Distribution underpinning VAST Data’s EMEA expansion plans

Storage software player VAST Data is on a mission to expand its channel base and is following up the recent opening of a UK operation with further expansion across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

As well as putting in people and offices, the US-based vendor has been recruiting distribution partners to support a channel push, which includes Spinnaker in the UK and Arrow Electronics for Europe. In addition, Logicom is covering the Middle East and Africa, TechData is handling Australia, ASI is covering New Zealand and ASBISc Enterprises is dealing with Russia, as well as eastern and central Europe.

“In just a few short years we’ve become one of the fastest growing storage companies ever, disrupting a stagnant marketplace and challenging the status quo to solve old storage dilemmas for the new data-driven world,” said Renen Hallak, founder and CEO of VAST Data.

“The plan now is to scale our Universal Storage platform into international markets, helping enterprises meet the challenges of exponential data growth, access complexity and speed. We believe it’s time for modern enterprises to rethink the whole data and storage landscape to take advantage and leverage the benefits of ‘clouds of flash’ for their AI [artificial intelligence], analytics and data protection strategies,” he added.

Peter Gadd, international vice-president at VAST Data, said the channel underpinned its business ambitions and it would continue to develop a strong network to increase sales.

“We’ve been laying the foundations of our international expansion throughout 2021 and we’re now ideally placed to accelerate our presence across EMEA and Asia-Pacific,” he added. “We have great technology, we have a great team and we have a great partner network. The market opportunity is huge and we are well primed to take advantage of the seismic shifts we see in data and storage over the next few years.”

When Arrow signed up last month, Alexis Brabant, vice-president of sales for Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in Europe, said the vendor offered something different.

“As more businesses explore new ways to address the growing needs of AI and big data analytics or to rethink their data protection strategies, it is important that their storage infrastructure can deliver the intensive performance needed to extract value from their data. With VAST Data, customers can realise the benefits of an all-flash datacentre without the usual cost barriers,” he said.

The deal with VAST is one of a string of vendor additions made by the distributor recently, having also been chosen by Pure Storage last month to offer its as-a-service offering.

Arrow has also been extending its security vendor roster, landing an exclusive relationship with Broadcom to take the Symantec product line across Europe to help the vendor grow its SME market share.