ScaleFlux sold its first two generations of computational storage SSDs direct, but the new series is more plug and play, so they are selling it through channel partners as well, and have built a channel program to facilitate this.
Hao Zhong, Co-founder and CEO of ScaleFlu
San Jose-based ScaleFlux, which makes SSDs with computational storage at scale for larger customers, has announced the general availability of its 3000-series suite of products based on its new System-on-Chip [SoC] Storage Processor, the ScaleFlux SFX 3000. The 3000 series portfolio, including the CSD 3000 series NVMe Computational Storage Drives, NSD 3000 series NVMe SSDs, and SFX 3000 storage processing, are all being displayed at the 2022 Flash Memory Summit, which runs through Thursday at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
ScaleFlux was founded in 2014 by a team with extensive backgrounds in the storage industry, who got together to solve the issues of computational storage, in which the processing speed has been growing at a much slower rate than data storage.
“That’s why in the last 5-10 years, it has been all about helping CPUs increase speed to accelerate and offload workloads,” said Hao Zhong, Co-founder and CEO of ScaleFlux.
“We had the 1000 and the 2000 series before, and the 3000 series now becomes our flagship product,” said J.B. Baker, ScaleFlux’s VP of Marketing. “It marks our transition to the next generation of PCI interface and custom ASIC that integrates all these functions.”
The 3000 series is based on arm technology. It lets users align storage lifecycle management with servers by improving SSD endurance,and improve the economics of data center storage by reducing Cost/GB, increasing footprint density and delivering low latency across workloads. Its native support for NVMe also reduces the complexity of deployments, a major plus for the 3000 series.
J.B. Baker, ScaleFlux’s VP of Marketing
“The reduced complexity allows us to compete and do much better than the ordinary NVMe SSDs they get from the current market leaders,” Baker said. “We have gone with the approach of making it easy – plug and play – so that no application modifications are required. You just plug it in and you get more work out of your infrastructure.”
This new focus on simplicity is also leading ScaleFlux, with the 3000 series, to carve out a meaningful role for the channel for the first time.
“One of our key foci has been making this easy to use, with no application integration, and no work by the user,” Baker stated. “The challenge with our early models and with our competitors is that these products are very complex, and end users don’t have the time to manage them. That’s also why it can grow very broadly through the channel. Our first two product generations were 100% direct selling efforts. But we see the 3000 series as broadly usable for channel partners, and to that end, in May, we launched our first global channel program.”
The goal of the program is to establish a fairly broad channel presence.
“We have a handful of partners signed up now, and we want to cover all the regions,” Baker indicated. “We are working with TDSYNNEX in North America and Europe.”
The focus with the 3000 series, for both ScaleFlux and its channel partners, will be on relatively large customers.
“We sell to both large scale data centres as well as Tier one users, who represent a combination of both on-prem and in cloud,” Baker said. This ranges from hyperscalers to customers who buy a few times a years with a few dozen or a few hundred servers.”
