Competitor Ad Mocks Intransa

I don't know anything about BCDVideo's storage solutions from personal experience, but I like the ad.

While the cartoonish 'frustrated man' stock photo might be construed as mocking, the message (& neon green phone [not stock]) certainly clarifies the intended target audience.

With Intransa/Viakoo/et al continuing to ignore the world, there exists a rare 'clump' of untethered storage customers floating around.

Still-surviving storage vendors would be derelict if they didn't try and woo at least a portion of that clump....

I think it's a well played ad too. Rather than a generic, "We're Great" ad, they've picked a known pain point for people who buy their type of products.

I've used BCD products and have met some of the crew through Anixter distribution, and this ad does not surprise me. They're good people, and always easy/fun group to talk to and work out deals with.

Excellent ad. One thing all customers have in common is they want their "pain" to go away. They identified the pain and offer a solution. Although it willl likely involve replacing their Intransa units with another storage solution that will be another large pain in the wallet.

Is anybody besides "Viakoo" offering to support Intransa customers with parts and service? The biggest service issue I would think is providing replacement drives and that should be fairly simple. Or perhaps offer a "trade up" program for Intransa users to swap their storage at a discount?

I'm holding on to my Intransa trade show gimme neon green rubber stick figure with magnets in it's hands and feet, could be a collectors item someday.

John, I am not sure who else besides Viakoo is providing Intransa service/support. If anyone else knows of alternatives, please share.

Marty, you don't know BCD? OnSSI has some type of partnership with them for their hybrid solution.

Regardless, they're great guys to work with.

The IP Video/VMS manufacturers are always touting the benefits of an open platform, HW agnostic software and promoting COTS solutions. Why are these HW vendors succeeding (with the exception of Intransa). I see the benefit only for the pure software VMS companies like MIlestone and OnSSI to partner with these vendors so they can provide a one stop shop but is there really room in market for so many?

As a technologist, I find it hard to recommend to one of my customers the need to go to something other than the top COTS server and storage vendors in market. I have favorites for every price level that I try to recommend.

Greg, I am not sure these HW vendors are 'succeeding' that much. Pivot3 is 'big' relatively speaking (tens of millions annual revenue) but it took $100+ million in VC funding to get there. The other companies all seem to be relatively small / niche.

To the extent that they are succeeding, integrators who use them cite the 'value add' of storage calculation, support, etc. If the price is modestly more than COTS providers like Dell or HP, it can be worth it for those that want to reduce risk.

My comment related to my 'personal experience' with BCD....

While OnSSI has literally hundreds of technical partners (as you are aware), my training role somewhat limits my exposure (or personal experience) with many of these folks.

I'm certain our support and engineering teams are abundantly familiar with BCD's storage solutions.

I was actually referring to my previous positions (integrator support) where BCD was not a hardware vendor that we used. (i.e. no 'personal' experience) :)

So BCD's message is "we actually answer our phone". That's compelling?

It is when your vendor doesn't... :)