Qumulo Exits Hardware, Teams With Supermicro, Arrow On Appliances

‘We’re a software-only company. You can run our software on the cloud or on hardware all the same. It’s true software-defined storage with open APIs. So customers can do things like have a workload based on a Supermicro appliance shift to AWS to run first-party services,’ says Warren Mead, Qumulo’s vice president of channels and business development.

Data management and hybrid cloud file storage technology developer Qumulo Thursday unveiled a new partnership with Supermicro under which Supermicro is building data management appliances using Qumulo software.

The new relationship comes as Qumulo, which had been making its own data management appliances using other vendors’ whitebox server hardware is ending its own hardware integration and sales business, said Warren Mead, vice president of channels and business development for the Seattle-based company.

“We’re a software-only company,” Mead told CRN. “You can run our software on the cloud or on hardware all the same. It’s true software-defined storage with open APIs. So customers can do things like have a workload based on a Supermicro appliance shift to AWS to run first-party services.”

[Related: Qumulo’s Bill Richter On $125 Million Funding, Recruiting Cloud-Forward Partners]

While Supermicro has its own direct sales channels, it is also a top provider of whitebox server technology to the channel.

Mead said Supermicro will sell complete Qumulo-based appliances to its own customer base. However, solution providers looking for data management appliances can work with Centennial, Colo.-based Arrow Electronics to order the hardware and software with Arrow taking care of the integration, he said. “Arrow will bundle it and ship it out,” he said.

The Qumulo software continues to also be available integrated with Hewlett Packard Enterprise hardware and for sale via HPE’s channels, he said.

The Qumulo-based appliances offer management of high-performance, critical file data that competes with offerings from a couple of top storage vendors, Mead said.

“It displaces a lot of Dell EMC Isilon, the No. 1 product we’re disrupting,” he said. “But we don’t want to discriminate against NetApp. We’ll displace that, too.”

Qumulo’s technology has proven itself for nearly any customer with unstructured data challenges regardless of vertical, said Jason Grant, director of storage and data solutions at VeriStor Systems, an Atlanta-based solution provider which has worked with Qumulo for several years.

This is especially true for clients with high-performance and high-capacity requirements where it shines, Grant told CRN.

Grant said he had heard that Qumulo was planning to exit the hardware business, and said it will not have a big impact on VeriStor.

“HPE is a very strategic partner of ours,” he said. “We can buy Qumulo through HPE. We drove a handful of Qumulo hardware deals, but more on the smaller side. Qumulo’s exiting the hardware business will help our HPE relationship.”

Grant said he expects VeriStor will use the new Qumulo-Supermicro appliances.

“There are scenarios where it makes sense from a customer perspective,” he said. “There’s a lot of value in the HPE ecosystem, but unless a client is really ingrained in the HPE environment, Supermicro may be a better option. We’ll look at it on a case-by-case basis.”