Kaminario Furthers Software-Centric Transition via Tech Data Partnership

As Kaminario, the cloud storage software company, approaches its 10^th year in business, the vendor on Wednesday announced a partnership with Tech Data to help streamline its operations as it transitions to a software-centric business model.

What the new strategy means to Kaminario is that it gets to focus on doing what it does best, IP and software, while Tech Data takes over the management of the supply chain for the vendor — doing what it does best. The agreement allows the distributor to provide supply chain, integration and product support services for the vendor’s composable data platform solutions, including the Kaminario K2 all-flash array. Going forward, Needham, Massachusetts-based Kaminario will focus company investments and resources on software innovation.

Kaminario’s Dani Golan

“The cloud-computing paradigm and demand for automated data centers are changing the nature of enterprise IT,” said Dani Golan, CEO at Kaminario. “This business-model shift, enabled by our partnership with Tech Data, positions us to deliver the economics and flexible consumption models that cloud providers need, with absolutely no compromises on our well-proven technology capability.”

IDC reported that the total all-flash array market generated about $1.6 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2017, up more than 38 percent year over year.

Kaminario, a player in enterprise all-flash storage, competes against big storage vendors such as IBM, HPE, and Dell EMC, among others, according to Josh Epstein, chief marketing officer at Kaminario. The vendor did all of the integration work, including managing vendor-partner relationships – in house – and marketed its appliance. Now Tech Data will take over the integration and distribution of Kaminario products, and Kaminario will supply the software.

“For the partner and customer, the experience won’t change. They’re still getting an integrated appliance,” Epstein told us.

The alliance with Tech Data is new for the company. Kaminario’s 200 global partners, i.e. VARs and system integrators, that are part of its Kaminario Accelerate Partner Program, will purchase products through Tech Data. The transition will be aggressive, Epstein said.

Kaminario’s go-to-market strategy is to be a 100 percent channel-led company, and in 2017, almost all of its business went through partners.

“Tech Data provides product life-cycle management services for technology companies that want to focus on their core competencies,” said John O’Shea, senior vice president, Global Lifecycle Management Services, Americas at Tech Data. “Our alliance with Kaminario helps them to deliver a complete solution to their customers by leveraging Tech Data’s global logistics network and comprehensive integration and product support services.

Kaminario’s latest generation of the K2 all-flash array is now available to all resellers through Tech Data and includes Kaminario VisionOS and the Kaminario Clarity support, analytics and management platform. Kaminario K2.N and Kaminario Flex will also be offered through Tech Data, as soon as the products are available for general distribution.

The vendor said it will continue to provide centralized support management for all data-center implementations based on its software.