Channel veteran Jonathan Lassman has vowed not to “burn” resellers as he announced his return to vendor-land with Immutably.
Lassman and business partner Phil Dick already own storage and cybersecurity resellers Epaton and NGS.
Having sold their last vendor venture, Restorepoint, in 2011, the duo are back with Rubrik and Cohesity competitor Immutably, which will operate via a two-tier channel.
“We’re going back to vendor-land,” Lassman told IT Channel Oxygen.
“We’ve still got the two resellers and have invested in a distie. We’ve got people running the distie for us, and we’re going to do a similar thing with this. We’ll go out for funding to take it to market in a big way.”
“The same thing as Dell, but in the backup space”
Lassman compared Immutably’s business model to that of Dell. Rather than making anything itself, it has struck up a deal with back-up vendor HYCU to OEM its software, and another with appliance vendor TrueNAS.
Immutably’s appliances will start at 50 terabytes and its licences at 10 terabytes.
“We’re doing the same thing [as Dell], but in the backup space. We’re getting software from x hardware from y, and are putting it together and taking it to market with full support and management capabilities,” Lassman said.
Although Immutably will sell through Epaton, Lassman was at pains to stress that preferential pricing will be awarded to whichever partner registers the deal first.
“Everything is going to be run on a deal reg programme,” he said.
“The first time my reseller burns another reseller who got their first is the last time I’m able to deal in the channel.”
Lassman claimed some of the existing immutable backup vendors are “overpriced”, “more desperate than ever”, and “happy to burn the channel along the way”.
“We won’t play those games,” he said.
“We understand the channel – having owned the resellers – we understand vendor-land – having owned and dealt with vendors – and everything we do is going to err on the side of fairness and margin for the reseller community.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
