The Hedvig software-defined technology collapses disparate tiers of storage and unifies block, file, and object interfaces in a single platform, providing HPE and its partners with a capability not otherwise available to them through HPE.
Avinash Lakshman, Hedvig’s founder and CEO
Santa Clara-based Hedvig has announced that their bundled software-defined storage solution with Hewlett Packard Enterprise is now available through the HPE Complete program. The joint solution combines the Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform with HPE Apollo 4200 servers. It is available in 48- and 96-terabyte configurations.
Avinash Lakshman, Hedvig’s founder and CEO, had been working on distributed systems for a dozen years before Hedvig and was the creator of Apache Cassandra. He was drawn to the storage infrastructure space because of his belief that no fundamental innovation had taken place in it during the last decade. That led to his decision to found Hedvig.
“What we bring to the table is immense simplicity in how structure can be done, democratizing what is available in Google or Amazon and bringing it with simplicity at a fraction of the cost,” Lakshman said.
Hedvig’s secret sauce lies in using multi-protocol support to collapse disparate tiers of storage and unify block, file, and object interfaces in a single platform. This makes it unnecessary to organize SAN, NAS and object storage separately, and allows for allocation of data by workload-optimized servers.
The target market is medium to large enterprises, and the company aspires to a 100 per cent channel model.
Phil Williams, Hedvig’s VP of Business Development and Channels
“Last year, we launched our CloudScale partner program, and we have just launched our second wave of that, which coincides with us being part of HPE Complete,” said Phil Williams, Hedvig’s VP of Business Development and Channels. They have had about 50 partners in North America and Europe, of whom about 20 have been active.
“We have found that some of the smaller niche players have been effective for us – guys who know how to talk cloud,” Williams said. “They can rep us better than some of the big guys tied to big iron.”
Williams said that their goal is to exit the year with over a hundred channel partners in North America and Europe.
“We fully expect to handle exponential growth on the channel front from being a partner of HPE, with our value propositions around cloud and IT and the way they fit into HPE’s declared strategy,” he said.
Lakshman said that the initial development of the HPE relationship leading to the joint solution took place because of interest from the HPE side.
“They had begun to hear about us from their account teams, and were interested because we can deliver a hybrid cloud platform that aligns with their vision,” he said. “We had been in Partner One, and had been a certified server partner since March 2016. In March 2017, Hedvig became involved in HPE’s Pathfinder program, which incubates young companies with complementary technologies.
“As a software-defined storage company, it’s important to have partnerships,” Williams said. “HPE also brings reach into the hybrid cloud, which is important to us.”
Hedvig also talked about partnering with Dell EMC, but when the HPE relationship moved forward, they decided to focus on them.
“We had discussions with Dell but once the HPE relationship became clear, that went by the wayside,” Lakshman said. “Now we help HPE compete against Dell EMC’s ScaleIO.”
The joint solution, which is available now, is initially available as a preconfigured SKU on HPE’s high density Apollo 4200 servers. SKUs on the Apollo 4500 and on ProLiant servers will follow.
“We are already working with HPE field teams that are on ProLiant today,” Lakshman said.
Lakshman said that Hedvig has significant expectations from the HPE relationship.
“We expect a significant increase in business from this because of what we bring to the table,” he said. “They have no other portfolio company at this point that we believe can do what we do.”
