HDS hunting partners for healthcare push
Vendor also looking to increase the volume of sales that go through existing partners
Storage vendor Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is searching for partners that operate in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, as it looks to gain a foothold in the markets.
Lynn Collier, COO at Hitachi Data Systems UK and Ireland, said that as well as focusing on recruiting partners in its existing verticals - financial services, retail, logistics and utilities - the vendor is looking to branch out into different verticals with the help of new partners who already operate in those markets.
"I'm not looking to double or triple the number of partners we have; we are looking for partners that bring with them complementary skills. I'm looking for partners who have the capabilities and scale in particular vertical markets," she said.
"For me it is not about the number of partners; it is about their specialist skills, the segments they play in and the kind of expertise they can bring."
Collier (pictured) added that having the wider Hitachi group behind HDS helps the vendor to combine solutions from multiple sections of the group to take to the healthcare and pharmaceuticals markets.
Collier said that a big focus for the future of HDS is its flash offerings, which she claims have brought the vendor in a lot of new customers.
"We are seeing a lot of the customers we already had in place have upgraded their software to include our all-flash arrays or have included it as part of the infrastructure they are offering," she added. "We have got a lot of new customers with that solution, because it is enterprise class and scalable.
"We are seeing is a lot of customers going for the all-flash arrays because they have high performance requirements for some applications, and then for the rest of it, including development and longer term retention, they are putting in our object store. It's verified by IDC and Gartner as one of the top object store capabilities in the market."
HDS currently has 10 focused partners and 60 additional partners. Avnet is the vendor's sole distributor, after a strategy shake-up last year which saw the vendor drop its other distie Zycko.
Collier said that around 60 per cent of HDS' sales currently go through indirect, compared with barely any channel involvement 10 years ago.
She added that increasing its partner base and the volume of sales that go through partners is a key focus for the rest of the year.
"Partnering will always be the core of what we need to do for the scale and consistency we need," she explained. "Our ambitions are to ensure we continue to evolve and that we are selling more to our existing customers through our partners."