Datalink Corp. (DTLK)

[Det_Robert_Thorne]

Good article about Q2 from a VAR-focused site

IMO, the company needs to see more articles like the one at the following link. It's from a news site dedicated to serving VARs, and isn't just a rehash of the press release.

It's also not a Seeking Alpha article by a self-interested blogger.

The author obviously listened to the CC, or used a transcript.

Here's an excerpt, followed by the link:

While Datalink enjoyed a 34-percent growth in revenue over last year, the quarter's revenue total was below previous guidance, said Paul Lidsky, Datalink's president and CEO, during the company's financial analyst call.

The lower-than-expected revenue resulted from a lengthening of the sales cycle, and not from a drop in large projects, Lidsky said.

"Sales cycles are lengthening because we are selling larger projects, which require a longer time," he said.

Customer demands for modernizing their data centers has not abated, Lidsky said. "It is simply taking longer," he said.

Datalink sold 24 virtualized data center projects during the second quarter which equated to revenue of $21.7 million, which is up from 17 deals worth $16.6 million in the first quarter of the year, Lidsky said.

These resulted from strong partnerships with Cisco and NetApp on their jointly-developed FlexPod converged infrastructure architecture, as well as a strong partnership with EMC on its newly-unveiled VSPEX reference architecture, Lidsky said.

Datalink was the first North American solution provider to get the FlexPod Premium Partner status, and was one of the first in the world to be certified by EMC for VSPEX, he said.

Lidsky also said that revenue from selling Cisco server and networking products rose 11 percent during the quarter over last year, while EMC-related revenue rose 66 percent over the same period.

"Both our Cisco and EMC partnerships are playing an increasing role in our data center business," he said.

http://www.crn.com/news/storage/240004439/converged-infrastructure-virtualized-data-center-business-drive-datalinks-2q-revenue-earnings.htm