VAR Wins Healthcare Account By Increasing Disk Performance
This VAR is increasing sales 60% by specializing in SMB networks and disk defragmentation software.
Karl Palachuk, president of KPEnterprises Business Consulting, Inc., can’t understand how any business could run even a single Windows file server without using management tools such as a disk defragmenter. “We build Diskeeper into every Windows Small Business Server network quote we present to a customer,” says Palachuk. Diskeeper Corp., formerly Executive Software, manufactures disk defragmentation software for Windows. Its flagship product is called Diskeeper and is available in a variety of versions for file servers and stand-alone computers.
Sell Disk Defragmentation To Increase Customer Productivity
“Disk defragmentation is one of the easiest and least-expensive ways to increase performance on a network,” explains Palachuk. Disk fragmentation refers to how Windows stores single data files at multiple locations on a computer hard disk. Because the data is split up, it takes longer for the disk head to retrieve an entire file. Over time, disk fragmentation increases and can cause performance problems on a network.
For instance, in a recent independent study by Joe Kinsella of SilverBack Technologies, testing revealed that in some cases, a heavily fragmented disk drive resulted in file activities taking almost 15 times longer than the same file activities on nonfragmented drives. Loading a large Word document took 17.7 seconds with an unfragmented file, but took over 50.9 seconds with a highly fragmented file.
Recently, KPEnterprises won a service contract with a cardiology practice. The customer was a referral and looked to KPEnterprises to improve the performance of its network. After a network evaluation, KPEnterprises concluded that most of the performance problems were caused by excessive disk fragmentation. “We installed Diskeeper 10 Professional and increased performance immediately,” explains Palachuk. “We sell Diskeeper 10 Professional at a street price of about $450, depending on the version.” At a deeper level, KPEnterprises worked with the customer to further increase performance by optimizing six different databases it used. KPEnterprises now delivers additional services to the customer via a managed service model. Those services include a monthly check to make sure the Diskeeper configuration has not been changed and the defragmentation processes are still runnning according to schedule.
Add A Simple Solution To Your Networking Arsenal
If disk defragmentation sounds like a rather simple fix — it is. In most cases, KPEnterprises installs Diskeeper when installing a new file server, SAN (storage area network), or NAS (network attached storage). A regular schedule of defragmentation eliminates fragmentation issues on Windows servers. In cases where KPEnterprises is summoned to solve network performance problems, a manual execution of Diskeeper can provide a customer with immediate performance improvements, even on SAN and NAS storage systems. In one case, a customer was reluctant to purchase Diskeeper, so it paid KPEnterprises to run Diskeeper manually once every month as a service. After three months, the customer spent enough with KPEnterprises to pay for a full version of Diskeeper, so Palachuk was able to convince the customer to buy a copy of the software.
Focus Network Management Services On Vertical And/Or Horizontal Markets
Palachuk says the medical and financial markets provide his company with the strongest vertical sales opportunities. However, as with most networking VARs, the company takes more of a horizontal approach to doing business. KPEnterprises focuses on networks with 100 users or fewer, and Diskeeper is only one of the software products, hardware, and services the company provides for its customers.