Perhaps the single most crucial aspect of any data center is storage. Servers can crash and printers can fail. While that is a pain, it's not that big a deal. But mere talk about storage subsystems failure is enough to drive any IT director to update the old résumé. Seagate appears to be doing something about it.

On Monday (Sept. 24), disk drive maker Seagate announced a major initiative in which it is ratcheting up support for system builders with a new campaign to drive adoption of high-capacity storage with Windows Vista. That's a good thing. After all, when a single edited, multi-layered Photoshop file from a 10 megapixel camera can easily grow to 300MB or more (I have many hundreds like this) people need all the storage they can get.

The initiative targets distributors and solution providers with training, customizable tools
and channel programs that it hopes will boost revenue and profits, presumably for everyone involved, not just Seagate.

So what is this, exactly? According to Seagate, it is a toolkit designed to help system builders capitalize on the market transition to Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. (We could have a lively discussion on whether that transition is but a trickle or a wave, but I digress.) The toolkit is meant to provide distributors and solution providers with a new level of support to market and sell high-capacity storage with Windows Vista.

Among other benefits, the tools aim to help system builders match the Seagate desktop, notebook or external hard drive to various versions of Windows Vista -- Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, and Enterprise -- so they can build systems tailored to their customers' application requirements. Anything that simplifies and speeds the process has to be good, but the skeptic in me wonders whether a cheat sheet taped to the wall might accomplish the same thing.

Key aspects of the initiative include the abilities to:

-- Connect, carry, and share content using mobile devices and wireless networks

-- Accelerate restoring a complete PC or updating a new computer

-- Streamline backups

-- Find, manage and archive email through new search capabilities

-- Manage and store large amounts of photo files

-- Enjoy sophisticated, graphics-rich games

Ah yes, the games. But I digress again.

Perhaps I'm a wee bit confused, but none of the aforementioned points seems to be based solely on hard-drive technology. It's applications and utilities that bring these capabilities to fruition, in other words, it's the software.

The problem with hard drives as that they are invisible and nameless. They are commodities often purchased on price alone. If you're building a thousand desktops each equipped with a 750GB, 7200RPM drive, it's a good bet you'll opt for the least expensive one. The challenge Seagate and its competitors face is a difficult one: to make the invisible visible and communicate in a compelling way why their product is better.

The announcement goes on, letting us know that "personal computers powered by Seagate's Barracuda family of drives are especially suited for use with Windows Vista, providing up to 1TB of storage and enabling users to expand the capabilities of desktop PCs in the home and office." Does this insinuate that drives from Western Digital, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, or Toshiba are less well-suited for Vista? John Lennon once said not to read into his lyrics that which was not there. Perhaps that rule applies here, too.

If this was less about the hardware and more about improving the fortunes of integrators, perhaps I'd be a bit less disparaging. In fact, Seagate does eventually get around to that.

According to the company, the storage sales and marketing toolkit will serve as a "valuable and customizable resource, enabling solution providers to better educate, market and sell the reliable and capacity-rich solutions their customers want." That's precisely the sort of thing channel denizens want to hear.

The kit includes white papers, brochures, sell sheets, a solutions guide, fact sheets, and FAQs, all good things. The program is being offered exclusively through the Seagate Partner Program (SPP), a channel program that, like all channel programs, is designed to help solution providers close more sales and deliver better support.

Cynicism aside, any effort to ease the challenge of educating customers is an enormous help to solutions providers. For that, Seagate deserves to be applauded. Let's be realistic to acknowledge that this is not going to spur anyone to move to Vista sooner rather than later. I hope this new Seagate program is less convoluted than its announcement.

ITworld.com

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