| | | Key resellers signed on as Mellanox pushes into enterprise
Chris Player (ARN) 23 November, 2016
arnnet.com.au
InfiniBand and ethernet provider, Mellanox, is continuing its push into the local market through its partnership with Exclusive Networks’ data centre subsidiary, BigTec, after signing on a number of key partners in Australia and New Zealand.
ARN can reveal that the vendor has already recruited over a dozen partners across each state and territory including ASI Solutions, Digicor, and Xenon Systems.
Mellanox has two parts to its business, InfiniBand and Ethernet. InfiniBand is the high performance computing component and the vendors target markets are research, simulation, meteorological agencies, and the automotive industry.
The company’s focus on its ethernet business is more open. While still an enterprise play, the target verticals are broader and encompass almost all sectors, but Mellanox intends to target specific verticals - such as education and cloud providers - and partners to achieve its goals.
Mellanox vice president and general manager APJ, Charlie Foo, told ARN that while the company has an established presence in the InfiniBand market, it is still a relatively new player in the ethernet space and is focussing a lot of energy in the local market to attract new partners.
“We have to be very focussed, and one of the strategies Sudarshan [Ramachandran] and his team are doing is to identify vertical segments where they will focus and then will build a practice around that through our partners,” he said.
“If we go after a market - higher education for example - then we could leverage our InfiniBand footprint there, but we will also recruit partners who have been successful in that segment.
“We are looking to build one or two segments successfully, and then move on to other segments.”
The vendor uses partners as its only route to market and is focussed on a two-tier model in close partnership with Exclusive Networks’ data centre subsidiary, Bigtec.
Bigtec managing director pacific, Dominic Whitehand, said the two organisations are working closely to recruit partners in each state and territory that are focused on their target verticals.
“Part of the reason we really wanted Mellanox as part of the BigTec stack was to cater to the open networking and software defined networking side of things,” he said.
“We are looking to help those partners transform their datacentres. Either their own when they are serving their customers, or for the customer themselves.
“The great example we use with Mellanox is the three halves. It is half the cost, half the power, and half the width. In a normal rack you can fit two Mellanox switches for half the price, and half the power.
“It works on top of that Nutanix piece we are putting in place because we can bundle it with the Cumulus Linux OS pre-loaded on the switch, so you have three of our vendors working together in the stack. Its a key thing for us,” he added. |
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