At the Dell Storage Forum, The VAR Guy sat down and chatted with some key Dell partners. Chief among them: Sidepath. Sidepath had traditionally been a Comepllent partner until Dell acquired the company, and then things got — better. The VAR Guy spoke to Patrick Mulvee, VP of sales at Sidepath about Sidepath’s successes, hurdles and what Sidepath sees as the benefit since working with Dell…

Sidepath’s focus, according to Mulvee, was more than offering data solutions. “We’re trying to build an engineering focus. Put the ‘value’ in VAR,” Mulvee said. Cute jokes aside, our resident blogger asked Mulvee for a bit more of a deep dive into Sidepath’s market strategy. And surprisingly, there isn’t one industry Sidepath focuses on, it’s all things. With the Dell Compellent technology solution and a “significant investment” in their customer solution center, Sidepath has carried all the different Compellent technology (while partnering with Brocade) to provide the data needs from virtualization to verticals. “We haven’t focused on specific vertical, but when I captured all of our customers, we have customers in every vertical.”

What Recession?

Sidepath, a company with just under 20 employees, is growing and was unhindered by the recession. “We’ve grown the business year over year since we started, ” says Mulvee. “I see huge opportunity [in the data center.] We have an awesome lab, great engineers and awesome delivery capabilities. We see the business growing exponentially.”

That growth is also attributed to tight customer-centric service. “We help customers save money. We can say, ‘here’s your data center now, let’s shrink your data center and save money.'” Sidepath can also help customers reinvest saved money back into helpful storage solutions, like virtualization and more. To help close deals, Sidepath also has the ability to do proof and concepts in their lab, enticing customers to bite. On top of providing the data center architecture, Sidepath also negotiates on behalf of the customer for the telco pipe that may connect the customer to that data center.

Dynamic Duo?

So The VAR Guy had to know, since Sidepath was so focused on Compellent — was it truly the “better together” world that Dell has been evangelizing? “It’s actually better,” said Mulvee, bemused. “Customers want to buy [Compellent] now that it’s ‘Dell.’ So many times we’ve won the technology argument, but [a company] wants to go with a bigger brand. Dell gives us that.” For the future, Mulvee is excited about the Dell Compellent strategy and fluid architecture and sees a bigger future with Compellent, alluding to the idea that Dell could take Compellent international. “Dell can do that better than Compellent could,” said Mulvee.

But what about competition? Mulvee remains upbeat about Compellent’s chances for success — which should help Sidepath as well. “It’s different now that Compellent is a bigger company. If customers are open minded and willing to look at best of breed technologies, I don’t see competition there. We can execute opportunities from cradle to grave. “

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