S3 gets Nimble in channel two step
Start-up Nimble Storage has landed Solid State Solutions (S3) as its first partner as part of its expansion into the UK market. The firm has also recruited Phil Turner, a highly experienced channel veteran to grow its European business and establish a two tier pan-European distribution strategy.
Nimble offers iSCSI arrays that combine lots of flash memory and low-cost SATA drives with an intelligent file system that speeds up task such as deduplication, compression and backup. The company was founded in 2009 by several senior ex-NetApp and Data Domain executives and has picked up a plethora of awards for innovation along with 150 customers, predominately in US.
As EMEA sales director, Turner (pictured) is charged with its regional expansion and is a well known face through a six year stint at NetApp and four years at Data Domain / EMC. “We have made a decision to fully embrace the channel and will be building out teams across EMEA with our initial focus on the UK,” he explains. “We are also in discussion with a number of distributors but no firm decision has been made as to which one is the best to take us to market.”
Nimble is still weighting up a choice between a big pan-European, regional specialists or a hybrid model but Turner confirms that it is actively looking for at least one distribution partner.
Dan Leary, VP marketing for Nimble Storage believes that the channel and end-customers are eager for choice – especially after the last year of market consolidation. “Virtually every independent player has been acquired, several of those have gone to server companies,” he comments. “If a partner is a HP / Lefthand vendor but they also sell Dell servers, bringing Dell or HP into the deal and trying to cross sell can create channel conflict.”
In the US, Leary points out the channel has raised concerns that the smaller end of the market is moving towards big vendors going via telesales or even direct touch. Typically a Nimble deal starts at around the $50,000 mark but the majority of customers tend to scale-out quickly after the initial trial.
In the UK, Turner is now in the process of recruiting partners of which Solid State Solutions (s3) is clearly the most significant. S3 is an EMC Isilon Platinum Partner and also won the vendor’s European partner of the year award for 2010.
Turner thinks that a channel of around a dozen partners in the UK would not be “inconceivable” but adds that they are not looking for a large network. “I would rather become fundamental to a controlled number of partners rather then dealing with a large number that, at best, we can pay lip service to.”
Channel Pro Comment
It’s clear that with just 150 customers and little brand awareness, Nimble is not going to be the primary sales platform for most partners. But for a firm like S3, the move indicates a strategy that others in the channel might adopt. No matter what the technology benefits are on paper, some customers will always stick with a big brand whether that’s EMC, HP or Dell. But for a particular project or to cut costs, some will certainly entertain an innovative start-up providing the channel partner is trusted enough to guarantee that “it does what it says on the tin!”
The casualty of the scale-out acquisition wars of 2010 were the smaller partner communities of vendors like 3Par, Isilon and Compellent that have now become swelled by the masses. Some of these partners are going to try and jump on the next big thing instead of having to fight in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Start-ups like Nimble, Avere, Nexenta and a few others are on the hunt for partners that want another differentiator. Either way, a broader choice is probably a healthy climate for both the channel and end customers alike.
