CRN Exclusive: All-Flash Array Vendor Kaminario Targets SaaS Channel Partners

All-flash storage array vendor Kaminario is strengthening its channel focus with several new initiatives planned throughout 2016.

Among the changes that solution providers working with Needham, Mass.-based Kaminario can expect are programs for new partner types including those with a focus on Software-as-a-Service, along with increased spending and training to go with those new programs.

The expanded program comes from a realization that the future of the data center lies in all-flash storage architectures that allow enhanced performance with new applications while letting customers continue to leverage past storage investments, said Kaminario founder and CEO Dani Golan.

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The traditional approach to flash storage has been to add flash as a performance tier, or to run a single high-performance application on a flash storage array, Golan told CRN.

"When we approach customers, we don't tell them to put one or two applications on our systems," he said. "We tell them, put all your mission-critical applications on us. On-line transaction processing, virtualization, analytics, all of it."

That has made the SaaS market a big focus for Kaminario in 2016.

"SaaS companies need affordability and performance along with the flexibility to do analytics and reporting on the same data set," Golan said. "We provide scalability, cost efficiency, and the ability to host mixed workloads. This lets us shine."

Kaminario's K2 family of all-flash storage solutions are unique in their ability to independently scale out for performance and up for capacity while applying such storage services as deduplication, Golan said.

"And we're the only company with adaptive block performance that allows the storage to be tuned to an application in real time," he said. "This allows customers to host any application."

Kaminario is a channel-led company, with almost all of its sales going through indirect channel partners, said Dror Friedman, senior director of global channels for the vendor.

This year will see a significant expansion of the company's Accelerate channel program to the SaaS channel, Kaminario's Friedman told CRN.

Kaminario will be reaching out for the first time to solution providers with experience in the SaaS market and providing them with targeted channel sales campaigns, he said.

The company also will provide those partners with marketing funds specifically targeted at developing SaaS initiatives and accelerate their development of SaaS practices, and will offer new training programs specific to the SaaS market including webinars and seminars, he said.

The all-flash storage array market is taking off quickly, and Kaminario is playing a big part on the line card of Consiliant Technologies, said Dave Cerniglia, president of the Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider.

Consiliant only signed with Kaminario about six months ago but already has closed a couple of Kaminario deals and set up several proofs-of-concept solutions, Cerniglia told CRN.

"I looked at several technologies, and I believe in the Kaminario solution," he said. "It's not a single-workload solution. It can handle multiple workloads and provide the scalability to do it."

The Kaminario solution is a good fit for partners like Consiliant, Cerniglia said. "Kaminario is eager to do business with us and has helped us break into new accounts," he said. "Kaminario seems to be on a growth spurt, and is hiring some really good people. That's when a vendor is fun to work with."

Cerniglia said it is important that Kaminario early on took a channel-focused approach to the market. He also said he applauds the vendor's new focus on the SaaS market.

"SaaS and IaaS [Infrastructure-as-a-Service] are two conversations you can't get away from," he said. "I was on two phone calls today talking about SaaS and IaaS. Our ability to target SaaS hosting facilities is extremely important for us."

The Kaminario program is not yet fully baked, Cerniglia said. "But we're already taking it to our Oracle customer base, which has adopted SaaS," he said. "And we're working with Kaminario to help customers looking at such services as remote recovery and hosted desktops."