Cyclades comes south of the border

US data centre management company Cyclades has opened an office in Sydney and seeks eight more resellers for its services.

Daniel Dalarossa, the Brazilian-born CEO of Cyclades, said the US company had been working with XSI and was “just about” to sign integrator BTAS in Australia but wanted about 10 resellers for its complex “out of band” data centre management portfolio.

“We're looking for vertical alignments and established resellers,” he said.

However, broad-based distributors were unlikely to be considered, Dalarossa said, as the company's services were complex and not suited to box-drop marketing.

That said, demand for the company's Linux-based services -- aimed squarely at the disaster recovery space -- could be on the verge of exploding, he said.

“We've estimated the market in Australia is about US$35 million in our niche market. Globally, we can say it's US$850 million,” Dalarossa said. “We're looking at about 69 percent growth for this current financial year, ending December 2004.”

Dalarossa said that Cyclades had 300 customers in Australia so far, including EDS, National Australia Bank and the Department of Defence. The company has a year-old R&D facility in Brisbane but customer response had suggested it was time to cut a broader swath through the local market, he said.

Leanne Ramsay, newly-appointed regional director for Cyclades in Australia and New Zealand, said the services provider would combine 10 or 20 percent direct with about 80 percent indirect sales.

However, channel partners that had invested in a possible sale would be compensated should a customer elect to go direct to Cyclades instead, she promised.

“We don't want to rob Peter to pay Paul -- that's not what it's about,” Ramsay said.

She said education would be a particular focus for partner attention. “We've a lot of universities in Australia and also in the financial market,” she said.

The Sydney office had two staff so far, and two more would be hired in a few months, Ramsay said.

Dalarossa said the closest competitor had been Stallion Technologies, an Australian company that was swallowed up by Lantronics in the 1990s.

Ramsay said that Lantronics had since taken its eye off the ball. “I don't come up against them any more,” she said.

Cyclades makes and delivers console access, KVM, power control and systems management software which aims to provide an alternate pathway to remotely accessing and managing servers, network equipment and automation devices.