With interest in high-performance Ethernet and Infiniband switches increasing, thanks to the rise of cloud computing and big data, Mellanox Technologies is looking for some additional channel help to drive more sales.
The company this week announced it is revamping its partner portal to include blueprints for building cloud and storage solutions and a range of new online training courses.
Darrin Neil Chen, senior director of worldwide channels, said high-performance computing (HPC) technologies are increasingly finding their way into the enterprise, thanks to cloud computing, big data and a host of other latency-sensitive applications.
Mellanox, said Chen, has been gaining share at the expense of rivals such as Brocade and Emulex. According to market research firm Crehan Research, Mellanox grew its 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) market share to approximately 19 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. Mellanox claims its market share is the fastest growing of all vendors in the category, demonstrating a more than threefold increase from the previous quarter.
From a channel perspective, one of the most attractive attributes of Mellanox is the company’s Virtual Protocol Interconnect technology, which makes it easier for organizations to upgrade not only to 40G Ethernet switches in the future, but also to Infiniband switches, Chen said. While Ethernet currently dominates the switching market, sales of Infiniband are also expected to increase as I/O bandwidth demands increase over time, he said.
Demand for Infiniband, says Chen, is especially high among organizations building high-end data centers in support of advanced cloud computing applications.
In addition to looking for solution providers familiar with high-performance switching technologies, Chen said Mellanox is willing to invest in training solution providers with little experience in this area as a way to expand the overall market.
“We think this whole area represents a growth market opportunity for the channel,” said Chen.