SolidFire Accelerates Channel Momentum Across EMEA

SolidFire, Inc. announced the Virtualization Specialization tier of its Cloud Builder Partner Program for EMEA-based partners.

By recognizing partners’ strategic expertise and capabilities within the most complex virtualized, VMware and cloud environments and enabling them to provide premier solutions for customers’ transition to the next generation data center, SolidFire expands its worldwide network of select, specialized partners. Cloud builder specialization partners are the only SolidFire partners who can create complex solutions that meet clients’ specific business needs at every phase of the SolidFire solution lifecycle.

Cloud computing has set a standard for the agility, scale, automation and operational efficiency of IT infrastructure and the expectations of IT service, delivery and consumption. Virtualized cloud environments demand complex storage architectures purpose-built to guarantee performance to thousands of workloads, OSs and applications from a single, shared infrastructure. Partners qualified as SolidFire cloud builder virtualization specialists are experts in building modern, virtualized data centers that can consolidate multiple workloads, scale-out to add capacity and performance as business needs dictate, and automate storage provisioning, management, monitoring and reporting.

Cloud builder virtualization specialization partners have the highest level of expertise, technical and services capabilities in advanced technology areas and architectures. They demonstrate the most knowledge and experience with an equally high level of investment in people, processes and data center tools to service very complex environments. To achieve this specialization, partners must meet stringent requirements and maintain a client success track record.

SolidFire’s storage platform and its virtualization specialization complements VMware’s virtualization technology, giving organizations the ability to improve storage resource utilization and flexibility, increase application uptime and simplify day-to-day operations. Unlike legacy storage vendors, SolidFire’s QoS enables its partners to deliver their clients predictable storage performance to each individual VM, while enabling applications and end user experiences to be more predictable and easier to manage. cloud builder virtualization specialists leverage SolidFire’s all-flash scale-out architecture to build next generation data centers which:

• Virtualize storage into performance and capacity resource pools that can be allocated using policies, reducing the need to over-provision and allowing more VM deployment
• Utilize a complete REST-based API, enabling automated orchestration that adjusts volume IO/s allocation and matches each VM’s storage I/O requirement
• Deploy per-volume QoS to ensure predictable VM performance, reduce ‘noisy neighbors’ and allow for the consolidation of multiple performance-sensitive applications onto a shared infrastructure
• Provision, change, scale and guarantee storage performance on-demand without interruption or downtime
• Designate, manage and deliver predictable VM performance from the host all the way through to the underlying SolidFire storage system
  

“Since the launch of SolidFire’s cloud Builder partner program in EMEA, we’ve seen tremendous growth of high-quality partners that share our DNA and have established expertise within the domains of data center infrastructure, virtualization technology and cloud applications and services,” said Ian Coop, sales director, EMEA partners, SolidFire. “The new Virtualization Specialization offers SolidFire customers an instant network of virtual systems experts who can efficiently and effectively design and deploy custom solutions that deliver impact at the technology level, but also drive real business value.“

The Cloud Builder Program is a foundational element of SolidFire’s go-to-market strategy, enabling the partner community to profitably engage with the SolidFire customer base in consistent and complementary ways. Launched in 2013, the cloud Builder EMEA community has grown to nearly 50 high-quality solution providers and VARs, including Alyseo SARL, Apalia SAS, Azuba, DTS Systeme GmbH and ShapeBlue Ltd.

More than 80% of SolidFire’s overall business in EMEA has involved a cloud builder partner. Through the program and SolidFire’s storage consumption models, partners benefit from high and predictable margins and rebates, recurring revenue and additional income from infrastructure and integration services, thought leadership and customer retention.