Coraid launches formal EMEA partner programme

Ethernet SAN vendor Coraid has formally launched an EMEA channel programme following steady reseller growth.
The firm has built up around 350 customers in the region and has organically grown to nine channel partners in the UK. The new programme will formalise its relationships but will forgo distribution to instead rely on a three-man team lead by Marcos Burnett, formally of ONStor, to manage partners and grow the business.
Burnett confirmed that the Coraid would be actively recruiting a “possible further three” to the programme. The vendor’s UK Gold partners already include some well known names such as Admiral IT, Bell Microsystems, Nexstor, Solid State Disks and S3.
Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid believes that heavy acquisition in the storage markets last year has provided a great opportunity for the vendor: “A lot of the channel wanted to have ,say, EMC and Compellent or 3Par; they want a mix of things but now they are all gone and part of EMC, HP and so forth.” Brown suggests that the channel wants an innovative alternative that is outside of the monolithic providers.
The firm claims its block-based storage technology that uses 10GbE, “goes faster than fibre channel at around one fifth to one tenth the cost.” The technology uses a “flat layer 2” topology which Brown claims is also much simpler to manage.
Coraid arrays use off the-shelf hardware sold as ‘EtherDrive’ appliances, “So we come in at under $600 a terabyte and we outperform 3Par and EMC arrays that are $5000 or $8000 a terabyte – that is how we get in.” explains Brown. The CEO, who was formally a VP at NetApp, confirmed that the firm is partnering extensively with Ethernet switching vendors that lack a storage offering such as Arista, Force10 and Cisco and as Brown describes, “a very special relationship” with Avaya.
 
Channel Pro Comment
Coraid has picked up a number of partners who are highly respected storage solution providers that have historically picked winners at an early stage. S3 for example got into bed with Isilon and Nexsan early on and have delivered some very high profile projects for both. Some of Coraid’s flagship customers are multi-Petabyte organisations and the notion that Ethernet is king resonates with a number of vendors that are pushing the cutting edge low latency and high performance networking such as Arista and Force10.
Coraid last year decided to grab some funding to expand into new markets and it’s clear it is growing rapidly, with a three times EMEA customer growth in the last year. With few hot vendors left to buy in the storage space, you could make a case that Coraid’s position makes it an attractive buy for any vendor that would like to add storage to an Ethernet-centric network portfolio.