01732 759725 14 BUSINESS BRIEFING How Climb Channel Solutions and Cloudian are working together to help channel partners address opportunities in AI and hybrid cloud massive growth in unstructured data and data gravity, where applications move to where the data resides to ensure performance and security. It does this by bringing the scale and affordability of cloud-native storage technology to enterprise data centres, where it can be controlled and secured in on-prem and hybrid cloud deployments running on industry-standard servers or Cloudian appliances. Cloudian’s two building blocks are: n a highly scalable HyperStore platform, which joins together nodes in multiple locations, data centres and geographies to form a cluster that can be scaled to exabyte size and managed as a single system, with a 70% lower TCO than conventional storage systems; and n fully native interoperability with the Amazon S3 API, the de facto standard in S3 object storage used by thousands of applications from the likes of Adobe, Commvault, Microsoft SQL, Rubrik, Snowflake, Splunk, Teradata, Veeam, Veritas and many others. “At the scale data is being created you really need a modern API that’s designed for scale of exabytes of data and this is why we focus as a company on the Amazon S3 API. It really is the most well-defined set of APIs or protocols to handle very large data sets,” explains Cloudian CEO and co-founder Michael Tso. “We have taken whatever Amazon offers with the S3 API and built it for a fully distributed world, for on-prem and for hybrid, and kept it compatible at every single level so that we can promise that if you have something that runs in the cloud, it can run on our data storage without any modifications to your application.” Ahead of its time Tso adds that when Cloudian started in 2011 it was probably ahead of its time, with its vision of a distributed rather than centralised future. “For a number of years, we were against the grain, because everybody was saying everything’s going to be centralised in the cloud and all IT outside the cloud is going to disappear. What we’re seeing now is that not only has IT outside of cloud not shrunk, but it’s growing faster again, because of the AI push. “AI is going to be done near where you have the data and, because people are very concerned about the security of the data and what AI is being trained on, we’re seeing that even the hyperscalers, the public cloud guys, are now pushing a hybrid edge strategy.” At the same time, many businesses are looking to de-cloud to some extent to tackle public cloud’s perceived shortcomings in cost, transparency, performance and data sovereignty, especially in countries with laws to counter the Patriot Act, which enables the US government to look at the data an organisation might have on a US-owned and managed platform. “For CIOs to say they are ‘cloud-first’ now sounds very old hat. Today it’s about right-clouding – what’s right to put in the cloud. We did a call blitz with one of our major strategic partners recently and they generated over 30 opportunities in just a couple of days. And 100% of those deals were cloud repatriation deals,” explains Tso. He adds that this is generating significant interest for Cloudian on the HPE Greenlake platform from customers that still want a very cloud-like experience, Climb Channel Solutions is a fastgrowing US distributor with big ambitions for the UK and EMEA, following its acquisitions of Sigma Software Distribution in 2020, Spinnakar in 2022 and DataSolutions last October. Specialising in emerging tech, primarily in the datacentre, infrastructure and cybersecurity sectors, Climb’s global revenues hit $1.26 billion in 2023, up from about $300 million four years ago. According to Chief Revenue Officer Gerard Brophy, this makes Climb big enough to give vendors the scale they need, but small enough to make decisions very quickly. “We are very much a people business and our resellers and vendors like dealing with us because we just get stuff done. Ultimately, what we’re about is speed to market. Our vendors want to be in front of the customers as soon as possible, so that’s the service we offer. From quoting and invoicing to delivery, speed is everything. I see us as more of a sales and marketing business than a distribution business.” He adds that channel gives emerging vendors scale and an extended salesforce, plus the support infrastructure, professional services and training that a distributor like Climb provides to help them establish a market presence and grow more quickly. “We like to take vendors early and act as a proxy, taking their technology to market and creating their footprint. Compared to the broadline model, where it seems to me that everyone’s fighting over the same deals, we’re always looking ahead. We’re always evangelising. What’s the next best thing that’s going to come out of Silicon Valley? That’s why resellers want to work with us.” Reciprocal value One Climb vendor that Brophy holds up as an example of a company that understands the reciprocal value of channel relationships is Cloudian, a specialist in S3-compatible object storage systems founded in 2011 to help enterprises address the cost and complexity of data storage at a time of Scale and reach Gerard Brophy We are very much a people business and our resellers and vendors like dealing with us because we just get stuff done. Ultimately, what we’re about is speed to market
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