A number of data storage and management channel opportunities were floated at this week’s IT Press Tour held in Lisbon, Portugal.
IT Europa was in attendance to help grill the various vendors who took part in the event, which varied between established names in the data technology space and some very niche players.
One of those niche players is Cleondris, which is a Switzerland-headquartered firm that specialises in offering data services around the global NetApp installed base.
It is a NetApp partner who originally struck its relationship with the Californian storage giant after it helped the company’s German unit solve some problems a big German banking customer was having with its NetApp configuration.
Christian Plattner, CEO of the firm, says his firm has no interest in working with any of NetApp’s rivals, as doing so would spoil the close relationship they have together, with NetApp sales and services people effectively involved in a joint go-to-market with Cleondris.
“The global NetApp footprint is huge and we see no reason to work with other vendors in the enterprise space we are involved in,” he said.
“The NetApp guys take us to the customers, and it has been like that for the last ten years, that’s how we get into the large customers. If we were to work with the likes of Dell EMC or Pure, for instance, they would stop taking us.”
But with the expansion of Cleondris’ services, particularly in the security space, there are now opportunities for other third party partners to get involved.
The company essentially offers a toolbox for NetApp deployments and problems. Its three main products are SnapGuard for ransomware protection, Data Manager, and Cleondris HCC to support NetApp’s SolidFire legacy flash storage products, which many customers are still keen on using. The first two products mentioned here are essentially add-ons for NetApp ONTAP data management software.
On that ransomware offering, Plattner said: “About six years ago [when ransomware became a big global issue] NetApp took the view they were a storage company and not a security one, which is when we came in.”
Cleondris has 150 large customers using its SnapGuard ransomware so far, and expects potential partners of the company to be interested in helping to get it to other NetApp users.
All three offerings above are supported by a tiny piece of core software of 15MB. Plattner expects to sell through the Amazon Marketplace in the future through resellers and MSPs, and its streamlined software will help.
“Resellers want the product, but want to sell it through Amazon as their customers want a single Amazon bill, they don’t want ones from vendors,” he said.
The company already has three resellers in Germany, for instance, including Computacenter, illustrating channel interest.
More IT Press Tour news to follow.
