StorONE S1 Storage Platform Adds New Features for Partners

The StorONE S1 Storage Platform has been updated with new features aimed at increasing productivity and revenue for channel partners. Bolstering Version 3 of the platform is the ability to move data across multiple tiers of storage and quarterly updates.

Also new is the ability to move older snapshot data to cheaper hard disk-based or cloud storage with zero impact. The enterprise storage platform also now allows users to create volumes that support object storage using Amazon S3 storage protocols.

StorONE’s George Crump

The ability to move data across four storage tiers is huge, George Crump, StorONE’s chief marketing officer, told Channel Futures.

“What makes this new and different is that with most hybrid arrays you are typically going from a flash tier to a hard disk tier,” said Crump. “This goes from up to four tiers, from NVMe SSD to QLC SSD to hard disk or to cloud, whichever.”

That makes it more flexible for users, said Crump. “For resellers, this matters because now they can provide a cost-effective solution and because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its business and economic effects, that’s going to be as import as it’s ever been.”

The StorONE S1 storage platform gives resellers a chance to prescribe the exact solution for a customer’s needs, he said. In addition, the product can be installed remotely, which is helpful during ongoing COVID-19 quarantines.

Also helpful for channel partners is the company’s decision to move the product to quarterly releases, said Crump. “Formerly, there had been one major release a year. This now allows us to get new features to customers more quickly. For resellers, it gives them the opportunity to re-engage with customers on a quarterly instead of annual basis.”

That also makes new releases more manageable from a training perspective because IT workers don’t have to learn as many new feature changes at once, said Crump. “It allows us to avoid a whole big feature load. It’s just a few things of significance, which is easier to bring in than 16 big things once a year.”

This is important to resellers so there’s one product to use, sell, support and train for, said Crump. “For resellers, this is an ideal strategy because it is one piece of software they can combine with their hardware and they can really focus on.”

The new features and improvements in the StorONE S1 storage platform came through requests from partners and users.

“We’re finding our resellers are telling us that margins with this are significantly better and that time to install and time spent supporting it is significantly lower” compared to other products, said Crump. “The time to learn the product from sales to an engineering perspective is also lower. Because we simplified the customer environment it became one solution to sell, and it dramatically reduces the cost of storage because we are less expensive and we are 60% more efficient in using hardware.”

Fabrics4Clouds’ Andre Mellul

Andre Mellul, CEO of StorONE Fabrics4Clouds, said the StorONE S1 storage platform options are critical for software-defined storage platforms. “The flexibility, the multiprotocol paradigm as well as the multitier storage media” will be helpful for his consultancy and customers, he said.

“Customers do not directly ask for these things,” he said. “It is more about showing them they need these things to fit in the delivery and protection of their storage assets.”

The improved platform provides storage flexibly quickly and reliably where needed while providing for granularity of these metrics, said Mellul. “This is a differentiated platform with a focus on flexibility, performance and reliability. The functionalities and abstractions play a key role in providing those achievements.”

For partners, working with StorONE means having partner support and a voice for customer features, he said. “We have decided to standardize on S1 for our existing customers and are actively demonstrating better value and performance than their existing solutions.”

ESG’s Scott Sinclair

Scott Sinclair, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, said the flexibility of StorONE’s software-defined storage architecture may be its most compelling feature. “Businesses often desire more choice when it comes to storage hardware and public cloud services,” said Sinclair. “More choices, however, often add complexity. Here is where channel partners can offer value, by providing their expertise…

…on how to best tune the infrastructure with StorONE’s technology to help their customers best optimize their storage environment.”

The latest StorOne feature enhancements help differentiate the company’s offerings, said Sinclair. “There is a lot to like about StorONE’s approach. The multilevel tiering capability is a great fit given the rise of different storage types, including flash, storage class memory, disk and cloud. The integration of object storage with the S3 protocol offers organizations an option to support application developers with the same storage environment.”

The key is meeting the infrastructure flexibility needs, including the option to leverage on or off premises resources, he said. “Application demands are constantly increasing and becoming more diverse. Businesses need more options and more flexibility to adjust and evolve with demands. The end result is businesses can better tune their environment to their specific needs for a more cost effective and simpler storage environment.”