Kaminario Delivers Storage as a Service Through Tech Data Deal

Kaminario has unveiled a new storage-as-a-service offering that will enable end-user customers to end their investments in expensive storage hardware and instead buy storage services from channel partners who can lower their costs and management overhead.

The new storage-as-a-service capability, called Kaminario Storage Utility, is being hosted and provided by global life-cycle management firm Tech Data, which then offers the services to channel partners for resale to their customers on a consumption basis.

Under the arrangements, end-user customers can pay for storage services as needed, instead of having to invest in costly storage hardware capital purchases and systems management on their own.

The storage-as-a-service offering allows Kaminario to deliver enterprise-class storage experiences to end users by using an MSP model, Josh Epstein, chief marketing officer for Kaminario, told Channel Futures.

Kaminario’s Josh Epstein

“It allows MSPs to layer their services on top of it with no capital outlays,” he said.

After being founded in 2008 as an all-flash storage array company, Kaminario got out of the hardware business several years ago to focus solely on its storage and other cloud software, said Epstein.

Now, with distributor Tech Data as the company’s hardware arm, Kaminario is positioned to serve its channel partners and end-user customers through consumption-based software licenses, Epstein said. The platform was built for MSPs to host the storage services and is available through Tech Data, which maintains, expands and invests in the infrastructure behind it. Tech Data offers the storage offering as part of its technology as a service products.

“The Kaminario Storage Utility allows an MSP to deliver high-end, mission-critical storage as a service with no capital outlay,” said Epstein. “This is very important for MSPs, which are very sensitive to capital expenses.”

Kaminario also unveiled new disaster-recovery-as-a-service capabilities and new capabilities to place Kaminario storage instances on major public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. A new unified software licensing scheme also has been unveiled to allow customers to choose how they want to acquire infrastructure under a combination of acquisition models, the company said.

The Kaminario Utility Storage and disaster-recovery-as-a-service capabilities are available immediately, but the new cloud service capabilities won’t be available until the first half of 2020.

Mark Shirman, chief operating officer for Congruity360, a Kaminario VAR and MSP partner, told Channel Futures that his company’s customers have been evaluating as-a-service offerings for their infrastructures for some time and that the new Kaminario offerings could help his company facilitate and expand those opportunities.

Shirman said that his company has had ongoing conversations with Kaminario about these kinds of services.

Congruity 360’s Mark Shirman

“We will be utilizing Kaminario to provide a storage subscription service that can be leveraged for our customers to provide disaster recovery,” he said.

Congruity360 will soon be testing the market with such services, but they are expected to drive business, he added.

IT analyst John Webster of Evaluator Group said that services like the new products from Kaminario are good for channel partners because they provide the ability to sell as well as the potential to add their own professional services on top of the as-a-service offerings.

“Storage as a service is still emerging so there are no clear leaders at this point,” said Webster. “What is important for vendors offering storage-as-a-service solutions is to have a services orientation as opposed to finding just another way to sell a box. The ability to respond to a customer’s service level expectations is critical to success.”

At the same time, channel partners also will have an opportunity to provide value add services for customers requiring disaster-as-a-service capabilities, said Webster.

Ultimately, “the real savings for customers using storage as a service won’t come from infrastructure cost differentials, but from management time saved by letting the storage-as-a-service vendor and channel partner do the heavy lifting for management and support,” he said.