The deal sees the Cirrus Data Migration Server become the data migration element in INFINIDAT’s InfiniBox hardware, which is aimed at the higher end of the market.

Two startups have converged, with the formal announcement of a partnership between SAN data migration specialist Cirrus Data Solutions and high-end storage hardware vendor INFINIDAT. While partnering is central to Cirrus’ go-to-market strategy, and they have existing relationships with HPE and Dell EMC, the INFINIDAT deal is their first partnering where the Cirrus Data Migration Server is integrated into the other product, INFINIDAT’s InfiniBox hardware, to provide a complete storage solution with a data migration and management platform.

“The rest of our partnerships are different from this embedded technology deal,” said Ron Croce, Cirrus’ Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. “We have set out to be the industry standard, and to work with all the OEMs. We announced a technology alliance with HPE last December, and we are integrated into the back end of HPE and Dell EMC products. That’s been our strategy all along – be adopted by OEMs for block level data migrations, and use the channel for services.”

Croce said that the deal is an excellent fit for both companies, because both have a strong enterprise focus.

“We excel north of 100 TB, but we have done migrations a lot larger than that,” he said. “IBM Global Services has been using us for large scale petabyte migrations. We just did an 11 PB migration in two months that would have taken twelve months if it had been done another way.”

INFINIDAT is run by Moshe Yanai, who led the development of Symmetrix, EMC’s flagship enterprise product for years.

“They have been around for five years now, and have some really good traction in the market, and are really highly rated,” Croce said. “Gartner says they will do over a billion in revenue this year. They are really focused on big iron, and see their product as a modern replacement for Symmetrix. They also have secured some big marquee names as customers.”

Croce said that the deal came about because INFINIDAT had been looking for an enterprise-class migration tool, and while Cirrus came to their attention because one of INFINIDAT’s directors knew Cirrus CEO Wayne Lam well, Cirrus won out in the selection after INFINIDAT did their due diligence on a range of migration products.

“We have actually been working with them for a little over a year now,” Croce said. “We took our Data Migration Server and customized it for them, and it now appears in their product as their migration tool, Powered by Cirrus. They actively tell people it’s a Cirrus product, and have been using it for the last six months, doing engagements with their professional services team.”

Croce said that other significant partnering announcements are on the way.

“We expect to announce other significant deals,” he said.