Partnering with LinMin

We can work together in several different ways

So, you currently offer solutions and services for managing and monitoring systems, data centers and clouds, or perhaps you provide hardware to your customers, and you would like to further help your customers by offering bare metal provisioning capabilities.

Your options are the usual ones: "Make vs. Buy", "Make vs. Partner","Make vs. Resell" or "Make vs. OEM".

Let’s review these different options and see which one is best suited for your company:

• Make vs. Buy:
  • Make: This is typically a costly and time-consuming proposition. You should expect to spend a few million dollars and several years before you have a viable, commercial product. You may get a prototype out within 12 to 18 months, and an initial release within 2 years, but you’ll quickly realize that bare metal provisioning is an art as much as a science. It will take a long time, and probably some lost customers along the way to fully appreciate the nuances between operating system and hypervisor providers, low-level networking protocols, networking and orchestration and other factors. But the good news is that once you made this investment, you obviously own your product free and clear and are not reliant on a third party provider.
  • Buy: If you intend on owning the technology but don't want to assume the risks and lost opportunity time of building your own solution from scratch, then the "Buy" option is a very viable option. Part of your due diligence should include an evaluation of the company, its products/technology, its market presence, its existing partners. After the acquisition, you can start selling this new solution in your portfolio and take some time to integrate the product and company into yours, but you hit the ground running with a good product for your existing and prospective customers.
• Partner: Partnering means different things to different people, but in this context, we mean having a cordial and mutually beneficial solution with a provider of a solution complementary to yours that fits into common target markets. One party invites the other to propose their solution to a prospective customer, with the understanding that a finder's fee will be provided to the originator should the customer like and purchase the solution. Everybody, especially the customer, wins! Drop us a note if you would like to discuss this.
• Resell: Reselling LinMin products may make sense, as it provides your teams with full control in customer situations since they don't have to rely on another company to present a complementary solution to your customer. If you have a loyal installed customer base needing such a solution, this can quickly add to your bottom line, and you will likely also include this solution in most/all your proposals to prospective customers. There is a modest upfront investment to consider: sales, systems engineer and level-1 support engineer training, some product marketing deliverables to package the new solution consistent with your company's existing products. We can help you get started if this is right for you.
• OEM: This approach involves providing a "private-labelled" or "OEM" version of a solution, where most of the customer-visible GUI components include your company’s logo, product name and copyright strings. The online documentation is also branded throughout with your company name, product name, product acronym, support email address and more. With the OEM approach, LinMin will interact with your existing or prospective customers only in rare scenarios and only when you request it: maybe initial customer situations and rare post-sales support instances). You instantly add a much needed and proven solution to your product line, and with your logo and product name throughout, the new solution integrates seamlessly with your existing products (orchestrators, systems management tools, control panels, etc.) As an example, Cisco selected LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning under the name of Cisco Server Provisioner as part of the Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud. LinMin has designed its software build, packaging, documentation, quality assurance and other systems around the ability to offer branded solutions. Should we discuss this further?

Please contact us to explore how we might work together!