Bootstrapping A 130 Million VAR In The Midwest: Ahead CEO Dan Adamany (Part 4)

Sramana: What happened during your second year of business in 2008?

Dan Adamany: We had a bit of a ramp. I had built up the coffers some, so I went after a well-known technical guru and another person who was a former college colleague of mine. He was at EMC and ran the area for them, but he had decided that he wanted to leave EMC. That was a game changer for us because he had a lot of customer relationships and rep relationships, and he was very well respected. In 2008, we really kicked in.

Sramana: What was the structure of the value-added reseller relationships? Did you have to take inventory or just backfill on consignment?

Dan Adamany: We did not have to take inventory. EMC equipment was built to order. We would place the order and then just handle payment terms.

Sramana: In terms of the ‘value’ portion of ‘value-added reseller’, would you talk about what type of value add you brought other than the selling?

Dan Adamany: What we did then and what we do now are drastically different. As we have added more money we have been able to add more value. On day one we were strictly an extension of the EMC sales force. Our value was finding and closing opportunities. Our value was more to EMC than it was to the customer.

Over time we expanded our portfolio. In 2009 we started to focus on VMware. It was a growing company and more and more people were deploying it. As we focused on VMware we added another layer of value to the customers because it would drive cost out and increase efficiency. In the middle of 2009 we started selling Cisco when they announced their server platform. EMC gave us backup, VMware gave us virtualization, and Cisco gave us servers.

We signed with Cisco because they had no partners and had a very big hill to climb when it came to competing with Dell and HP. We felt that if we signed with Cisco it would give us additional differentiation. It also allowed us to be the Cisco go-through partner in the Mid-West. From there we branched into networking. Over the past two years we have simply expanded of product portfolios to other providers, so we are no longer one company deep when it comes to a core technology. Our focus today is on the entire solution set. We go in and educate customers on what is available in the marketplace. We talk about Vblocks, VPLEX, and infrastructure that comes out in stacks. Our value add today is understanding that space and how it integrates together. We have built a hybrid lab and we can bring customers in and show them how customers work together.

Starting last year we built a consulting group. We hired the two guys who started RapidApp, which they sold to GlassHouse. After they left GlassHouse they came here and started our consulting practice. We are about 9 months into that and we are getting a lot more relevant to customers because we are entering at a much higher level and earlier in the cycle. We are trying to move up and provide a more broad solution. If we get in early enough we can help identify what the business requirements really are.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping A 130 Million VAR In The Midwest: Ahead CEO Dan Adamany
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