New Dell deal for Pivot3

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Pivot3 has a new deal with Dell that will make the storage manufacturer even more attractive to government and enterprise customers, Lee Caswell, Pivot3 co-founder and chief marketing officer, told Security Systems News.

“It's a major change in how we ship and fulfill products,” he explained. Pivot3 sells “serverless storage,” products that combine servers and storage in a scale-out application platform.

Under its new deal, Dell hardware will be combined with Pivot3's software and branded under Pivot3. Caswell said a number of government and other enterprise customers were interested in having a platform from a major supplier. “Our value as a company is in the software we build; we can run on any hardware,” he said.

This arrangement will give Pivot3 customers “access to Dell's break-fix services.” It will speed up access to products because Pivot3 spares and replacement parts will be serviced via Dell's domestic and international supply chain. And, Caswell said, “We can offer Dell management tools for servers for customers who invested in Dell management software.”

Caswell emphasized that, “this does not mean we're now a Dell company.” Pivot3 “will still work 100-percent through its reseller channels.” Dell will not sell the Pivot3-branded servers to end users directly, he said.

Dell's high-volume, off-the-shelf servers are a great option for government and enterprise customers, and “the fact that they are Dell products eliminates questions about hardware, and it allows us to focus on the value of Pivot3 software,” Caswell said.

The deal comes at a time when Pivot3 is experiencing a lot of growth. It added two new people to its executive team in recent weeks: Deborah MacCallum, VP of engineering, and Curt Wittich, VP of sales. Caswell said the company is also in the process of hiring a new VP of manufacturing.

MacCallum has 25 years of experience in IT. She comes to Pivot3 from EMC, where she was senior director of software engineering responsible for strategic product strategies in network server and storage solutions. She also supported the development of cloud-based systems at EMC.

Wittich has more than 20 years of sales experience in the IT industry. Most recently he was VP of worldwide sales for Pillar Data Systems. Before that, he was SVP and GM Americas for Hitachi Data Systems. Both MacCallum and Wittich report to Pivot3 CEO Bob Fernander.

Caswell said it's significant that the company had a VP of support before hiring a VP of sales. “We've invested heavily in a deep, technical sales group ... we partner up [with customers] and help configure systems in the field,” he said. “We invest in the support side, so we win customers one at a time,” he said.

Caswell said the company, which does not release its financials, doubled its revenue for the fourth year in a row. “IMS [Research] says we're now number one of the IP SAN products for the surveillance industry,” he said.  “And IMS predicts IP SANs will be the fastest growing segment of the storage market for video security, growing at 97 percent year over year.”