Curt James StorageCraft

StorageCraft, which employs roughly 150 people, found an early niche by promoting backup and recovery to the Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) market. Part of that effort involved attending Microsoft user group and SMB Nation conferences, and discovering like-minded vendors that were focused on partnering. The result: Strong relationships with most of the major RMM (remote monitoring and management) software providers, notes James.

Connecting With VMware

Also of note: StorageCraft built a close working relationship with VMware (symbol: VMW) — no small feat, considering VMware has its hands full working with massive partners like Cisco Systems and all of the major server providers. The defining moment came in 2007, when VMware licensed StorageCraft’s Volume Snapshot Manager technology. That deal allowed VMware’s Converter technology to more easily migrate physical systems to virtual systems — giving customers and partners peace of mind as they pursued those complex migrations.

Meanwhile, StorageCraft has remained fiercely loyal to the channel ever since the company’s launch. In addition to working with VARs, StorageCraft in early 2011 introduced simplified licensing for MSPs — a pay-as-you-go model that many traditional storage companies are still trying to emulate.

Next Move

For 2012, StorageCraft’s big focus is manageability and international expansion. Instead of building out a complete stand-alone management platform, StorageCraft will continue to enhance its management software, ensuring that it plugs into MSPs’ existing dashboards — such as RMM software.

While StorageCraft will continue to work with all of the major RMM providers, James mentioned the recent Kaseya relationship as a key move that allows StorageCraft to target a key MSP ecosystem. Also, StorageCraft will continue to leverage an Intel Hybrid Cloud relationship, which includes the AppsUp software service.

StorageCraft is operating worldwide, but James sees Latin America and Brazil as big, emerging opportunities.

Also worth watching: Will StorageCraft ever launch its own cloud service for MSPs? James concedes that some smaller partners would welcome such a cloud service from StorageCraft. In particular, he noted that some partners would like to combine local backup (for quick disaster recovery) with a cloud-based archival service. And perhaps that cloud service would allow partners to spin up virtual machines to temporarily run customers’ systems in the cloud.

Either way, StorageCraft sounds like it expects to generate at least 100 percent revenue growth yet again this year — an impressive figure considering all the storage rivals pursing MSPs these days.