Data center appliance and storage company SoftIron Ltd. has launched a global channel partner program to accelerate growth and marketshare of the company’s open source scale-out data center appliances, services and solutions, according to a statement released by the company.
SoftIron creates appliances for scale-out data centers private and public cloud and enterprise scale facilities. The company is best-known for its HyperDrive software-defined storage portfolio, which is comprised of task-specific storage appliances hardware-optimized around open source cores like Ceph, according to the statement.
Ceph is an open source software storage platform that implements object storage on a single distributed computer cluster, and provides interfaces for object-level, block-level and file-level storage.
In February 2021, the company named Phil Crocker VP of business development and channel to head SoftIron's channel and reseller efforts. Crocker previously was with Panasas, where he developed and executed the Panasas Accelerate Partner Program as the senior director of channel and business development. Before that, he spent eight years as global channels director for EMC/Isilon.
SoftIron Launches Channel Partner Program
Traditionally, organizations use commodity, off-the-shelf hardware and optimize the software layer to try to eliminate bottlenecks. SoftIron, however, has designed its hardware around the needs of the operating system source code, optimizing solutions at the hardware level, according to the statement. In addition, SoftIron is able to deliver what it calls Secure Provenance via its own component-level design, firmware and component manufacturing process and facility in Newark, California, which enables auditable provenance, the company said.
The SoftIron + Co. program will give channel partners the ability to differentiate themselves for data center and storage customers by expanding their access to SoftIron’s open source-based data center solutions and services, according to the statement. SoftIron resellers will be able to offer powerful, open source technology, such as Ceph, in the company's task-specific hardware packages instead of commodity data center and storage hardware.
SoftIron Channel Program: Scaling Open Source, Software-Defined Storage
“The results of SoftIron’s unique ‘designed, not assembled’ approach to manufacturing enterprise data center solutions, is a highly integrated, truly differentiated offering that tackles the needs of the perpetually-scaling data center,” said Crocker. “As organizations grapple with the challenges of scaling their IT operations, they become even more interested in open source solutions that eliminate vendor lock-in and give them more control. SoftIron’s partners will be able to capitalize on the growing opportunity created by the rise in demand for supported, enterprise-class open source technologies like Ceph. By partnering with SoftIron in 2021, partners will be putting themselves in the best position possible to inherit success.”
