Cloudian Rolls Out Hyperforce Partner Program

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Cloudian, the provider of object storage solutions for unstructured data, on Wednesday announced the Cloudian Hyperforce Partners program and introduced the company’s new director of channel marketing, Christine Blum.

With the new program, the enterprise storage vendor is formalizing its relationship with the partner community, one that could be defined as unstructured up until now. The program has been in beta since February.

“Our goal is to make [partners] more effective at selling Cloudian and get them up to speed on the new technology, making it easier for them to register their deal, easier for them to find sales and marketing materials, start to create their own programs, get their demand gen up and running, and help educate them overall on the market and make them the experts in their territory,” Blum told us.

The Cloudian Hyperforce Partners program includes a portal for access to news, updates, leads and demand generation. Other program features include market development funds (MDF) to support demand-generation and business-development activities; a training curriculum; and access to the vendor’s inside sales team, the company said.

Service providers who worked with the company’s direct sales team were Cloudian’s initial targets. In the past year, however, the vendor has expanded its target market to include enterprise customers.

“That’s what this [new partner program] is all about. We’re expanding our routes to market,” said Jon Toor, chief marketing officer. Cloudian defines the enterprise market as medium-to-large companies, 500+ employees with capacity requirements of 50TB or more.

The profile of a Cloudian reseller may include a small shop with 10 people, to national resellers. What defines the ideal partner is their ability to add value in a specific area, i.e. backup and data protection, media and entertainment, or video surveillance, or a partner that works with customers driving unstructured data growth.

“These are all areas that drive a lot of capacity and see the value to a Cloudian solution,” said Toor.

The vendor has 200 partners worldwide, about half based in North America. The company wants to increase its number of partners but wants to attract those with expertise in specific areas and who are a good fit.

The company’s flagship product is Cloudian HyperStore, for scalable hybrid cloud storage solutions.