For resellers and integrators
Add archive and retention capability to your portfolio without hiring for it.
You already hold the customer relationship. We supply the archive architecture, the sourcing, the integration and the migration work behind it, under whatever branding the engagement requires.
Commercial terms are agreed per partnership. We do not publish tiers, margins or certification levels we would then have to qualify.
Long-term archive is an awkward line of business to build from scratch. The deal cycle is long, the technical knowledge is narrow and slow to acquire, and a single badly specified retention policy can cost a customer relationship you spent years building. Most resellers and consultancies encounter the requirement two or three times a year, which is often enough to lose deals over and too rarely to justify a dedicated practice. This page is for firms in exactly that position.
Reseller and integrator programme
What a partner draws on falls into five areas.
Architecture support on live opportunities. A storage architect works with you on the customer's actual requirement: data classification, tiering, retention rules, capacity modelling and the interface the application needs. Present it as your own work or ours, whichever suits the account.
Sourcing. Component selection and configuration validation against three manufacturers' portfolios, then a bill of materials your customer can price. Import and lead-time planning is part of this, which matters more in this region than most; see GCC coverage.
Integration and migration delivery. Installation, commissioning, acceptance testing and data movement with reconciliation, carried out to the phase structure on how we work. This is the part most partners subcontract in full, and there is no expectation that you build the skill yourself.
Technical enablement. Sessions for your pre-sales and delivery people on where each technology fits and, more usefully, where it does not. Qualifying an archive opportunity accurately is worth more to a partner than product feature knowledge.
Post-sale support. Media and hardware health, policy changes, capacity tracking and lifecycle review, either behind your support desk or directly with the customer if that is how the account is structured.
How an opportunity typically runs
- You register the opportunity with the customer name and a short description of the requirement.
- A joint qualification call establishes whether the requirement is genuinely archive, or a backup problem in disguise.
- We produce the architecture and bill of materials, with you leading or joining the customer conversation as agreed.
- Delivery follows the six-phase model, with roles per phase written down before work begins.
- Support responsibilities are set at handover and reviewed with the account annually.
Territory and portfolio fit
Not every firm is a good match, and it is cheaper for both sides to find that out in the first conversation.
| Signal | Strong fit | Weak fit |
|---|---|---|
| Customer base | Established enterprise or public-sector accounts with data retention obligations | Transactional SMB hardware resale |
| Portfolio | Complementary: networking, virtualisation, backup software, security, document management, PACS or VMS | Already resells competing archive and WORM platforms |
| Motivation | Wants to answer a recurring customer requirement properly | Wants a price list to bid against ours |
| Territory | A defined country or sector focus we can write into the agreement | Undefined, overlapping coverage claims |
Territory. We agree scope in writing so that neither side finds the other in the same account unexpectedly. That can be geographic, sector-based, or account-named, and it is easier to define narrowly at the start and extend it later.
Consultancies without a resale arm. If you advise rather than sell, the relationship works as a referral or subcontract instead. Your recommendation stays independent, and we appear as the delivery party.
Manufacturer relationships. Aban Smart is not an authorised or exclusive distributor for any of the three manufacturers involved, and we do not offer partners any distribution status. What the partnership provides is architecture, sourcing, delivery and support capability. The manufacturers themselves are described on the technology partners page, and the kind of engagement they support is set out under long-term data archiving.
To open a conversation, bring your territory, your existing portfolio and one live or recent opportunity that prompted you to look. That is enough to establish fit in a single call. Partner with Aban Smart or contact Aban Smart with those details.
Frequently asked questions
They are agreed per partnership and we do not publish them. Margin structure, whether you buy and resell or we contract directly with the customer, and how support revenue is split all depend on the scope you want. We would rather negotiate that against your actual model than advertise a tier table that fits nobody.
Related pages
Turn your requirement into a defensible architecture
Share the workload, capacity, retention, access, and resilience requirements. Aban Smart will identify the next discovery inputs and the appropriate engagement path.