Cohesity Brings Secondary Data Storage to Cisco SolutionsPlus Program

Hyperconverged secondary storage vendor Cohesity has joined Cisco’s SolutionsPlus partner program, allowing Cisco customers to buy Cohesity backup and recovery products as part of tested and validated packages from Cisco’s global price list using one purchase order.

The deal means that Cisco channel and direct sales teams will be able to offer Cohesity products with Cisco Unified Computing System servers and Cisco HyperFlex systems, along with joint sales, marketing, service and support for customers, according to the companies.

“We are excited to take our relationship with Cohesity to reseller status with Cisco’s world-class go-to-market capabilities,” said Vijay Venugopal, senior director of product management for Cisco HyperFlex. “Through the new solution, Cisco and Cohesity can offer the entire data stack for both primary and secondary data in an integrated architecture, which unlocks amazing new opportunities for customers.”

For partners, the new arrangement means that they can provide pricing and delivery on a Cisco-Cohesity package as easily as if it were a standalone Cisco product, while also providing access to additional customers in the $60 billion secondary data and apps marketplace, the companies said. The new global reseller agreement expands an existing relationship between Cohesity and Cisco. The new offerings are available worldwide.

Sanjeev Desai, the senior director for solutions marketing at Cohesity, told Channel Futures that the deepened partnership will be a boon to resellers and to customers.

Cohesity’s Sanjeev Desai

“For customers, it really brings simplicity,” he said. “They will no longer have to deal with multiple silos for their data. We are now moving to a single-course model from Cisco with everything on one purchase order.”

In the past, not all Cisco partners were also Cohesity partners and vice versa, he said. Now the process will go through Cisco channel partners and streamline the process for customers.

“We are a small company,” said Desai. “A large enterprise typically has branches all over the globe and oftentimes they want local sourcing from local channel partners. Now they will be able to source the products anywhere a Cisco partner is located on the globe. That gives significant simplicity for customers.”

For partners, the new validation of Cohesity products on Cisco hardware using Cisco Validated Design means that customers will know what they are getting and that it has successfully been put through rigorous testing and is ready for deployment, he said.

“For the partners, I think this accelerates their growth,” said Desai. “They can tap into this secondary data storage market to sell this with Cohesity,” using a Cisco SKU on a Cisco price list.

Kristin Struttmann, vice president of partner organization for VAR and reseller Trace3, told Channel Futures that the Cisco partnership with Cohesity continues a valuable pattern of Cisco finding young startups to work with on behalf of channel partners and customers.

“It’s valuable to us as a partner and not just to Cisco,” said Struttmann. “Cohesity is reinventing the storage play. Cisco is not a storage company, so this brings in the secondary storage piece, with reference architectures.”

In the past, Trace3 would have to bring together such packages on their own for their customers and the Cisco packages will make it easier in the future, she said. “Now that Cisco has done the heavy lifting, we don’t have to do that. This falls right into our lap.”

For a long time, storage, particularly involving secondary data, has been …

… a very complicated, legacy problem for clients, she said.

Trace3’s Kristin Struttman

“It has been clunky and heavy. What Cohesity realized is that there is so much data that is not useful and that isn’t being used every day, but it needs to be organized and usable,” said Struttmann. “Customers need to be able to tap that for data intelligence. For Cohesity to be able to tap that easily, it brings about a new opportunity for us and for our clients.”

Many clients are struggling with their huge quantities of secondary data, she explained.

“If they are going to make that transitional leap to staying in business over the next decade, they are going to need this technology. We have had Cohesity on our radar for three years and we saw them as something special.”

Cohesity focuses on secondary data, which is non-production data, or data than is stored without strict service-level agreements such as file shares, backups, archives, object storage or data for application testing and development.

Cohesity’s flagship product for secondary storage is Cohesity Data Platform, which runs on certified hardware including Cisco UCS, HPE Proliant, Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Cohesity’s own hardware.