HyperGrid hunts cloud newcomers as it launches first cloud solution

Infrastructure vendor searching for partners who are new to cloud or lack infrastructure in recruitment push for new product

Hyper-converged infrastructure vendor HyperGrid is looking to recruit partners who are looking for a way to get into cloud services with the launch of its new cloud platform, HyperCloud.

The California-based vendor - which specialises in hyper-converged application delivery - was founded in 2009 and was originally called GridStore. It changed its name to HyperGrid in July this year.

HyperCloud offers platform, application and infrastructure services which aim to allow customers to run workloads on-premise, through an MSP or on a private or public cloud. It is on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, allowing customers to "lift and shift" workloads across to Azure from on-premise or other cloud platforms.

Kelly Murphy, HyperGrid's co-founder and CTO, said that HyperCloud is designed to help stop "shadow IT", where developers are using public clouds to build applications without going through official approval procedures in their organisations.

He explained: "Developers are going to AWS or Azure and building applications, sometimes without the organisation knowing about it. This is because of the lengthy approval processes with organisations. This has become known as shadow IT. Our view is that this is not a good result, but it is also the reality. With cloud vendors it is a one-way ticket and then there is no choice. That is not a good position for a business to be in.

"What we have built with HyperCloud is the ability for organisations to run their workloads either on-premise, on a service provider or in a private or public cloud. When they run those workloads, they have complete control and governance around them. It lets them use the cloud as a resource, and they can use any of them."

HyperCloud uses a subscription model, and the vendor is looking to recruit partners who are either just starting to offer cloud services, or are unsure how to do so.

"We would love to speak to anyone who is looking at this space and thinking; ‘how do we get into this space of cloud services without losing that customer?'.

Doug Rich, vice president of EMEA for HyperGrid, said that the vendor has just hired a new channel manager and is stepping up partner recruitment after the brand relaunch.

"We are looking to acquire partners in various countries within Europe," he said. "We have got a very high quality list of partners that we are looking at. They have traditional infrastructure they sell, but we are offering an alternative of a subscription-based solution.

"We would love to speak to anyone who is looking at this space and thinking; ‘how do we get into this space of cloud services without losing that customer?'. Because you can lose the customer sometimes in the process of doing that. But with us you are keeping that relationship."

The vendor is mainly looking for partners in the traditional infrastructure space and partners currently offering cloud but without infrastructure to back it up.

"We want traditional infrastructure partners who want to offer something with higher margins and better annuity. We also want people just starting in the cloud. Maybe they are offering cloud at the moment but haven't got the infrastructure," Rich added.

Epaton has been partners with HyperGrid for about six months, and its managing director Jonathan Lassman said he thinks the hyper-convereged space is the most intereting space to be in currently.

He explained: "We have been working on a few opportunities with them; they have got a good story. We are looking at hyper-convergence as a play in the market right now, and when we saw this product we knew we wanted to take advantage of it. If you are looking at Hyper-V only then it is a story that can't be ignored. The hyper-converged space right now is very interesting. It seems to be the fastest growing revolution we have seen in the storage space for a long time."