As a provider of an all-flash array that is sold primarily through the channel, Kaminario has made a lot of headway in the crowded storage field. Now the company is ratcheting up those efforts with the launch of its first formal channel program.
Ritu Jyoti, chief product officer for Kaminario, said the ACCELERATE channel program will give Kaminario’s partners access to discounts, product rebates and market development funds now that Kaminario has been able to raise a total of $143 million in funding. The goal, she said, is to provide partners with the tools they need to sell, without creating a lot of overhead in terms of channel processes. To help manage the channel, Kaminario recently appointed Dror Friedman as director of channel sales.
“We want to keep it as simple as possible,” Jyoti said. “The channel program covers only 10 pages.”
Kaminario is locked in a fierce battle with a raft of other all-flash array newcomers, as well as every major storage vendor that now has its own all-flash arrays. Kaminario contends that it’s now only a matter of time before all-flash arrays replace magnetic disk drives as the main device used to provide primary storage. The degree to which that will actually happen remains to be seen.
Jyoti noted that in addition to simply being faster, all-flash arrays provide more consistent levels of application performance when compared to magnetic storage systems that have to be tuned constantly. At the same time, however, the cost of magnetic storage keeps falling, which has led many organization to opt for hybrid storage arrays that combine flash and magnetic storage.
Kaminario, which currently has 70 partners in the United States, reported that bookings for the fourth quarter of 2014 grew 100 percent over the previous quarter. Jyoti said that the company is looking to add about 30 more partners in 2015, which—despite all the entrenched competition in the storage space—Kaminario expects to be able to easily recruit.