisation product. What WorkSpace does is provide a cross platform solution, irrespective of how those applications are being delivered to the desktop,” adds Stradling.

Jon Fuller, operations director at Centrix Software says the firm developed the software in response to its consulting customers’ needs. “The consulting work we have done with these large companies over the past ten years is where we have gained the knowledge of the pain areas they are experiencing. So we have been developing software products – WorkSpace being the first of them – that will help them address those challenges the companies are facing,” he says.

“WorkSpace has been borne out of a consulting business, and it is software demanded by the customer. It’s arrived today as a result of customer demand, rather than other way round.”

Centrix is now looking to hire 20 partners in the UK, and is discussions with distributors that can provide coverage across EMEA and the US. “Recently we made a clear commitment to start selling through partners only – we are looking to set up a single tier reseller strategy and are also considering two-tier distribution to provide leverage in EMEA, and then aggressively start taking our product over to the US, then other parts of globe,” explains Stradling.

“In the short term we will look to engage new reseller partners with a history of selling into the virtualisation space and have experience in analysis testing and implementations of virtualisation solutions around high availability, backup recovery and consolidation. It will be attractive to those resellers as it’s another way to differentiate as many resellers are finding it difficult to compete and differentiate themselves from the hundreds of others that are already out there selling virtualisation products,” says Stradling.

“It will also carry significant services opportunities and provide them incremental margin and profit opportunities.”