SolidFire insists channel will make 'seamless' move to NetApp

Newly acquired vendor claims scale is essential in the now-mainstream flash market

SolidFire's boss has said its channel will enjoy a "seamless transition" to NetApp because more than two thirds of its former partner base already sells its new owners' technology.

Fledgling flash firm SolidFire was acquired by NetApp in a deal which closed in February and integration plans have been moving ahead at full steam since then.

SolidFire's general manager Dave Wright told CRN that the similarity between the two firms' channels will make integrating the two sets of partners simple. The company had 200 of its own partners prior to being taken over, but two thirds of those were already partnered with NetApp, said Wright.

"For the remaining partners [which did not partner with NetApp previously], we'll give them an option to move onto the NetApp partner programme," he said. "The NetApp programme and tiers are set up fairly similarly. We'll selectively move those partners which are engaged and productive into the NetApp programme so they can continue selling SolidFire and have access to the rest of the NetApp portfolio."

The flash market is extremely competitive and has been for a number of years, with numerous start-up firms battling each other and the more established vendors for the market. Wright said that flash is now so mainstream that winners and losers are beginning to emerge.

"Being smaller has key advantages in terms of product innovation and creation," he said. "But the reality is that SolidFire has already had that advantage. We built a unique and transformative product for the market. The challenge now is scale and how you get those products to as many people as possible. And that's where the benefit of a larger company is beneficial. We've seen a number of smaller start-ups who are still independent struggle to get mind share in the customer and partner community.

"There is a lot of them and their differentiation is not that unique any more. Everyone has flash and hybrid storage. You don't need to go to a start-up to get those things and it is a game of scale at this point."

NetApp claims to be the largest company dedicated to enterprise storage thanks to its acquisition of SolidFire and EMC's takeover by Dell.

Wright said this has key benefits for partners.

"If you look at what's happening with Dell and EMC, EMC was arguably the only other standalone storage company in the market and now it is becoming part of the much larger IT company of Dell," he said.

"You're going to have NetApp standing alone as the only dedicated public enterprise storage company. It is beneficial in a couple of ways. One is that it allows us to have a broad base of people who we partner with. We partner with Cisco and Fujitsu and many large, global OEMs. But also, when it comes to our channel, there's not that pressure that they have to sell NetApp with our servers and switches. They can build the best solutions for their customers."