Dell is training up its Data Domain channel to battle Exagrid in the purpose-built, deduplicating backup to disk market.
The company ran a seminar for resellers via Zoom on July 16, entitled “Practically Speaking – Exagrid vs Data Domain”. The synopsis goes like this:
“You asked for it – we’ve got it! – a Data Domain refresher course along side a competitive review of EXAGRID.
In this edition of Practically Speaking, join host Jason Jones and Competitive Analyst Stephen Karra as we talk Data Domain and Exagrid.
This is targeted at Channel Partners that are interested in a introduction to Data Domain and that work with smaller or midsized customers that think Veeam to Exagrid are winning combination!”
Exagrid CEO Bill Andrews told us Dell must be feeling the Exagrid heat: “We are shaking Dell’s tree. The took 20 minutes of their 60 minute channel webinar and dedicated it to ExaGrid. They did not bring up any other vendor.”
He said: “We are taking them out of deals on a regular basis,” he said. “Data Domain is slow for backups, slow for restores, does not scale well and is expensive.
“The challenge is that Dell has a huge sales force, channel and installed customer base so it is hard to get customers to let a new vendor in. Once in, we will take it 70 per cent of the time.
“We are hiring more sales teams ASAP to take it up a level. We have 132 staff in our sales organisation now. They have 20,000 including all sales staff. A true David and Goliath battle.”
Exagrid last week boasted of a great second quarter, gaining 82 new customers. Nineteen customers kicked off with six-figure purchases and one plunked down seven figures.
