NetApp & VMware Solutions

To meet the needs of today’s diverse, technology-driven businesses; delivering products of the highest quality and reliability is only the first step. Increasingly our customers are looking not just to satisfy their data storage needs, they are also looking for integrated solutions that meet their demanding requirements encompassing sophisticated data consolidation for ease of management through to enterprise level virtualisation projects for reduced total cost of ownership and demonstrable, measurable return on investment.

To meet these requirements, Alpha partners with industry leading vendors within data storage, virtualisation technologies, networking and application/data protection & retention.

Through these partnerships, we deliver solutions that interoperate seamlessly and reliably within our customers environments whilst also offering the highest levels of service; these technology partnerships are critical to our success and our customers’ success.

To ensure we remain constantly abreast of new products & emerging technologies, best practice guidance and excel within our chosen field(s) of expertise we are constantly investing in the attainment of new skills and partaking in the relevant vendor programmes to achieve the highest levels of accreditation. This approach helps us to deliver better performance, reliability, manageability, and scalability within SAN and virtualisation environments.

Alphas NetApp Capabilities

Member of the Star Partner Program
The STAR partner program and initiatives are important to Network Appliance's strategy to attract and retain the industry's top storage-focused resellers, this program is focussed firmly on the partners capabilities to provide integrated storage and content delivery management solutions for any size of enterprise.

APSP Accreditation
NetApp Authorized Professional Service Partners represent partners with the highest level of competency in professional service delivery for NetApp technologies. These partners have successfully completed the program’s rigorous solution areas training requirements – the same training offered to NetApps own Professional Services teams. These partners also have access to the same best-in-class tools and methodologies used by NetApp professional service engineers. When you team up with a NetApp Authorized Professional Service Partner you get a partner that you can rely on to help you reach your storage and data management goals.

APSP Requirements

To qualify for authorized status within the APSP program, partners are required to employ at least two people who have completed the training requirements outlined below. Training is mandatory for all solution areas:

 

Specialisation	NetApp Requirements	Alpha Personnel
APSP Storage Design & Implementation	2 x NCDA 2 x NCIE	Alphas technical team currently hold the most technical certifications for any UK partner;   12 x NCDA http://www.netapp.com/us/services/university/certifications/ncda.html 11 x NCIE http://www.netapp.com/us/services/university/certifications/nso-501.html 2 x NCSA http://www.netapp.com/us/services/university/certification-ncsa.html
APSP Storage for Virtualised Platforms (VMware)	2 x NCDA 2 x NCIE

ASP Accreditation
NetApp Authorized Support Partners represent partners with the highest level of knowledge in the area of remote and maintenance support services on NetApp products. These partners have reached the same certification level required of NetApps own Support Service engineers. ASP partners have a close working relationship with the NetApp Global Services team and are fully supported for backend escalation support. You can be confident in knowing that these partners can quickly and efficiently resolve your technical issue around the clock in the geographies that they support.

ASP Requirements

 

Key Area	Components
Call Centre	·         24x7 support capability	·         Single Support Number
	·         Electronic case tracking	·         Escalation Process
	·         3 x NCDA level engineers	·         Root cause analysis investigation process
Field Support	·         String assignment of 3 Engineers	·         Time based escalation
Reporting	·         Case performance metrics	·         Training logs
	·         Parts inventory	·         Performance Reviews

2009 NetApp Insight Award
NetApp Insight is the premier NetApp pre-sales and technical event and is attended by over 1200+ NetApp Channel & Partner staff from EMEA with over 100 of these from the UK, the event also hosts the Partner Awards during which NetApp recognises individuals and organisations for their contribution and efforts, this year a senior member of the Alpha technical team was acknowledged for his outstanding technical contribution and was presented with the award for Technical Partner Excellence. This recommendation was made by a NetApp nomination panel and the award really does reflect a very high level of diligence and all round capability.
 
VMware Capabilities
 
Enterprise Partner
Enterprise partners have a higher level of VMware expertise, allowing them to more effectively take advantage of VMware’s vCloud computing solutions to develop and deliver enterprise-ready cloud services to market. Partners at this level have met the requirements to deliver the highest levels of service within  the design, implementation and support of virtualization enabled solutions, applications and services.

VAC Accreditation
The VMware Authorized Consultant Program (VAC) is designed to support the VMware vision to help customers virtualise their IT infrastructure by virtualising computing, storage and networking – and managing it centrally. This program supports our services partners in expanding their business by incorporating VMware virtual infrastructure solutions into a focused service model.
 

Specialisation	VMware Requirements	Alpha Personnel
Enterprise Infrastructure Virtualisation	2 x VSP 2 x VCP (ESXv3 & vSphere) 2 x VTSP	15 x VSP (VMware Sales Professional)   9 x VCP (ESXv3 & vSphere) http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=12457&ui=www 4 x VTSP (VMware technical sales professional)