Trilio Ramps Up Channel Program For Its First-To-Market OpenStack Backup Service

Startup Trilio Data offers the first native OpenStack backup and recovery service and is looking to bring in more partners for its newly launched channel program, the company told CRN.

OnX Enterprise Solutions, a solution provider with headquarters in Toronto and New York, is the lead channel partner nationally for Trilio Data.

Brian Davis, vice president of open cloud solutions at OnX, said he’s been working with telecommunications and financial services companies that have started to adopt Trilio or are at the proof-of-concept stage with Trilio’s offering.

’Usually you have a [proof-of-concept] runoff against several products, but really it’s a one-horse battle because [Trilio] has the only product out there,’ Davis told CRN.

Trilio CEO David Safaii said all of the company’s sales are going through the channel and ’we’re looking to absolutely bring in more partners.’

Those may include regional partners around the U.S. that bring expertise in specific verticals. On such partner so far is Hanover, Md.-based Alliance Technology Group, which focuses on government customers.

Trilio also is looking to soon add partners in Europe and Asia, Safaii said.

’When you talk about the journey of OpenStack, whether you’re just starting down this path to roll out a cloud, it’s ongoing and iterative in nature,’ he said. ’Solution providers are critical to this.’

Many organizations that are looking to deploy an OpenStack cloud will eventually find that business needs such as compliance dictate that they’ll need a data assurance service -- and find that their only options are ’to develop your own in some form or fashion, or use a more hardened product like Trilio,’ said OnX's Davis.

Davis added that he’s aware of several other companies that are working on a native OpenStack backup service, ’but they’re a year or two behind Trilio.’

’The feedback [from initial customers] has been great, and quite honestly it’s because of the way that they are doing their backups. They’re looking at both VM-based and hypervisor-based backups, and you don’t get both of those normally,’ Davis said.

Trilio, Hopkinton, Mass., was founded in 2013 by Murali Balcha, a former engineering manager at EMC who was involved with OpenStack work, and Giri Basava, who was also previously an engineering leader at EMC and whose work included VMware integration.

The 15-person company has raised a seed funding round from two venture capital firms, Safaii said, though the firms and the funding amount aren’t being disclosed.

As far as how many partners Trilio is looking to add, Safaii said he doesn’t have a specific target to share but noted that the company is being pretty selective.

’We’re in a bit of a unique position, as the only data protection vendor out there [for OpenStack], that we can pick and choose. Our plate fills up very quickly,’ he said.