LSI Valued Solution Partner Program for VARs

LSI Corporation announced the LSI Valued Solution Partner (VSP) Program, a multi-level program for VARs designed to help them solve customer challenges related to massive data growth and the bottlenecks of traditional storage architectures.

The program includes benefits including access to dedicated channel resources, tools and support designed to help VARs address new business opportunities and gain a competitive edge.

It is backed by a line of storage solutions, including the recently introduced Nytro portfolio, a second-generation family of solutions combining PCIe flash technology with intelligent caching and management software to achieve accelerated application performance in datacenters and cloud environments.

"The VAR channel is an exciting new way for LSI to take our Nytro products to market by working with leading industry VARs to demonstrate the benefits of our innovative flash technologies," said Brent Blanchard, director, WW channel sales and marketing, LSI. "LSI is committed to the channel and to helping VARs deliver differentiated solutions that help them stand out from the competition, increase revenue opportunities and secure new business."

The VSP Program provides participants with varying levels of access to marketing resources and sales support based on their level of commitment. Depending on the participation level, program benefits may include market development funds, an opportunity registration program, lead-generation opportunities, a sales incentive program and demonstration and customer evaluation programs.

VAR support for VSP Program
"CMT exists to provide our customers with an unwavering commitment to delivering technology solutions that enable continued growth, efficiency and mutual success," said Dennis Mueller, VP, Innovation and Emerging Technologies, Computer Media Technologies. "We believe the LSI Nytro portfolio of flash-based solutions has the potential to be a game changer, and our participation in the VSP Program will allow us to bring the benefits of the product family to our customers to improve application performance and virtual machine density without massive expenditures on additional spindles."

"Flash-based solutions are having a huge impact on the market segment, and we're excited that LSI is making its innovative and extensive Nytro product portfolio available to us via their new program," said John Barnes, area VP, Groupware Technology, Inc. "The VSP Program will provide us with the products, tools and resources to differentiate from the competition and grow our business."

Nytro product portfolio

The solutions are designed to allow datacenters to contend with the growing data deluge, and its impact on the ability of databases and other critical applications to rapidly access data and extract its value through approaches such as real-time analytics and reporting.

They include:

• WarpDrive Application Acceleration Cards - a second-generation family of PCIe flash adapters for drop-in performance and low latency to accelerate transactional application performance and response time. They range in capacity from 200GB to 1.6TB of MLC or SLC flash memory, and are powered by the performance, reliability and energy efficiency of LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processors.
• XD Application Acceleration Storage Solution - combines the WarpDrive card with XD intelligent caching software for out-of-the-box application acceleration for SAN and DAS environments. It automatically and transparently caches frequently accessed data reads and writes to PCIe flash storage, reducing latency and delivering up to a 30x performance improvement over HDD-only storage systems.
• Nytro MegaRAID Application Acceleration Cards - provide acceleration of SAS-connected DAS storage by combining the RAID performance and data protection capabilities of LSI MegaRAID controllers with on-board flash and intelligent caching software. MegaRAID cards automatically move data between integrated flash storage and hard drives to blend high-performance and high-capacity storage without requiring expensive software tuning or rewrites.

Estimated Nytro MSRP pricing and availability:

WarpDrive SLC-based solutions

• NWD-WLP4-200: $6,596                                            
• NWD-WLP4-400 (Expected availability in July, 2012): $12,195

WarpDrive eMLC-based solutions            

• NWD-BLP 4-400: $5,945                                   
• NWD-BLP 4-800: $10,895         
• NWD-BLP 4-1600 (Expected availability in July, 2012): $20,795         

XD caching bundle                                      

• NXD-BLP 4-400: $10,695
• NXD-BLP 4-800 (Expected availability in July, 2012): $15,645

Nytro MegaRAID solution models and pricing will be announced in the third quarter.

LSI Nytro products are available through the network of authorized distributors, integrators and VARs.