StorOne has launched a new enterprise storage service which includes on-premises hardware and storage software on a monthly subscription basis, instead of requiring customers to buy the systems up front as an expensive capital expense.

The S1 as a Service storage offering integrates StorOne’s software with hardware from Dell Technologies and Mellanox to create a system that allows customers to get secure, high performance and flexible storage starting at $999 a month for an 18TB all-flash array.

StorOne’s Gal Naor

“Until now, every time that you wanted to buy storage you needed to pay the storage vendors a huge amount of money for hardware and then for maintenance,” Gal Naor, the CEO and
founder of StorOne, told Channel Futures.

Instead, the company’s latest offering means customers can get the advantages of the cloud, including its flexibility and its payment structure, without having to worry about data security and performance degradation in the cloud because the data is kept on premises, he said.

The 18TB starting point for the on-premises hardware delivers up to 150,000 IOPS and the service requires no long-term commitments, he said.

The data storage systems come complete with data protection and data retention capabilities that allow unlimited snapshots and other services, so no other products are required to run them, according to Naor.

“It’s very efficient and needs dramatically less resources, which is why we can provide this service,” he said.

The service allows customers to use it with any type of data as well as any combination block, file and object storage as needed — even on the same drives.

“We didn’t compromise on the hardware to give you this kind of service,” said Naor.

StorOne offers the systems in partnership with distributor Tech Data – which has a large channel partner community – or to IT solutions providers directly from StorOne.

Joseph Cousins, vice president of the Americas for Tech Data, said his company will soon offer a 20TB package using the StorOne software for customers to test and work with.

Tech Data’s Joseph Cousins

“StorOne’s software allows users to protect and utilize their data faster, more efficiently and at less cost than any other solution on the market today,” said Cousins. “VARs and MSPs need high-performing, cost-effective data center-centric solutions to compete with the larger cloud providers.”

Cousins said the two companies have been working together for the last year to create the new service and their included hardware packages.

George Crump, principal storage analyst for Storage Switzerland, said that products like this can help partners solve a vexing problem for customers — when they need a product or service but don’t have an adequate capital budget at the time.

“So the customer delays, and that’s why they go to the cloud, because there you don’t have to spend $100,000 up front,” said Crump.

But under that scenario, the channel doesn’t get the customer win like it used to, he added.

“With S1 storage as a service, it allows the channel to still sell a hardware product, but under an operational expense deal” rather than as a capital expense, said Crump. “It can solve the customer’s problem, maintain account control and grow the customer’s business. And for the channel it’s a huge win because they can completely go toe to toe with the cloud.”

In addition, channel partners can install the systems and then benefit from new and valuable recurring revenue streams, said Crump.

“They also get to move forward on a project right away instead of waiting for a capex budget.”

To provide the high performance of the new service, StorOne removed a lot of bottlenecks to make it all work efficiently and quickly, said Crump.

“The reason StorOne can get here with this product and these capabilities is they have really reinvented storage configurations. They didn’t use existing software libraries” and instead created their own, which has allowed them to get raw performance numbers from drives even when they already contain data and applications, he said.

“All the features a channel partner and a customer can want are there,” said Crump. “It’s clearly a big win for the channel and for the customers who like that operational expense model and who really don’t want to go to the cloud.”