LeftHand Networks announced that the company’s Advantage Partner Program is growing at an accelerated rate, adding 145 new VARs to its global program since November 2007. At more than 425 partners worldwide, the program’s strong growth is attributed to the expanding iSCSI SAN market and LeftHand Networks’ focus on its channel partner business model worldwide.

Flexibly designed to help partners of all sizes offer next generation iSCSI and virtualization technologies to grow their business, the LeftHand Advantage Partner Program offers partners the ability to sell proven, SAN solutions that are appealing to mid-tier and enterprise organizations. LeftHand Networks’ partner program also provides a rich opportunity registration program, highly satisfied customers and an architecture that promotes a high degree of repeat business and joint sales and marketing assistance from experts in the iSCSI market. The program is targeted at creating a profitable business opportunity for LeftHand Networks’ partners.

“IP SANs are quickly becoming the storage system defacto standard for server virtualization environments. With clustering capabilities and performance that scales with capacity, LeftHand Networks’ iSCSI SAN solutions are ideal for virtualized environments,” said David Webb, executive vice-president of sales, Evolution, LLC, a LeftHand Networks reseller. “LeftHand Networks physical and virtual storage options coupled with the focus they have on channel success, through their rich registration program, the 40 percent annuity business and knowledgeable sales team, creates a very compelling business model for us.”

As the largest pure-play iSCSI vendor LeftHand Networks provides customers with highly available storage solutions that are ideal for virtualized environments, data center and remote office/branch office environments, providing new levels of performance, scalability and utilization. According to IDC, the iSCSI / IP SAN market is expected to grow to $4.4 billion by 2012.

“LeftHand Networks’ emphasis on innovation is proving to be very successful with our growing customer base,” said Alex McLoughlin, director of operations, Virtual Age Limited in the United Kingdom. “With LeftHand’s technology we have the ability to offer the most highly available iSCSI solutions in the marketplace to help customers make the best choices today to meet the emerging needs of tomorrow.”

The Advantage Partner Program includes resellers in Europe and the United States who have enthusiastically joined the LeftHand Networks partner team and sold its technology as an integral part of their customer solutions, including IIS, PC Connections, AVNET, Virtualize IT, Integra and more. As a member of LeftHand Networks team partners enjoy a partner program, technology and sales model all committed to helping them create a compelling, successful and profitable business.

“LeftHand Networks is committed to the success and profitability of its channel partners, and we are pleased to have the world’s leading resellers join the LeftHand Networks team,” said David Bangs, worldwide vice president of sales, LeftHand Networks. “With some of the world’s best and most knowledgeable specialists in virtualization and SANs, customers have access to best-in-class expertise and support around the world.”

LeftHand Networks partners sell an enterprise-class SAN that includes all the features a customer needs, including online scalable capacity and performance, synchronous and asynchronous replication for data protection, ultra-efficient thin provisioning, instant data copies with snapshots, and remote copy for disaster recovery. LeftHand Networks SAN/iQ software enables a customer to manage all these features on their SAN from a single management interface on both physical and virtual SAN platforms.