Overland Creates Solutions Engineering Group

Overland Storage, Inc. announced the creation of a Solutions Engineering Group focused on expediting the development and delivery of complete data protection offerings that solve today’s toughest data protection problems. The newly formed team will leverage Overland’s existing portfolio of tape, disk, NAS and SAN products along with innovative applications and third-party products to address a vast array of data protection challenges.

Dan Davies, a storage industry veteran who previously led the company’s applications engineering organization, will spearhead the new group as vice president of solutions engineering. In this new role, Davies will be responsible for defining, testing and delivering market-leading solutions that meet the ever-evolving data protection needs of Overland’s partners and customers worldwide. Overland’s global sales and marketing organizations also have been realigned to ensure widespread support of the company’s solution-selling efforts.

According to Vern LoForti, president and CEO of Overland Storage, this strengthened focus on developing integrated data protection solutions will enable Overland and its channel partners to be more agile and responsive in delivering complete turnkey solutions that help end-users solve their data protection problems more easily and affordably. "In today’s extremely challenging economic environment, it’s imperative for Overland to deliver total solutions that help our partners expedite sales and implementation," he says. "In addition, our new solutions engineering strategy will allow us to minimize spending, while leveraging our existing product platforms and resources by adding value through increased partnerships and licensing arrangements. The ultimate goal is an improved offering for our customers, reduced expense in our business model and a faster return to profitability."

Overland’s recent move into the video surveillance market is an example of this renewed focus on solutions-focused engineering and sales. In October 2008, Overland announced a strategic alliance with Mobotix Vision Systems, the leader in high-resolution IP cameras, to speed the deployment of integrated video surveillance and archiving solutions featuring Mobotix cameras and Overland’s high-performance, economical Snap Server network attached storage (NAS). Overland’s new Solutions Engineering team will continue to pursue additional joint solutions where the company can integrate other applications with its REO disk backup VTLs, NEO and ARCvault tape libraries, as well as Snap Server NAS and ULTAMUS RAID SAN appliances to meet the widest possible range of end-user requirements.

Overland’s solutions focus aligns well with the needs of key resellers and channel partners in the data protection market. "Overland’s elevated solutions approach complements our focus on virtualization, archiving and business continuity applications to provide tremendous value to our customers," says Dave Rasmussen, senior sales consultant at Mosaic Technology. "Overland’s product set, combined with their understanding of what it takes to deliver a complete solution, not only makes them highly capable of solving real-world problems but also helps us close business much faster."