Ingram Micro gets flash with Whiptail

Advanced implementations should benefit from solid state storage, says vendor

Ingram Micro Europe has agreed to distribute flash storage arrays and related OSes from US manufacturer Whiptail.

Erik Hardy, executive vice president of worldwide sales at Whiptail, suggested that Ingram was chosen primarily for its market dominance.

"Ingram Micro's deep and broad relationship with its network of VARs will be key to our continued expansion. We listened to partners requesting the ability to combine our proposition with Cisco and through Ingram Micro we were able to do this," Hardy said in a statement.

Cisco last week announced its intention to buy four-year-old Whiptail for $415m (£261m).

Customers engaging in database consolidation, analytics or batch processing projects, virtualisation, or storage upgrades could benefit from Whiptail's products, the statement suggested, especially if they are combined with Cisco offerings.

"Flash storage has come of age," Hardy claimed. "Performance-intensive, mission-critical environments require resilience and accelerated performance."

Jason Beal, executive director for advanced solutions at Ingram Micro Europe, said the advanced technologies division would help channel partners identify and pursue suitable opportunities.

"We provide a higher-touch customer enablement model with specialised and dedicated resources," Beal said.