All-Channel Sales Model Propels Compellent Beyond 100 Customers in Products First Year

Company built product and structured business to maximize the success of value-added resellers

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) April 8, 2005 -- Compellent Technologies (http://www.compellent.com), a provider of modular, affordable storage solutions distributed exclusively through a select national network of business partners, today announced it surpassed 100 customers for Storage Center, its storage area network (SAN) product, within one year of the solutions availability.

Unlike other SAN vendors, Compellent does not have a direct sales force that competes with its channel partners. Compellents Elevate Partner Program addresses a business partners biggest challenges – eroding margins, direct competition from storage manufacturers, and difficulty generating ongoing professional services revenue – through an all-channel strategy that enables partners to grow a stronger, more sustainable business.

It is remarkable that Compellent was able to surpass the one hundred customer milestone in less than a year," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. End users tell us that when storage system vendors have one hundred or more customers they no longer consider the company a startup – Compellent is quickly emerging as a force in this market."

Unlike other manufacturers who tap resellers for distribution but ultimately compete with them via direct sales, our channel partners are truly our sales force," said Phil Soran, president and chief executive officer of Compellent. We will continue to focus 100 percent of our resources on delivering an innovative product and helping our partners succeed selling and servicing their clients."

What Compellents Channel Partners Are Saying
Compellent doesn't compete with me for business," said John Dusek III, Convergent Storage Solutions, "leaving me free to focus on what's important - designing and delivering strategic storage solutions for my clients."

With Compellent I continually capture high value service revenue by combining my data storage expertise with Storage Centers modular offerings," said Scott Winslow, Winslow Technology Group. I never run out of opportunities to add value to the customer and to my business."
Compellent does not offer direct professional services," said David Payne, Xcedex. Eliminating the services competition enables me to continually create new offerings for my clients that help me penetrate more accounts and provide more services around every opportunity."

Compellent understands my need to build a profitable business and doesnt just view me as a source of leads," said Jim Stover, Clear North Technologies. I can build their product into my solutions and maximize the impact for my business while solving my clients storage problems."

About Storage Center
Storage Center builds on its Dynamic Block Architecture to deliver a scalable, open-systems hardware platform allowing businesses to mix and match any number of drives, controllers and enclosures; an integrated foundation of core storage capabilities providing functionality previously available only in high-end systems; a powerful suite of software applications optimizing utilization, automating replication and speeding data recovery; and a single, intuitive, centralized management interface streamlining all storage administration.

About Compellent
Compellent delivers affordable, modular storage solutions exclusively through business partners that provide companies of all sizes enterprise-level storage capabilities without big system costs or complexities. Designed by network storage and virtualization pioneers, Compellent enables any business to cut storage expenditures in half, recover from data hazards within minutes, scale to any capacity across any technology and easily manage its storage without adding staff. Headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minn., Compellent has raised more than $23 million in financing from leading investors including Cargill Ventures, Crescendo Ventures and El Dorado Ventures. For more information, visit http://www.compellent.com.

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