The first-ever NetApp HCI solution, announced in June, will be available in October, and that, rather than the shinier and newer announcements at INSIGHT, was what had solution providers buzzing.
Hitachi made multiple announcements of significance at their recent NEXT customer show, but they also gave some high level guidance about what’s coming in 2018.
In addition to new SMB-focused server, storage, networking and hyper-converged product, HPE has brought their Consume IT OPEX pricing model from the enterprise to SMBs as well.
Maxta has developed the ability to migrate customers seamlessly from VMware ESXi to Red Hat, using their software, and looking to appeal to customers who want to move some of their workloads to a less expensive hypervisor.
Millard, a veteran EMC channel exec who has most recently been in charge of channels at Virtustream, comes on board the Dell EMC channel team as a focused storage specialist.
Comtrade launched their purpose-built solution for Nutanix three months ago. The new version includes the ability to set Nutanix Storage Dense nodes as backup targets, and adding autodiscovery for Microsoft Active Directory.
The M-Series family OEMed from Mellanox, which provide 100 GbE Ethernet connectivity, but also scale down to an SMB price point, provide HPE with a strong channel offering that has a large price-performance differential over Fibre Channel.
OnApp, which has a larger global share of the service provider market, enters the enterprise HCI market with their software in Intel hardware, and a channel-only model with a master reseller/distributor in each geo.
VMware Canada moves to get partner more involved in more sales, earlier in the process, as the longstanding “channel tax” is scrapped.
In addition to upgrades to VxRail, VxRack SDDC, both their Enterprise and Native hybrid clouds, and new turnkey VMware Ready Systems for ‘do it yourself’ cloud deployments, Dell EMC also announced GA for XtemIO X2 and an upgrade of their Dell Data Protection Suite for Applications.
HDS also announced that their hyper-converged Hitachi UCP HC platform has been upgraded with the new Intel processors and NVMe memory support.
Pivot3 has a large channel, and the changes are designed to both provide increased support for go-to partners while ensuring the large majority of partners receive necessary protection and support to close deals.
Cloudistics sees Ingram Micro’s EVI program for startups as a great boon to let them expand their channel in the U.S. and Canada.
The Cloudistics 3.2 release makes significant security and networking enhancements, and will be followed by some notable channel-side announcements next week.
Commvault Canada is using customer digital transformation consultations to further build awareness of the breadth of its data platform.
There are four main enhancements, one of which is the addition of file and object storage support to give the Cohesity platform an archiving capability as well as backup.
HTBASE, a Toronto-area startup that is in the process of moving its main offices down to the Valley, has inked what for them is a huge statement of validation, partnering with Dell EMC.
Connolly acknowledges he will need to work hard to assure Dell EMC Canada customers, partners and staff that a guy coming from the EMC side of the house gets the commercial business, which is mainly legacy Dell.
The new offerings are more powerful than the appliances Scale has offered before, but they aren’t looking to move upmarket, just satisfy the demand of storage-hungry SMBs and midmarket customers.
Stefan Bockhop discusses his new role in the Lenovo DCG and their plans to drive business with new product, new go-to-market, and new channel programs – which include some forthcoming changes to deal reg.
