Tintri's story provides 'opportunities' for vendors and partners - NetApp channel boss

Adam Tarbox tells CRN that partners should be paying attention to their vendors' financial security and market position

Tintri's demise should act as a warning for the channel to only work with financially strong vendors, according to rival NetApp's Adam Tarbox.

Tintri filed for bankruptcy earlier this year before being auctioned off for $60m (£46m) to US storage vendor DataDirect Networks last month.

Tarbox, UK&I channel sales director at NetApp, told CRN that such stories highlight how important it is for partners to ensure that they are working with financially secure vendors that have the means to cater to their customers' needs.

"When you look at companies like that going under, there is, first of all, an opportunity for vendors because a number of customers would have been serviced by that vendor," he said.

"Secondly, there is an opportunity for reflection in the partner community on which vendors they want to work with and how those partners are positioned within the market."

Tarbox added that the Tintri story is not reflective of the global storage market, stating that it is in a "good place" overall.

NetApp held 6.3 per cent of the global enterprise storage market space in the second quarter of 2018, generating revenues of $832m, according to IDC.

This placed it in third place for that quarter, behind Dell EMC and HPE respectively.

The channel boss said this ranking was promising, but that it covers only one part of the firm's portfolio.

"I think every vendor wants to gain market share and that is always part of our strategy," he said.

"We keep a close eye on overall share of the storage market, but from a NetApp perspective, storage is just one aspect - we also have HCI and the cloud market. We measure our success across those three areas - not just one."

Tarbox also warned partners of how customers may come to compete with them when recruiting the required skill sets to manage diverse technologies.

"As customers adopt simpler technologies, like HCI on-premise, they can use a lower skill set for that, allowing them to recruit into the higher skill sets such as analytics and big data and machine learning," he explained.

"There is a knock-on impact for partners who have to service those demands and they are equally in a place where they are competing for skill sets in the market, so I think that will drive some acquisition."